FormTab

What FormTab is

FormTab is a mobile form builder and data collection app for businesses that still run on paper. Its homepage headline is "We help you turn paper forms into mobile forms". You build a form in a web-based Form Builder, send it to staff, and they fill it in on a smartphone or tablet in the field, with or without a connection. Submitted data then shows up back in the office. The reader it is written for is an operations lead, project manager, site supervisor or facilities manager, not a software developer. The company says it has helped businesses "for over 10 years", and the copyright line reads FormTab Ltd.

The site sorts its audience by industry: consulting and developers, trades and construction, project management, service and maintenance, health and safety, medical, and franchise operations.

What you build and how

The core of the product is the form builder. The site says you can create a sophisticated mobile form "within minutes" with "zero technical experience needed", and that you drag in fields such as e-signatures, photos, barcode scanning and maps. Those are the field types a paper replacement needs on a job site: a signature at handover, a photo of a defect, a scan of an asset tag, a location pin. The company also says required fields "can't be ignored", so a worker cannot submit a form with a mandatory answer missing, which is one of the paper problems the homepage lists beside lost or damaged forms and messy handwriting.

Conditional logic is covered on its own feature page. The Rules add-on lives inside the form builder's template editor, at the bottom right of the form. A rule has three parts: a field in the form, a rule type that depends on the field type, and a value. Rules can act on sections, which can be shown or hidden, and on fields, which can be shown or hidden or switched between mandatory and optional. The rule types are grouped by field type. Value present rules test whether a field is empty or not empty and work on all fields except the excluded ones. Text comparison rules use contains, does not contain and does not equal, for text, text area, address, location, email and URL fields. Number comparison rules use greater than, less than and equals, for number and slider fields. Date comparison rules use the same three operators on date and date plus time fields. The page lists two exclusions for now: layout fields, and tables or fieldsets with the fields inside them, which it says are "to be supported at a later date". The app downloads the rules with the form, so fields appear and disappear on the device as the worker answers.

The mobile app runs on iOS, iPadOS and Android. The company says users need no training and that the layout stays consistent across devices. It works online and offline: in a place with no signal, the form saves data on the device and synchronizes once an internet connection is established, after which the data is in the cloud and available to office staff. The homepage names a national park and a high country farm as examples. The company's three-step description is create the form, complete it on the app, and collect the data in the office.

For integrations, the answer to "Will it work with our current software systems?" is "Absolutely! FormTab can integrate and complement any software you're already using." One customer quote describes the effect: site information "goes from project iPads directly into our system." Data submitted in the field is synced to the cloud and, in the homepage's words, "immediately available back in the office." If you do not want to build forms yourself, the site lists a Form Build Service, and says that if you feel apprehensive about creating a form, "we can do it for you". A custom branded option lets an organization distribute its own forms to team members from a central help desk, which one case study describes for a civil infrastructure services firm that captures field data and images. Another case study covers Stream Group, which the site describes as operating throughout Australia, New Zealand and the UK, specializing in claim assessment and fulfillment for the insurance sector, and as "A powerhouse behind the Canterbury earthquake rebuild work." Stream Group implemented FormTab custom forms for project managers to record site meetings and progress. The footer links to Documentation, Support, Testimonials and a blog.

Pricing, trial and customers

The pricing answer on the homepage is direct: "From just $15 dollars per user/per month." The site also advertises a free 21-day trial with no credit card required, and a banner reading "NEW FormTab FREE!", with a section titled "Get started with FormTab on our all new FREE plan! No credit card required. For a limited time." The limits of the free plan sit on the separate pricing page rather than on the homepage.

The homepage lists the costs of paper in plain terms: required fields are easily missed, forms get lost or damaged in the field, data cannot be shared until it is re-entered, hours are wasted waiting for forms to return to the office, and double handling causes errors. Its four benefits are share data instantly, speed up workflow, easy to use, and save paper. Customer quotes appear on the homepage attributed by company type rather than by name. An international facilities management firm says "It's saved us a lot of time capturing data in the field (and) improved the quality of the information we are capturing." A large multinational civil infrastructure firm says the product "removed one of our biggest pain points, chasing missing paperwork." A pharmaceuticals firm says "We've saved about 2000 pages of printing a day." A large multinational agricultural manufacturer values that the product is generic: "We build the forms we want for each department or territory and roll them out." A civil construction firm says it lets the team "be nimble and deliver solutions quickly for business needs." The site says FormTab supports "millions of infield data submissions." The two named case studies are Stream Group and Fulton Hogan, the latter described as specialists in civil infrastructure services across New Zealand and Australia. Support runs through documentation, a support page, a contact form and the address solutions@formtabapp.com, and the blog covers topics such as using iOS 15 Live Text, calculating ROI and scoping a paperless rollout.

Who it suits and who it does not

FormTab suits field-heavy teams: inspections, site reports, safety checks, maintenance call-outs and franchise audits, especially where reception is poor and workers have to hand over something signed. Per-user pricing is simple for a small crew, and the Form Build Service helps a team without time to design forms.

It is narrower than a general web form tool. The product is built around staff filling in forms on a device in the field, not around public surveys or forms embedded on a website. Conditional logic does not yet cover tables or fieldsets. Per-user pricing also means a large field force pays for every seat, so the free plan and the 21-day trial are the places to test the fit before rolling it out across a whole crew.