A digital form creator is how you take the paper and spreadsheet processes that still run your business and put them online, so the data lands where your team already works. This article answers a specific question: in what order should a company of 20 to 200 people move its paper forms online, and how do you run each one through the levelpartner.ai platform? Done well, you remove retyping, lost sheets and the question "did anyone get back to them?"
Why digitising is mostly about order, not tools
Most firms that try to go paperless start with the form someone complains about loudest. That rarely pays off. The forms worth moving first are the ones that touch revenue: enquiries, booking requests, onboarding questionnaires. Internal forms such as holiday requests can wait, because they cost little when they are slow.
Rank each paper process by two things. How many times a month is it filled in, and how much does a delay cost? A form completed 40 times a month that holds up a sale belongs at the top. A form completed twice a year that nobody waits on belongs at the bottom.
An audit you can finish in a morning
Walk round the business and ask each team lead which forms, printouts and spreadsheets they rely on. Write each one down with its owner, how often it is used and where the answers end up. You will usually find 10 to 30 of them. Many will be duplicates or no longer needed, and those you can simply retire.
Suppose the morning audit turns up 18 forms. If five duplicate each other, three are no longer used and four are internal, six client-facing forms are left. Say two of those handle 300 submissions a month between them: they go online in week one, because that is where retyping and delay cost most. The remaining four can follow over the next month.
Before you start
Make sure you have access to Sites and to Settings in your account. Agree with each team lead which answers they actually use, and set up custom fields for any detail that has no existing contact field. Choose a naming pattern for forms, such as "Client: onboarding" or "Internal: equipment request", so the list stays readable once you have twenty of them.
How to set it up
- Gather every version of the paper form for your first process.
- Merge them into one agreed list of questions.
- In Settings, open Custom Fields and click Create field for each answer.
- Go to Sites, then Forms, and click + Create New Form.
- Add the standard fields, then the custom fields in answering order.
- Mark as required only what the next step depends on.
- Set the post-submission confirmation message or redirect.
- Save, preview and submit a test entry.
- In Automation, create a workflow with the Form Submitted trigger.
- Set the Form Is filter, then add Assign to User and a tag.
- Publish the workflow and save it.
- Click Integrate and share the link where the paper form lived.
- Run paper and digital side by side for two weeks.
What changes for the team
Once a form is digital, three things happen. The data is searchable, so nobody asks where a sheet went. The follow-up starts on its own, because a workflow acts on every submission. And reporting becomes possible, because you can count submissions by source, by week and by owner.
The time cost moves from processing to maintenance. Expect each live form to need ten minutes a month: checking a sample of submissions, removing a question that nobody answers well, and updating a field label that confuses people.
Keeping the paper version "just in case". Two channels mean two places to check and twice the chance of a missed client. Set a date, tell everyone, and remove the paper form on that day.
When not to digitise
Some forms should stay as they are. A form you use once a year is not worth building. A form that must be witnessed in person, or one an external body issues in a fixed format, may need to remain a document. For those, our guide on moving document forms off desktop software explains how to collect the details online while keeping the official file.
Internal procedure forms are a separate category. They work well online, but the design is different, and using forms to run standard operating procedures covers that case. If you want the step-by-step build of a single form in more depth, building your first form and mapping its fields walks through it.
Troubleshooting
Staff keep using the old spreadsheet. The spreadsheet has information the form does not. Find out which column they still need and add it as a field, or report on it from the contact list instead.
Submissions come in without an owner. The workflow assignment step is missing or points to someone who has left. Check the assignment rule and use a round robin across the team if no single person owns the process.
Contacts are duplicated. People use a different email address each time. Make phone number a required field and review duplicates in Contacts each week.
Nobody knows the form exists. Paper forms were handed out; digital ones must be linked. Put the link in every place the paper form used to appear.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between a digital form and a document form?
A digital form is a web page whose answers write directly into your system. A document form is a file that must be returned and processed by hand. The first scales with volume; the second scales with admin hours.
How many forms should we move online at once?
One or two at a time. Each needs a test period, staff training and a firm cut-off date for the paper version. Moving everything at once usually means none of it is finished properly.
Can digital forms collect signatures?
Yes, forms can include a signature field. For contracts with specific legal requirements, check with your adviser which signing method your sector accepts.
Who should own the digital forms?
One person per form, usually the lead of the team that uses the answers. They approve changes and review a sample of submissions each month.