Convert Existing Agreements to Fillable PDF Contracts

Why transform agreements into fillable PDF contracts?

If you handle a lot of agreements in your day-to-day work, you likely deal with three major issues: monotony, tedious paperwork, and creating documents for every new client. The way out is through auto-generating PDFs! Here are a few of the benefits:

• Reduce paperwork
• Automate your workflow
• No more reinventing the wheel

Reduce paperwork

When you move your agreements into the digital realm, you create freedom for yourself —and help save the planet in the process. Stop printing and start processing!

Automate your workflow

Speaking of processing, why handle everything yourself? That’s what computers are for. Stop wasting time with monotonous work and start automating the easy stuff.

Stop reinventing the wheel

Populating data in every new agreement isn’t just tedious, it’s prone to error. Instead, you can use Gravity Forms and Add-ons right in your WordPress site and save tons of labor.

Creating a system to convert existing agreements into fillable PDFs might sound challenging, but it’s actually very easy to set up. Follow along and I’ll show you how.

Introducing Fillable PDFs: Automating PDF contract creation

When you’re looking to generate PDFs from Gravity Forms quickly and easily, you need Fillable PDFs. Designed to integrate perfectly with WordPress and Gravity Forms, Fillable PDFs is the ultimate no-code solution. Here are just a few things you can do:

Key features of Fillable PDFs for contract automation

• Map any form field or entry meta item directly to your PDF fields, including Nested Forms fields
• Send multiple, unique documents to various members of your team — all from the same form.
• Lock down generated PDFs with password protection and restrict views to only those you trust.
• Generate unlimited PDFs from your forms.

How Fillable PDFs streamlines the PDF contract process

Fillable PDFs streamlines contract workflows for Gravity Forms users by automatically generating, populating, securing, and distributing PDF contracts based on form submissions without storing sensitive data on third-party servers.

Step-by-step guide to creating automated PDF contracts with Fillable PDFs

Want to get started generating contracts with Fillable PDFs? It’s easy and involves just a few steps!

Preparing your agreement for conversion

Adobe Acrobat is the best choice for preparing your fillable PDF template. It provides the most flexibility, especially if you are concerned about the styling and layout of your document. You can design your PDF using Acrobat’s core features, then create fillable PDF fields by following these instructions.

Alternatives are Microsoft Word, Excel, or LibreOffice. Any of those options will help you create a bare-bones fillable document and use the ‘Export to PDF’ option to save it as a PDF. Just make sure your PDF contains fillable fields. Additionally, labeling each field will make it easier when you map the fields later on.

Using Fillable PDFs to automate form field creation

Let auto-generation do the heavy lifting by converting your PDF template into a form. Import your completed PDF form, and detected fields will automatically be mapped to their Gravity Forms counterparts, instantly setting up the structure of your form.

Create a feed and map form fields

Once you have imported your PDF and created your form, you need to set up a Fillable PDFs feed. This allows you to map the fillable fields in your PDF template to the fields on your form. The visual mapper makes this super easy to do.

Testing and finalizing your automated PDF contract

It’s always a good idea to run a test and ensure everything is working correctly. Then you can take advantage of more Fillable PDFs automation tools, like:

• Add restrictions to keep sensitive info private
• Attach generated PDFs to email
• Upload to Google Drive or Dropbox

Benefits of using Fillable PDFs for PDF contracts

Improved efficiency and accuracy in contract management

You can lighten the load on your whole team by automating PDF contract generation. Not only is it much more efficient, but auto-generated contracts are also less prone to human error.

Enhanced professionalism and consistency across documents

When you start with your own PDF template, you can add branding and other styling that make all PDFs generated from the same web form look consistent. The added bonus is that you only have to set it up once!

Now that you understand how you can convert existing agreements into fillable PDFs, let’s talk about how to make them legally binding.

Introducing Legal Signing: Legal considerations for PDF contracts

Generating PDF contracts using Fillable PDFs is great, but what happens when you need them signed in a legally binding way? That’s where Legal Signing comes in.

Key features of Legal Signing

The Legal Signing plugin provides all the features of Fillable PDFs and adds some powerful functionality:

• Attach the signed contract to your Gravity Forms notifications to ensure all signers get their documents instantly.
• Generate as many documents as you want per month at no extra cost.
• The Legal Signature form field is compatible with both touch and mouse devices, allowing signers to endorse documents on mobile devices, tablets, or desktops.
• Detailed audit trails — view the entire history of the contract signing process, and attach it to the final contract for all to see.

Legal compliance and security features

Legal Signing fulfills the four major requirements for an electronic signature to be recognized as valid under U.S. and EU law. Together, these three electronic signature regulations in the United States, the UK, and the EU make e-signatures valid and legal on any forms, contracts, or government documents for transactions that affect interstate or foreign commerce.

One central security feature of Legal Signing is the ability to lock down access to generated PDFs, preventing unwanted users from accessing contracts with password protection.

Customization and workflow automation

Just as with Fillable PDFs, you can customize notifications and send generated PDFs to anyone you choose. There are also limitless possibilities in configuring various Legal Signing feeds to design a signing workflow that’s tailored for your team — and unique for each contract!

Comparing manual vs. automated PDF contract creation

Now that you’ve had a glimpse of what automation can do for your existing agreements, imagine going back to doing everything manually. First, you’ll need to populate all the fields for each contract and all participants. That’s a lot of typing and a lot of room for error! Once that’s completed, you’ll need to either print and mail or email documents to everyone involved. And the signing process will be lengthy at best.

Time and resource savings with Fillable PDFs and Legal Signing

All that tedium can be eliminated by automating the contract creation and signing process. With either Fillable PDFs or Legal Signing, you can easily convert existing agreements into convenient PDFs — all from your WordPress site.

Reducing errors and inconsistencies through automation

When you consider the numerous errors that can occur when manually entering someone else’s info, it’s a no-brainer to automate the process. Each participant fills in their own information through a web form. That’s an entirely hands-free situation for you — and your completed contracts are dynamically populated with the correct data, every time.

Best practices for managing PDF contracts

Organizing and storing your contracts efficiently

One of the great things about using Fillable PDFs or Legal Signing is that all generated PDFs are securely stored on your server. You can access them at any time you need them, as well as control who has access. With an Agency or Pro license, you can also send them to Google Drive or Dropbox, which means you don’t have to grant access to your WordPress site to the whole team.

Implementing version control and tracking changes

With Legal Signing’s audit trail feature, you can eliminate the mystery in the contract signing process! You can view the entire history of the contract signing process and attach it to the final contract for all parties. It also helps you see when specific signers were sent notifications to view and sign the form.

Start automating your PDF contract process today

If you just want to generate PDF contracts, then Fillable PDFs is the plugin for you. However, if you need to generate legally binding agreements, consider Legal Signing, which offers all the features of Fillable PDFs, along with compliance, security, and audit trails that help you stay on top of the entire process.

Converting your existing agreements into PDFs will bring your business into the digital world, eliminating contract drudgery and making you look more professional.