PDFfiller - Fast. Easy. Secure.PDFfiller

Streamlining Online Document Completion Using an API

Who?

Compliance Management, LLC offers online safety training and tracking as well as serving as a hiring platform.

“Let’s say a manufacturer has to train their employees on lockout/tagout, machine guarding, blood-borne pathogens, and so forth, we do all of that online for them,” said Colton McKinney, president of Compliance Management, LLC. The company also helps clients with incident reporting and online OSHA 300 log completion. Moreover, “another component of our software is actually a hiring platform, which includes all of the steps to hire a simple employee to do a manual labor-type job: the application, the I9, the W4, any custom documents that they would need to fill out and sign for employment in their state or by their employer,” McKinney said.

Compliance Management integrates the expertise of three strategic partners with years of experience in operating industrial businesses, interactive online services and safety training. Combining these disparate areas of expertise makes Compliance Management a unique and powerful service to outsource the training, tracking and hiring processes.

Colton McKinney, Compliance Management’s president, is the third in a line of family members who have started, acquired, developed or sold companies in industries including sawmilling, pallet manufacturing, fastener distribution and more. With generations of experience, the McKinney family runs the day-to-day operations of Compliance Management, bringing a body of knowledge of these specific industries to the company’s work.

The Problem

Much of Compliance Management’s work demands the completion of documents. There are a number of documents that are used throughout the tracking and hiring processes and making these quick and easy to complete was an important part of Compliance Management’s benefit to clients. Digital documents can be completed faster and are easier to store if they are managed correctly – Compliance Management was looking for a solution to this problem. And moreover, they were searching for a more powerful replacement for traditional web forms.

“We didn’t have anything in-house that could do it,” said McKinney, referring to the digital completion and transmission of documents. And “we have to have highly customizable documents because any client could say, ‘put this document online,’ so we have to be able to upload that, put fillable fields in that document, and then use the API to auto-fill those fields. And there are very few [applications] that can do that.”

PDFfiller proved to be the powerful solution they were looking for.

The Solution

PDFfiller has been a fundamental component of Compliance Management’s client services since the company’s conception and is, said McKinney, an integral part of the company’s digital document workflow.

Powered by the PDFfiller API, Compliance Management’s clients can now complete and submit fillable forms directly through the company’s website. The PDFfiller REST API allowed Compliance Management to build an application that interacts with PDFfiller so clients can complete documents and add electronic signatures without ever leaving Compliance Management’s website. The API has also made it easier for the company to collect and collate submitted information.

The PDFfiller API has the ability to integrate powerful document management features directly into business applications, meaning it is now possible for Compliance Management to collect completed forms through PDFfiller from various parties from within their own online system. PDFfiller’s API also integrates easily with market-leading ISVs including CRM, CPQ, Practice Management and other SaaS application providers. Cloud-native, white label APIs enable the seamless integration of PDFfiller’s powerful document management features directly into any website or software package.

Compliance Management is using PDFfiller on a daily basis. “We have probably 500 employees on the system now and we have signed another thousand and we’re also doing demos [and intending to add new users in the near future],” said McKinney.

PDFfiller’s API integrates with Compliance Management’s own API to provide quick and seamless document completion and transmission from clients to Compliance Management’s servers where they are stored.

“[When] a company comes to us and says ‘Hey, we want to set up your system’. We’ll say, ‘great, we’ll set your application up and then when you hire your employee, the documents they need to fill out and sign — the W9, the I9 and any others you want them to sign – we’ll put online,” said McKinney. “And then we autofill [documents using] PDFfiller from [within] our application and [then users] can fill out the rest of the information and sign it, and then that saves to PDFfiller.”

For Compliance Management, connecting their API with PDFfiller’s and providing a seamless digital document workflow for clients is simple and makes the document completion process faster and easier than ever before:

First, Compliance Management makes digital documents fillable using PDFfiller’s proprietary drag and drop wizard to add smart fields to digital forms. “We put [custom smart] boxes [in the webform] and in some of the blanks, we actually fill in that information as we’re generating the PDF from our system to the API,” McKinney said. This means that all of the submitted information is automatically added to the document.

After the forms have been uploaded, they are accessible to clients through Compliance Management’s website. “We provide a link from our system to the PDF. [Clients] get links to PDFfiller to fill out the document and then once it generates the final PDF, it’s on our system.”

Once completed, the “online webform that we use for our application… goes to our Cold Fusion platform [an LMS]. That information then goes from our API to PDFfiller’s API, which writes it to the fillable fields that we’ve put on the PDFfiller document,” said McKinney, describing the document completion process.

PDFfiller “has been working excellently,” McKinney said, providing “more customization” than the alternatives and allowing users to quickly and easily complete documents which are sent instantly from Compliance Management’s website through PDFfiller and into their servers.

