Hi - My stores Shopify page has been up and running for a few years. However, I now need to add some customizing, and it is over my level of expertise.
Using the basic plan and would prefer not to upgrade.
I set up collections for 2 types of clients - Hospitals and Schools. For the School collections I want to add a mandatory field at checkout to include the students name and homeroom. We tried just using the instructions field, but most do not bother.
Any suggestions for an individual / small company who I can hire and could look into whether this is even feasible without upgrading. Many of the apps require the upgrade.
Thanks for any advise or recommendations
Hi @Joanne_13 
To be clear the cart and the checkout are not the same.
A shopify Plus enterprise plan is generally required to customize the checkout; 
checkout UI extensions.
So you would need to put this as a theme-customization at the /cart step preventing going to checkout until the info is entered.
Similar to a terms-of-service checkbox customization.
Optionally setting up a flow after order creation to tag, cancel, or notifiy you of orders missing this info.
Optionally if available use a validation app utilizing shopify-functions to check for the line-item-properties/cart-attributes.
This does requires using the online-sales-channel, so doesn’t apply to starter plans using just embedable buy buttons etc.
If you need this customization then contact me by my email for services.
Contact info in forum signature below 
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or if you have access use a private message by clicking here (sloooower).
Please ALWAYS provide context, examples: store url, theme name, post url(s) , or any further detail in ALL new correspondence.
Hi @Joanne_13 ,
You’re right, customizing the checkout requires Shopify Plus, but on the Basic plan, this can be handled with a theme-based customization.
You can implement this by adding required fields (Student Name & Homeroom) on the product page or cart using line item properties or cart attributes. This ensures the info is collected before checkout, and is included in the order details, no app or Plus plan needed.
If you’re looking for a quick, clean implementation, feel free to checkout signature!
Thanks
Hello @Joanne_13 ,
Yes cart based or products based customisation is good in this case.
Regards
Guleria
If you are looking for some user info before they can actually proceed to checkout you can rather do this on the product page itself with line item properties and make them required so they cannot add to cart until they fill out the inputs and the browser will also give an error message just like on normal forms. We can customise those messages with as well.
Since you are on a basic plan, editing checkout.liquid is not an option for such requirements other than what basic plan offers like changing colors, fonts, etc so usual stuff.
With line item properties, you make it required for the user to fill out the info before adding to cart and also this happens on the product page, so no hassle on the checkout page. You get the user entered info along with the order details on the admin backend.
Best