CommonsIQ gives cities, counties, towns, and special districts one system for permits, business licenses, registrations, and code enforcement. Your staff reviews and approves, your inspectors work from their phones, and your residents apply and pay online.
One system from the counter to the field · Runs in the browser on phones, tablets, and desktops
Intake, review, inspections, payments, and public self-service in one system. Here's what you get.
Define any permit, license, registration, or case yourself: form fields with conditional logic, a step-by-step approval workflow, a fee schedule, numbering, and renewal rules. Publish it without a developer or a change order.
Numbered records like BP-000412 move through review queues with required sign-offs, parallel approvals, and send-back with a note. The record keeps its full history from application to issuance.
A branded self-service site where residents, businesses, and contractors apply, renew, pay, and track applications. Complaints can be submitted anonymously, and a public dashboard shows permitting activity.
Inspectors get a mobile screen with large Pass, Partial, and Fail buttons, required notes on failure, photo capture from the phone camera, and tap-to-call for the applicant. Inspection types are yours to configure.
Take cash, checks, and card payments at the counter with printed receipts and change calculation. The end-of-day register reconciles by method and cashier, and a batch CSV export feeds your ERP.
Applicant deposits fund outside review work such as third-party plan review. Deposits and draws live in a ledger, each draw requires a memo, and voids reverse the account cleanly.
Parcels, addresses, and GPS points carry condition flags like Registered Vacant, so history follows the property. People, businesses, and contractors link to their records across departments.
Renewal reminders, past-due notices, and final notices go out automatically during the grace period. After the final notice, the system can open a citation case on its own.
Renewals and delinquency, fee activity, fee overrides, open records aging, and business listings come built in, plus an ad-hoc report builder. Export to CSV, save definitions, and schedule email delivery.
Also included: printable certificates for issued records, instant issuance for simple types, a searchable audit log, and starter record types seeded on day one.
Most permit questions are really one question: where is my application? The CommonsIQ portal answers it before anyone calls city hall, and it does so without exposing anything your staff wrote internally.
Your jurisdiction gets its own branded portal address. Applicants create a free account, submit online, pay fees, and renew when the reminder arrives.
Applicants see each review step as it completes, so the front counter stops fielding status calls.
All public output passes through a single audited chokepoint. Internal notes, staff contact details, and protected individuals never reach the browser.
Six roles come configured out of the box, with fine-grained capabilities you can rename, re-scope, or extend from the settings screen.
Manage staff, roles, record types, the portal, and jurisdiction settings.
Run records, inspections, and cashiering, and approve fee overrides with a documented reason.
Work the review queue, sign off on workflow steps, and send applications back with a note.
See their own assignments in the field, record results with photos, and stay read-only on the rest.
Take payments and print receipts at the counter without edit access to records.
Get read-only access for leadership, auditors, or neighboring departments.
Create your account, name your city, county, town, village, or special district, and add your branding. A working Business License type is seeded for you on day one.
Recreate your paper forms in the Type Builder: fields, review steps, fees, and renewal rules. Invite staff by email and assign each person a role.
Residents and contractors apply and pay online, your staff works the review queue, and inspectors record results from the field on their phones.
These controls are part of the core platform and are on for all jurisdictions.
CommonsIQ comes from MKN Web Solutions in Detroit, Michigan. Our platforms serve millions of users, and we design, build, and operate all of them ourselves. CommonsIQ runs on that same engineering.
We support what we ship. If you email us about CommonsIQ, the reply comes from the engineers that built the product, not a sales team.
Create your account and you start with a working license type you can adapt, not a blank screen. There is no credit card and no procurement call required to look around. If you would rather see it first, email us and we will set up a live demo.
Questions go to michael@mknwebsolutions.com and are answered by our engineers.