Moreover, because of PDFfiller’s emphasis on security, government documents containing personal data that are received and stored by Compliance Management are always secure. “It helped that PDFfiller had all the security requirements that we needed because there are government documents going back and forth on there and they do have some personal information,” McKinney said.

Advanced security features include PIN protected folders, two-factor authentication, and redundant backups. PDFfiller is HIPAA and SOC II Type 2 compliant so Compliance Management can be sure that their documents are secure, while other companies can be sure that they meet safe-practice guidelines.

With a “very” helpful customer service team, McKinney said, Compliance Management was able to get a bespoke digital document solution integrated quickly enough that they could build their company around PDFfiller. Since then, they have seen the company grow as PDFfiller helped them facilitate the submission and transmission of huge numbers of documents.

Conclusion

PDFfiller is the easiest way for businesses to integrate digital documents into their client-facing online services. PDFfiller is an easy to use digital document solution that makes it simple to have forms completed online through their integrated API. PDFfiller’s intuitive document management platform allows users to add information and even signatures electronically, meaning that it can serve as a comprehensive solution to a business’s digital document workflow.

“Yes, [I would] absolutely [recommend PDFfiller] for a company that would use it to generate documents fairly regularly and for a company that is just looking for a solution to fill out PDFs online,” said McKinney.

For the complete paper, click on the link below:

Streamlining online document completion using an api

Going Digital Isn’t Only for Magazine Publishers

September 1, 2017 No Comments

PDF is a widely used file type designed for the content distribution. From the beginning, it was a closed format that made adding any changes to the content difficult. At the beginning of the Internet it was not a big obstacle but as the Internet has been maturing and digital societies have become more connected it appeared that making simple edits to PDFs brings big value to organizations.

Lighter PDF Solution for your documents

The major PDF software solutions are usually too big and complicated to be able to support small businesses these days. Can you imagine using inDesign only for adding a signature to your PDF file?

Adobe Acrobat is the standard software for publishers making profession designs. If you need to compress, watermark, sign documents online or merge several PDF files it becomes clear that you need an easier, faster and affordable alternative PDF software with a public API.

PDFfiller is the type of software that can be used by many kinds of businesses. Whether you use PDF files in your digital documents distribution-loop or even if you are a publisher with a simple, DTP post-processing needs.

In PressPad we work with PDF files on daily basis. Our digital publishing platform supports magazine publishers from around the world. We help magazine or even the comic book authors go mobile with their own mobile apps. This is a self-service platform where publishers upload PDF files via PressPad publisher’s dashboard. Their users and clients can instantly experience this content via their branded mobile apps in with beautiful flip pages.

Despite publishers often using complicated DTP software like Adobe InDesign or similar products we sometimes need to make quick fixes for our publishers such as merging PDF documents, compressing or adding a watermark. To do this we often use much lighter solutions than Adobe’s such as PDFfiller.

We chose PDFfiller because it’s one of the most affordable solutions for editing PDF files. To our surprise, this is an evergreen post on the PressPad blog. That is real life proof that PDF format is very popular across many industries.

Go paperless with digital document distribution

You don’t have to be a magazine or book publisher to profit from the digital distribution in your company. How many times did you print a document just to get a signature on it and scan it again? Then what — straight to the dumpster, right?

— Did you know that digitization can save lots of money for you?

According to The Guardian, Xerox found in their study that office workers throw away 45% of everything they print within a day. The Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance claims in their report that “(…) the average office worker uses 10,000 sheets of copy paper each year. The U.S. EPA estimates that paper and paperboard account for almost 40 percent of our garbage.”

So the numbers are coherent and it is clear that even a small change can reduce the fixed cost of operations.

In PressPad we try to avoid unnecessary printing by incorporating the idea of a paperless office. This is quite feasible with PDF files and PDFfiller. Unfortunately, some the documents have to be printed and stored but we believe that even the smallest company can reduce the costs of their operations by digitizing their documents.

Wojciech Szywalski is the VP of business development at PressPad, a digital publishing platform that supports over 500 magazine publishers from around the world with native magazine apps. PressPad allows publishers to go mobile with their content in just a few days, creating a digital distribution channel reaching mobile users.

Completing financing forms digitally

August 31, 2017 No Comments

Who?

Green Brick Title, LLC based in Plano, Texas, occupies an important space in the house purchasing process. With decades of experience, six employees and a lawyer, Green Brick Title, proves expertise in residential and commercial real estate. The company works directly with realtors, banks, land brokers, builders, developers, and mortgage companies to manage all of their real estate transactions and banking issues. Green Brick Title, LLC also helps companies close complex transactions as efficaciously as possible.

