Fence permit software for your building department
Fence Plotter makes the drawing your fence permit applications keep coming back without. It runs on your permit page, under your logo, pre-loaded with your ordinance — and it stays free for your residents.
If you are a building official who arrived here off one of our PDFs and thought "this should live on our city's permit page" — you're right. Here's the offer either way.
The pitch in one paragraph
We embed Fence Plotter on yourcity.gov/permits/fence, branded with your logo and pre-loaded with your fence ordinance and your permit PDF. Every resident application arrives dimensioned, to scale, and pre-checked against your code. You spend less time bouncing applications back. Residents stop calling for clarification. It stays free for your residents; the city pays a flat annual fee, below.
Why the applications come back
We transcribed the residential fence ordinance of 67 US cities from each city's own municipal code, or from the fence rules its zoning office publishes where that code is not readable as text. 5 of them mention a drawing at all, and 1 — Tarpon Springs, FL — ties one to the fence permit submittal. The other 62 tell a resident their height limit and their setback and say nothing whatsoever about what to bring.
That is not a criticism of how the codes are written. Heights and setbacks belong in the code; submittal requirements belong in a counter handout, and most departments have one. It does explain where the review time goes: the applicant reads the part that is easy to find, draws something from memory, and a reviewer spends the cycle asking for dimensions, a scale and a north arrow instead of checking a setback.
Fence Plotter closes that gap on your side of it. The drawing is generated from your ordinance rather than from the applicant's reading of it, and it arrives with the dimensions, the stated scale and the compliance checklist already on the sheet. The full reading of those ordinances is here →
What your residents get
- A satellite-based draw tool on your permit page. They click points around their lot, mark gates, set height.
- Real lot lines from county GIS — surveyed parcel polygons, not eyeballed.
- Your permit form auto-filled with their info, dimensions, and material.
- Your ordinance compliance checklist on the printout — height, setbacks, neighbor consent — pre-checked against the drawn fence.
- No account, no sign-up, no payment. Plan lives in their browser.
What you get
- Permit packets that pass first-time review. Every PDF includes the elevation, the plot plan, and a checklist confirming the applicant read your ordinance.
- Less front-counter time. Fewer phone calls asking "what does ‘dimensioned to scale’ mean?"
- Your branding. Logo, colors, contact info — your city, not ours. Every PDF that crosses your reviewer's desk looks like it came from your office.
- Your ordinance, encoded. Max heights, setbacks, consent thresholds, fees — we keep them current, you tell us when they change.
- Ownership of the data flow. Optionally route submissions directly into your existing permit-tracking system.
Does this replace your permit system?
No, and it is not trying to. Fence Plotter produces the drawing and the completed application; where that application goes next is whatever you run today — a front counter, an email inbox, or a permit portal. On Standard the resident downloads a PDF and submits it through your existing channel, so nothing on your side changes except what arrives. On Integrated we route the submission into your system instead. There is no migration in either case and no data to move.
The one thing we check before quoting is your county's parcel layer. Where the county publishes surveyed parcel polygons we can query, residents get their real lot lines; where it publishes none, they place their lot corners by hand and the rest of the packet is unchanged. We tell you which of those your county is before you agree to anything, because it is the difference between a tool that finds a resident's lot and one that asks them to.
Cost
Standard
$79/month
Billed annually — one invoice for $948.
Your logo, your ordinance, your permit form, on your domain. We keep the ordinance current when you tell us it changed.
Integrated
$299/month
Billed annually — one invoice for $3,588.
Everything in Standard, plus submissions routed into your permit-tracking system and ordinance changes we make for you.
It is always free for your residents. No account, no sign-up, nothing to buy — that does not change and is not a trial. And we bill the way a city actually pays: one annual invoice, net 30, your PO number on it, by ACH or check. No card, no auto-renewing card on file, and no per-permit or per-resident metering, so the number on the invoice is the number you budgeted.
How long does it take
From first email to live on your permit page: typically 2 weeks. We need your ordinance text, your permit PDF, and your county GIS endpoint (or shapefile). We do the rest.
Talk to us
Email us with your city's name and whoever runs your building/permit office. We'll send back a one-page mock-up of what it looks like on your domain.
✉ Email t@mrcto.aiOr just reply to one of our resident's permit applications with the subject line "whitelabel for our city" — we read every one.
Curious how the homeowner side works? Try the planner → · See supported cities →