Custom software for a small municipality: tracking residents’ requests

Four publishers share town-hall software and none displays prices. Meanwhile residents' requests, the village hall, and the cemetery are tracked in a binder. What the state requires, what it leaves free, and how a municipality decides.

Custom software for a small municipality competes with a market displaying no prices: Berger-Levrault, JVS-Mairistem, Cosoluce, and joint public body AGEDI all lead to contact forms without schedules (sites consulted September 2, 2026). The sector's only public prices are for resident-information applications.

Local government's most closed market

The two tools displaying prices provide top-down information rather than management. illiwap is free below 100 residents, then €125 excluding tax annually below 500, €295 below 2,000, €495 below 3,500, and up to €5,000 below 100,000. PanneauPocket is free forever below 100, then €180 including tax annually below 500, €195 below 1,000, and €245 below 2,000, with reduced rates for Association des maires ruraux de France members. The four publishers handling finance, civil status, payroll, and elections publish nothing. A 600-resident municipality cannot know neighbouring costs before calling sales.

How many municipalities, and what sizes

DGCL counts 34,875 municipalities on January 1, 2026. Adding population bands in table 2-3a yields 24,844 below 1,000 residents, 71.2%, and 31,621 below 3,500, 90.7%. The calculation is ours; bands come from the official file. Secretariat work is often part-time and shared among villages, where tasks not covered by market software accumulate.

What residents say about deployed applications

Municipal software publishers have no professional review corpus: neither Capterra nor Trustpilot lists Berger-Levrault, JVS-Mairistem, or Cosoluce. The only dated, verifiable reviews are residents' comments on deployed applications, to be read as users rather than officials. A resident writes August 7, 2026 on illiwap: 'Just top-down information, exactly what participatory democracy does not want: a municipal channel without feedback from citizens on the ground.' Another on March 9, 2026: 'For our subscribed municipality, no response to reports.' The criticism concerns the missing process behind the tool: incoming requests find nobody to carry them.

Five registers the secretary still keeps on paper

A village town hall binder holds five objects. Resident requests record who asked what, when, assignment, response date, and a reminder after a chosen interval. The hall and loaned-equipment calendar includes deposits, photo condition reports, and receipts. The cemetery plan tracks plots, renewal deadlines, and family letters. Council preparation includes agenda, attachments, invitations, attendance, and resolutions for legality review. Works and grant tracking records phases, committed amounts, requested funding, and justification deadlines. None of the four publishers serves all five without extra modules, and neither publicly priced application covers any. It is the spreadsheet beside the official software again.

What the state requires and nothing rewrites

The regulated accounting chain stays outside custom software without debate. Article 205 of the 2024 Finance Act makes the single financial account mandatory for fiscal 2026, requiring M57 by January 1, 2026, with written notification to the public accountant now replacing a resolution (DGCL/DGFiP 'Le point sur la M57' leaflet). Payment orders and revenue titles go to the public accountant in mandatory Hélios formats. Supplier invoices arrive through the state's Chorus Pro portal, mandatory for municipalities. Civil status, electoral lists, and digital planning procedures remain with the state. Custom municipal software sits alongside, never replaces them. Check exact scope with your public accountant and adviser before committing.

Who decides, and how quickly

A municipal tool project first encounters decision authority, long before technology. The secretary knows actual work without signing power. The mayor signs and sees it between files. The council meets a few times yearly and votes. With AI agents, that becomes an advantage: first output is French text, readable in fifteen minutes by an elected official who will never open software. The secretary describes the binder, the agent writes a specification, the mayor reads before council, and council comments correct it before any code. Construction advances through individually verifiable steps at meeting pace rather than a provider's. The AI budget depends on the assistant, its plan and the work requested. Our measured AI spending covers specific tests and does not set this tool's price. Also budget for your approval time, any hosting, external services and maintenance. Documents and code remain on the town hall machine.

Where to start

Take this week's complaints notebook or email inbox and count incoming resident requests and those with written response records. The gap is the only council argument needed. Add the last three village-hall loans and locate deposits and condition reports. An hour suffices. Associations made the same inventory before building, and what happens to data is settled before, not afterward.