Custom Order Form Template

Custom work is a negotiation disguised as an order, and the first message sets the tone for the whole project. When commissions arrive as two-line DMs ("can you make me something like this? 😍"), the maker spends a week extracting the brief. This form front-loads that extraction: by the time you reply, you know what they want, when they want it, and what they expect to spend, so your first response can be a real answer instead of five questions.

The brief, front-loaded. The brief has a 40-character minimum, a tiny floor that filters "u make rings?" while barely registering to a serious commissioner, and the placeholder walks them through the four things every maker needs (what, size, materials, occasion). Reference images cap at three uploads, enough to convey a direction, few enough that you're not handed a 40-image Pinterest board to reverse-engineer. The budget question includes an "I'm not sure, tell me what's possible" option, the field's masterstroke, because it lets honest beginners self-identify instead of guessing a number that anchors the conversation wrong. The ideal completion date says "queued" out loud, teaching commissioners that bespoke means waiting before they've asked.

Skipped on purpose. A fixed price menu is out, because pricing bespoke work from a dropdown guarantees you underquote the complicated ones. Revision-count policies and contract terms belong in your quote document, where they're binding and specific, rather than on the intake form where they read as defensiveness.

Makers with a queue. Jewelers taking engagement commissions, woodworkers building to a room's dimensions, tattoo artists collecting flash-versus-custom briefs, portrait artists working from photos, and leatherworkers, knitters, and ceramicists whose "shop" is a queue.

Set your bands, deposit later. Rewrite the budget bands to your price reality, because bands that start too low invite briefs you'll decline. Add a dropdown of your craft's key variables (metal, wood species, canvas size) if one dimension dominates your quoting. Partial responses are captured automatically, which matters here: a half-finished brief with an email address is still a warm lead. The reference images ride along in that same response, so the brief and its pictures reach you together instead of scattered across a chat thread. Point a webhook at your project tracker so accepted commissions flow into your queue, and use the responses view as your waiting list, because it already is one. The ending says payment is arranged after the design is agreed. Custom work should never take money before scope is settled, and the form's job is starting that conversation with everything on the table.