A PDF fillable form creator is the right tool when someone else owns the document: a lender's application, an insurer's declaration, a regulator's template. You cannot redesign those, so the job is not building the PDF. It is getting the completed file back quickly, attached to the right client, with someone chasing it when it is late. This article answers one question: when a fillable PDF has to stay, how do you collect and track it on the levelpartner.ai platform so it stops living in email attachments?
When the PDF has to stay
A fillable PDF earns its place in a small number of cases. The format is set by a third party who will reject anything else. The wording is fixed and legally checked. Or the client needs a copy they can print, sign by hand and keep.
If none of these apply, the information is usually better collected by a web form, and deciding between a document and a web form explains how to make that call. This article picks up where that one stops: you have decided the PDF stays, and now you need a process around it.
What goes wrong with PDFs today
In most firms of 20 to 200 people, the PDF process looks the same. Someone emails the blank file. The client fills it in on whatever software they have, sometimes prints and scans it, and replies to whichever address they find. The file sits in one person's inbox. Nobody else can see whether it arrived, and the first sign of trouble is a case stuck for a week.
The fix is to keep the PDF and change everything around it. The blank file is offered from one place. The completed file comes back through a form with a file upload field, so it lands on the contact. A pipeline stage shows who is still outstanding, and a workflow chases them.
Before you start
You need access to Sites, Automation and Opportunities. Have the current blank PDF ready and check its terms of use if a third party supplies it. Decide which stage of your process the document belongs to and who checks it once it arrives. Create a pipeline stage called something like "Documents requested" if one does not exist.
How to set it up
- Click Media Storage and drag the blank PDF into it to upload.
- Go to Sites, then Forms, and click + Create New Form.
- Add Name, Email and a file upload field for the completed PDF.
- Add a line stating which file and formats you accept.
- On the Notifications tab, turn on Email Notification for the checker.
- Optionally attach the submission as a PDF to that notification.
- Save, preview and submit a test upload.
- In Automation, create a workflow with the Form Submitted trigger.
- Set the Form Is filter to the upload form and save the trigger.
- Add the Assign to User action for the person who checks documents.
- Add Send Internal Notification with To User Type set to assigned user.
- Turn the toggle to Publish, then click Save.
- Run the process once with a colleague acting as the client.
What this changes for the team
The PDF itself stays exactly as the third party wants it. What changes is visibility. Anyone with access can open the contact and see the file. The pipeline shows how many clients are waiting on paperwork. And nobody spends Friday afternoon writing chasing emails, because the workflow sends them.
Say around 60 clients a month need to return a lender's declaration, and a case administrator tracks them in a spreadsheet, sending about 90 chasers by hand. Swap that for an upload form, a pipeline stage and two automatic reminders, and the spreadsheet would no longer be needed. If eight or ten clients a month still had not returned the file after the second reminder, those would be the only cases the administrator handles personally.
Set-up takes two to three hours for the first document and under an hour for each one after, since you can copy the workflow. Running it costs the time it takes to check each returned file, which you were spending already.
Asking clients to email the completed PDF back "to make it easy". It feels easier for one client and it breaks the process for all of them, because the file never reaches the contact and the workflow cannot see it. Always route returns through the upload form.
When not to use a PDF at all
Do not keep a PDF just because one already exists. If your firm wrote the document and nobody outside requires its format, rebuild it as a web form and the answers become data. Building your first form and mapping its fields covers that rebuild. If the returned document needs approval by more than one person, routing form submissions through approval steps shows how to add them. For a wider plan across many documents, see digitising paper forms across the business.
Troubleshooting
Clients upload a photo of a printed page. Your instruction does not say what you accept. State the file types plainly and say whether a clear photo is acceptable, since many lenders will take one.
The file arrives but the opportunity does not move. The second workflow is not triggered by the right form. Check the trigger names the upload form, not the general enquiry form.
Reminders keep going after the file arrived. The reminder workflow has no exit condition. Add a check before each reminder that stops if the upload form has been submitted.
The upload fails on large scans. The file exceeds the size the form accepts. Ask clients to scan at a lower resolution or upload pages as separate files.
Frequently asked questions
Can the platform create a fillable PDF?
Not as an editable file. The Forms builder makes web forms, and it cannot edit a lender's or regulator's PDF. What a form can do is generate a PDF submission document of each response, which is stored in the Documents area of the contact record. For third-party files, you keep the original and use the platform to send it, collect it and track it.
Is a PDF form creator worth buying separately?
Only if your firm writes and maintains its own PDF documents that clients must fill in. If the PDFs come from lenders or regulators, you do not edit them, so a separate creator adds little.
Where do the returned PDFs live?
On the contact record, attached through the upload field. Anyone with access to the contact can open the file without searching an inbox.
Can clients sign the PDF online?
That depends on what the third party accepts. Check whether they allow electronic signatures before you change how clients sign.