John Hampton is the company’s lawyer and title manager. Since 1979, Hampton has served as an attorney in Texas addressing all of the nuances and complications of residential and commercial real estate law as well as business law. In the past 38 years, Hampton has handled over 500 million dollars in closings without a single claim. He also hosts the local KLIF 570 AM radio “Ask the Lawyer” show.

The Problem

John Hampton regularly has to go through the tedious and time-consuming task of completing UCC-1 and UCC-3 forms. The UCC-1, or Uniform Commercial Code-1, is a financing statement, which is used when property is applied as collateral for a loan. The UCC-3, or Financing Statement Amendment, is used when amendments to the UCC-1 have to be made. Moreover, “the UCC-3 document is a necessity in financing lot purchases from the developer by the builder, as financing is involved in each one. Also, whenever a house is sold, notice of the release of lien is also required.” All of these forms are critical when working with lenders, loan-recipients, and titles.

Hampton was looking for a way to expedite the form filling process, which was originally done by hand. Before PDFfiller, Hamilton said, “We hand-completed manual forms with a template centered on a printer…The old way involved setting up a print template – tedious, time-consuming! – and centering a form in the printer, so that the document could be created. Different versions of the form needed different templates. Multiple printings were necessary to achieve a usable form.”

But this solution was far from ideal for Green Brick Title, said Hamilton: “The process was time-consuming and error-prone. It took a substantial amount of time from an employee whose skills were better used elsewhere to complete these forms.”

Green Brick Title needed a digital solution that could expedite the form filling process. This is how Hamilton found PDFfiller. The transition was simple, and now Green Brick Title’s UCC-1 and UCC-3 forms are all completed digitally.

The Solution

Since adopting PDFfiller, Green Brick Title has made it an integral part of their document management with three employees using the program “at least three times per week with multiple documents produced,” said Hamilton.

“When a new subdivision is being created and lots are financed, a UCC-1 is filed; when more are taken down, a UCC-3 is filed each time, and when a house is sold and the construction loan is paid off, a UCC-3 is filed again,” said Hamilton. Ultimately, in Green Brick Title’s work, “in each case, PDFfiller is used to complete the form and print the form for filing with the Texas Secretary of State and the county clerk where the property is located.”

The process is easy: All Green Brick Title has to do is upload the UCC-1 and UCC-3 forms to PDFfiller. Then, using PDFfiller’s easy-to-use online service, they can write directly onto the form itself, changing font size, color, and style to suit their needs. They can save forms with prefilled information, like contact information, as templates, making them faster to complete in the future.

“PDFfiller’s simple to use online templates made our data processing a virtual snap! Tedious manipulation of Word files was replaced by simple insertions and copy/paste,” said Hamilton.

The benefits are numerous! Now Green Brick Title’s forms are completed faster, more accurately, and even look better. “Being able to go online to simply change the last version of the UCC and print it for each transaction allowed more employees to participate, improved the look of the work and, most importantly, its accuracy. The time savings for staff was immense, not to mention that the returns from the government departments went to zero,” Hamilton said. Also, these powerful features in PDFfiller are “easy to use.”

“Using PDFfiller has saved us 110 hours per year at $35.00 per hour as best we can tell,” said Hampton, meaning the company saves at least $3,850 each year. But, Hampton added, “that was just the beginning of the savings, because that time was put to productive, front-end, revenue-producing use, so the swing was at least triple what we saved in addition.”

Conclusion

Ultimately, by streamlining their workflow and making forms faster and easier to fill out, PDFfiller has cut down on operating costs. “Any company interested in bringing government form filling into a less expensive overhead layer and redeploying the more valuable assets would be well served subscribing to PDFfiller,” said Hampton.

While minimizing wasted man hours and paper use, PDFfiller has helped Green Brick Title create better documents more quickly. Using PDFfiller has “reduced printing costs by two thirds.” Moreover, “by virtue of the speed and convenience of PDFfiller, we have paid for the subscription at least 50-fold by the employee time saved alone,” said Hamilton. “Anytime working hours can be saved by smooth integration with online programs like PDFfiller, it should always be considered.”

PDFfiller is the best way to complete documents digitally, which allows for faster, cheaper and more effective document management in a professional environment.

For the complete paper, click on the link below:

Completing financing forms digitally

Completing and Distributing Financial Forms Digitally

August 19, 2017 No Comments

Who?

Since 2009, HSI Trust, LTD. has been helping clients take back control of their finances, working “primarily in situations where [clients] are having difficulty with their mortgage, but also student loans, credit cards, anything on the financial side,” said Bruce Boguslav, Executive Director of the organization.

Because HSI Trust works in the field of non-profit consumer advocacy to assist individuals across the country, “We don’t sell product, we just work with [clients] to either negotiate with their lender or various things like that,” Boguslav said.

