Gravity Forms
+ Parking Permits

Parking permits usually run on a spreadsheet, a box of paper tags and a long e-mail thread: the last space gets promised twice, the same car is entered with different spacing, permits run out without anyone noticing, and whoever checks the car park has to phone the office. The Gravity Forms Parking Permits add-on moves the whole job onto your own website. You set up zones with a number of spaces and the periods each one offers (term, month or year) with an optional fee, and residents, staff or students apply through an ordinary Gravity Forms form.

Your parking office approves or declines each application from a queue, with a reason the applicant receives. A zone never gets more permits than it has spaces: the space check, the permit number and the approval happen as one locked step, so the last space is given out once even when two people approve at the same moment. Approved applicants get a numbered permit PDF with a QR code, reminders 14 and 3 days before it ends and a renewal link that fills the form in again.

Wardens get a plate lookup on their phone: type any registration in any spacing, or scan the permit's QR code, and see valid, expired or unknown with the zone, but no names or contact details. Fees go through your Gravity Forms payment add-on. Withdraw permits, export a CSV, and keep everything on your own server with no outside connection. For homeowner and residents' associations, schools, offices and campuses. For Gravity Forms 2.9 and newer.

When the form is sent, the add-on checks the registration (compared without spaces or capitals), that the vehicle has no permit for overlapping dates and no open application, the per-person limit, and that the zone offers the chosen period. The fee for the zone and period is added to the Gravity Forms order on the server, so a payment add-on charges the right amount. Each application is saved in the add-on's own table and waits in the queue. Approving takes a short lock in the database with one conditional update, counts the permits in the zone whose dates overlap, issues the next permit number and sets the dates, all as one step, then e-mails a signed link to the permit PDF. The PDF is drawn on your server with a bundled PDF library and a QR code made by the add-on itself. An hourly job sends the 14-day and 3-day reminders with a renewal link that fills the form in again. The plate lookup is only open to the Parking warden role and administrators, and shows the state, zone, dates and permit number only. Everything happens on your own server — the add-on makes no outside HTTP request beyond the licence and update checks.