Convert PDF to Fillable Form - Automate PDF Creation

Introduction

Enterprises use PDFs for customer, vendor, and partner collaboration. It’s also common to use them for internal team collaboration. PDFs are popular because of their print-ready, cross-platform format. They maintain the document format irrespective of the operating system and device.

While PDF invoices, receipts, etc. are generated in bulk, some document types are generated individually or one at a time. Especially, the contracts, compliance documents, onboarding documents, etc. are generated by manually entering data into fillable PDF templates.

These fillable PDF forms, however, have their limitation. The interface isn't intuitive and can be challenging for many to fill in the desired information quickly. Duplicate fields in the fillable pdf form mean you spend time on repeat data entry. If other enterprise systems have the data that populates these templates, populating that is not possible, without using a third-party app.

What is a fillable form, and why do you need one?

The fillable form created from the PDF template addresses the above limitations. It creates the form with fillable fields for text, table, radio buttons, and checkboxes, exactly as in the PDF template fields. Submission of the form, after filling the form fields, creates a completed PDF. You can create a fillable form from both editable(fillable) PDF and non-editable PDF templates. The major benefits include

1. Beyond filling in data, a fillable form enables customization to certain parts of the PDF, like change in dynamic content, conditional field inputs, language change options, and supports attachment of other files.
2. Using a fillable form, you reduce the job of creating and editing fields in PDF to a fraction of the time. You can input a field once, and its repeated occurrences are populated automatically without re-keying the data.
3. Ensure compliance with corporate documents, especially when it comes to sensitive and legal documents.
4. Utilizing the fillable forms created from PDF templates, you can automate repeated processes, thereby reducing the chance of error and improving efficiency.

A brief overview of tools that convert pdf to fillable form

Before picking up the right pdf to fillable form converter, the following are the important considerations to check.

Ease of use across the team: Not all departments in your organization might be tech-savvy. But certainly, all want to be looped in their responsibilities through regular information access and rapid decision making. Ensuring that the tool that converts pdf to fillable form is business user-friendly, smoothen deployment across the organization.

Utility: When choosing the tool, you want to make sure whether it addresses the specific needs of your organization’s use cases. For example, if you have offices across the globe, you want to check whether it meets the multi-lingual needs of your customers.

Another important consideration is, if your documents are large, corresponding fillable forms are going to be large as well. Filling them in one go is difficult. Can the software support drafts functionality for saving partially filled forms? Also, for a better user experience, you want to have a multi-page form with a logical grouping of fields on each page instead of one long-form.

Intuitive: Most often, it's the application's intuitive nature that can make it a success. Your investment must reduce the learning curve for your employees as much as possible.

There are a few popular tools for converting PDF to fillable forms. They provide enormous benefits in productivity improvements and customer experience. However, you’ve to check their limitations before selecting the right one for your specific needs.

Adobe Acrobat forms

Because of its reach, Adobe Acrobat forms are often used for pdf to fillable forms conversion. Below are some of its drawbacks.

1. Often, duplicate data entry is required for repeated field elements. In this case, Acrobat does not replicate them across multiple forms or multi-page forms, forcing users to duplicate the data entry.
2. Customizing the field form for dynamic content, carrying out calculations, or adding rows isn't a feature in Adobe forms.
3. It does not allow uploading images or files through forms.
4. Difficult to make it work with your existing backend system since it doesn’t integrate easily.

The rest of the other popular tools, force you to either create PDF templates all-over-again in their proprietary designers or create a form in their form builders, or both. Moreover, these forms offer very limited functionality as in acrobat forms. Thus, creating complex PDF documents is not possible with these tools.

Here comes EDocGen which addresses the above limitation.

How EDocGen Works

It is a DIY system for creating fillable forms and you can use it for creating simple to very complex and large forms. With a wide array of dynamic field options, it allows you to create E-Sign, file upload, drop-down menu fields, etc., addressing every document scenario.

Upload your PDF template into the system and click “Form Input”. The system auto-generates the fillable form for you. You can fill this form inside the system or share the form URL with other users. Submission of form after filling the data creates a filled-in PDF document. Thus it creates "PDF to form" and "Form to PDF".

Some of the salient features include.

1. Large forms cannot be filled in one go. You'll probably fill it partially or wait for the right approval at work before you complete it. In this case, saving and reusing the form later is vital. Using the drafts feature, you can save the form as much as it is filled and come back later to edit it.
2. It lets you use conditional statements for specific inputs and enables calculation rights inside the form.
3. The tool supports the creation of document packages containing multiple documents from a single form filling.
4. Instead of one long-form, you can break it into multiple pages for a better user experience. You can group all related form fields into sections for easy navigation.
5. It is an API-first product. Thus, you can integrate it with your internal systems to auto-fill the data into the forms for PDF files creation. There is also an option to fill these forms partially with enterprise data. Partially filled forms can be filled can be sent to users for filling the missing data.
6. Using API, you can also create a document workflow.
7. The generated documents also need updating once in a while. You can use the “Edit” feature that creates a fillable form from the generated document to make the necessary changes. The pre-filled values will be intact without having to re-enter the entire form again.
8. The generated PDF files can be synced to enterprise document management systems or cloud storage.

Example - How you can Use EDocGen for onboarding

Onboarding new people shouldn't be hard when it comes to documentation. The issues of consistency, user experience, and standardizing the process are regular.

EDocGen can reduce this friction with a seamless onboarding process. Using the convert pdf to fillable form ensures you have the correct information available every time there are changes done to the document by using draft and edit features.

Multi-lingual support allows accurate input to the digital medium.

Easy sharing through Google Drive or others means your document is ready to be shared across teams and individual access points simply by sharing the URL, printing, or via email.

Conclusion

If you're looking for an all-in-one solution to convert PDFs to fillable forms, you have many to choose from. However, if it's quick access, a better utility for your investment, and a smooth user experience with multi-lingual support, EDocGen delivers like no other.