Gravity Forms
+ Admissions & Place Offers

Popular nurseries, schools, clubs, courses and housing co-ops often have more applicants than places, and applying the published oversubscription criteria by hand is slow: distances measured on a map, sibling links checked against a list, ties settled by a draw nobody can repeat, and a waiting list kept in a spreadsheet. The Gravity Forms Admissions & Place Offers add-on runs the whole round from your WordPress admin.

Collect applications with your Gravity Forms form during an application window. Enter your priority criteria in order: yes answers such as looked-after or staff child, a sibling list match and distance bands worked out on your own server from your postcode or coordinate list. Then a distance tie-break and a seeded random draw: the seed and a fingerprint of every input are saved, so the ranking can be re-run and verified. Every applicant gets a plain-language explanation of their position, for staff and on the family's private page.

On the offer date the top places in each group are offered with a signed accept / decline link and an answer-by date; everybody else goes on the waiting list and can see their position. A declined or lapsed place goes to the next applicant exactly once: capacity is protected in the database. Position changes need a reason and are logged, the appeals log records hearings and outcomes and can grant a place, and you get offer, waiting list and not offered letters by e-mail and PDF, a CSV and a full audit log. It is a tool to apply your published criteria; deciding those criteria stays with you. Everything runs on your own server, with no outside connection. For Gravity Forms 2.9 and newer.

Each round is stored in the add-on's own tables with its groups, places, window, offer date and ordered criteria. While the window is open, each new entry of the round's form becomes an application. Ranking reads every application's current answers, works out for each criterion whether it is met (a yes answer, a match against your sibling list ignoring capitals and spaces, or a distance band from the haversine distance between the setting and the home location from your postcode list), and sorts each group by the criteria in order, then by distance, then by a draw number made from HMAC-SHA256 of the application and a saved seed. A SHA-256 fingerprint of all inputs is saved with the seed, so the order can be re-run and verified. Offers take a place with one conditional database update while a place is free, and only the request that closes an offer gives the place back and offers it to the next applicant, so places are never over-offered. Family links are signed with a site secret. Everything happens on your own server — the add-on makes no outside HTTP request beyond the licence and update checks.