It may already be here
There are 387 of them and a fair number have names nobody would guess. The menu at the top of every page opens on the full list by category, which is quicker than describing something that took an afternoon to build last March.
Worth a look even if you are fairly sure. The most common request is for a thing that exists under a word the asker does not use, which is a failure on our side rather than theirs, and it is useful to hear about: if you looked for it and could not find it, the page is named wrong.
Describe the job, not the tool
This is the whole difference between a request that turns into something and one that sits there. A tool name is your guess at the solution. The job is the problem, and the problem is the part we can actually work from.
Instead of "you should build a holiday calculator", try "I run six lads on four different shift patterns and every time somebody leaves I spend an hour working out what they are owed". The second one says what the output has to be, which fields it needs, and what makes it hard. It is also the version that gets built, because the first one describes five tools that already exist here and one that does not.
Three things are worth including if you have them. What you use at the moment, even if the answer is a spreadsheet or the back of a delivery note. What the number or the document gets used for afterwards, because a figure somebody is paid against needs different care from one that is a ballpark. And what goes wrong with it now.
What turns a request into a tool
Four tests, and they are the same ones every tool already on this site had to pass. They are written down here so a no is never a mystery, and so you can see in advance which one your idea is going to run into.
The figures behind it have to be free to check. Everything here cites where its numbers came from, and that source has to be one anybody can read without paying. Where being correct needs a bought standard, the tool does not get built rather than being approximated from memory, and that rules out more than you would think.
It has to be a job you do more than once a year. Something you do once in a career is better served by reading the guidance properly than by a form that hides it. This is not about how many people want it, it is about whether a tool is the right shape of answer.
It cannot be a specification. Anything that outputs a size or a capacity for somebody to order from is a design, and a design belongs to whoever signs it. Eleven of those were built here and then taken out again. What we can do instead is the tool that tells you what to ask for, which is a genuinely different and more useful thing than a number with a disclaimer under it.
One person has to be able to keep it right. A tool that needs fifty state figures watched every quarter is not a build, it is a standing commitment, and a page that has quietly gone stale while looking current is worse than no page at all.
The ones that have already been declined, with the reason for each, are on what is not here. It is worth two minutes before you write, and it is the only page of its kind on any tool site we know of.
The small boring ones are the best ones
There is a temptation to ask for something impressive. Please do not. The most valuable request is a dull job that a few hundred people do every month and nobody has bothered to build properly, because those are the ones where the existing options are a form that wants your email address or a spreadsheet somebody uploaded to a forum in 2011.
A window cleaner writing four receipts a month does not need accounting software and should not have to sign up for any. That is the audience, and it is why nothing here asks who you are.
The second test nobody applies
Being correct is the obvious bar. The one that gets missed is whether anybody will finish filling the thing in, and it has caught us out on our own tools.
A rest break checker was built here that wanted seven days of start and finish times before it would say anything. It was right. It was also useless to the person actually asking the question, who wants to know whether they are entitled to a break and has one hand on a kettle. Correctness needs the full input. The front door does not, and where a tool needs more than about four fields it now gets a short path that answers the common case and keeps the long form for anybody who wants precision.
So if the job you are describing has a quick version and a thorough version, say so. It changes the design more than almost anything else you could tell us.
What happens after you send it
It gets read and it gets a reply, including when the reply is no. If it is a yes, the sources get checked first, then the arithmetic gets written and tested against whatever published figures exist to test it against, and then the page gets written round what the job actually gets wrong. That order is deliberate: the words come last because they are worth nothing if the numbers underneath them are guesses.
Nothing is promised on a date. This is one person around a full time job, which is said plainly here for the same reason every figure names its source: you can decide what that is worth to you.
Common questions
Do requests actually get built?
Some do. The ones that get built are the ones where the figures behind them can be checked against a free primary source, where the job is something you do more than once a year, and where one person can keep the tool correct without watching it every month. A request that fails one of those is not being ignored, it is being declined for a reason we will give you.
What is the best way to describe what I want?
Describe the job, not the tool. "I spend an hour a month working out holiday for people on different shift patterns" says what the output has to be. "Build a holiday calculator" does not, because there are six different things that could mean and five of them are already here.
Is a small request worth sending?
Small is better. A tool that four hundred people a month need and nobody has built properly is worth far more here than a popular one with twenty competitors, because there is no advertising budget to win the second fight and no reason to enter it. The one man window cleaner writing four receipts a month is exactly who this site is for.
Will you tell me if the answer is no?
Yes, and with the reason. There is a whole page of them: paid standards we will not reproduce from memory, government sources that refuse automated access, and anything that would amount to a specification somebody has to put their name to.
Does the form send anything to a server?
No. It composes the message and hands it to your own email app, or lets you copy it. There is no form handler, which is the same reason none of the tools here upload anything. Nothing you type on this page leaves your device unless you press send in your own mail client.
Anything that is not a tool request, including a fault in one that already exists, goes through contact instead. Same address, and the form there asks for the extra things a fault report needs.