Featured on ABC’s World News Tonight and Nightline as well as in the Huffington Post, HSI Trust are experts in their field and serve customers across the country. With such wide outreach, massive demand for their services, and the need to process and distribute huge numbers of financial documents, HSI Trust needed an effective digital document management solution to streamline their workflow.

The Problem

Working in the financial space, Boguslav and his team at HSI Trust needed an efficient digital document management solution that was simple, quick, and cost-effective.

Because they are helping to solve a range of financial issues for clients across the country, HSI Trust works with hundreds of different forms. “We’re dealing with various types of forms for submission,” said Boguslav. “There’s a gazillion, depending on what the issue is… We’ve got our own that we use to gather information with our clients, some basic financial [forms], then there’s some additional paperwork that goes with very specific [financial situations]… Some come in fax; some come in all different formats.”

Before PDFfiller, forms came in various formats and were difficult to distribute, manage, complete, store and return. Boguslav knew that he needed a digital solution, but couldn’t find an adequate tool for the job.

“We were using different PDF [tools] – we have an older version of Acrobat we’re using occasionally. We’ve also tried something called CutePDF. We’ve been through a couple different tools. Yeah, in some cases- we’ve been doing this since 2006- earlier, we were literally doing cut and paste. Or you’d [have to] scan it four times,” Boguslav said.

Before switching to PDFfiller, HSI Trust struggled with the complex feature set of Adobe Acrobat. Expensive and clumsy, Acrobat was a less than perfect solution. So too were other online PDF tools which did not provide the same ease-of-use features and functionality as PDFfiller. An analog, paper-based solution was inadequate – being too slow, time-consuming, and personnel dependent.

But then HSI Trust found PDFfiller. “After struggling with some of the other tools and then looking at Acrobat and the cost of upgrading, we just decided to try [PDFfiller]. It works!” said Boguslav.

The Solution

PDFfiller makes it easy to collate, complete, distribute, and return forms. With its intuitive user interface, PDFfiller makes document management simple.

Now, instead of completing forms by hand or using a complex, clumsy digital solution, Boguslav, HSI Trust, and clients can complete forms digitally; creating a faster, more legible and organized workflow.

“Mostly what we’re doing is setting it up here, in-house, and then either emailing to the client, or else we’re just using it ourselves,” said Boguslav. “In some cases, we’re emailing it to the client, and then we have a copy, they have a copy, and we can walk [them through] the form – it’s a lot simpler. And sometimes we’ll have them fill in parts of it; sometimes we’ll just take the information over the phone and fill it in. Occasionally, they’ll email us other documents,” which can then be consolidated with other digital forms to create a comprehensive folder of client information. “So either for us internally, or in some cases, with clients, being able to email and let them fill in [forms] – it makes life a lot simpler.”

With all the documents distributed and collected by HSI Trust, finding an efficient means of storage was critical. Going digital means that those thousands of documents can be stored remotely in the cloud or on secure hard drive-based digital storage. Documents kept on PDFfiller’s cloud-based system are always accessible, meaning you can edit, send, and sign from anywhere you have an internet connection.

PDFfiller relies on Amazon’s S3 servers and adds two-factor authentication and PIN-protected folders to ensure sensitive documents are always kept secure.

With PDFfiller, “either clients or our staff fill in [forms and] instead of trying to deal with all these different forms in different formats, we’re able to put them in one place – [PDFfiller] makes life a lot simpler,” said Boguslav. “This lets us put a package together.

Moreover, when dealing with financial forms, being able to add signatures is crucial. PDFfiller allows users to add a signature by drawing on their touch-sensitive device, scanning it in, or simply holding a copy up to their computer’s camera. Once saved in PDFfiller’s system, a digital signature is available to use on any of your digital documents in just a click – “[adding digital signatures] is coming in handy,” said Boguslav. And with PDFfiller’s advanced SendToSign feature, you can send digital documents to clients or colleagues for signature and have them returned automatically.

More advanced features available through PDFfiller’s intuitive online graphical interface include the ability to highlight important information, redact sensitive text, add sticky notes to direct clients’ attention to specific issues, and even API connectivity, which allows users to post documents directly to their website and have them completed by others without ever leaving the page.

This combination of powerful and easy-to-use features make “[PDFfiller] a nice fit for us,” Boguslav said. “[PDFfiller is] faster and more focused – Acrobat and the features there are overkill for us. So to spend money on that, even for their online version, when we’re using a small portion of it [doesn’t make sense]; we just need something that meets our needs, that’s not overkill. And [PDFfiller] does it.

Conclusion

PDFfiller is faster than analog and digital counterparts and features everything you need at hand and nothing you don’t. It is an always-on digital document solution available anywhere, any time, and on any internet-connected device.

PDFfiller’s comprehensive digital solution is so fast, efficient and easy to use, that Boguslav has recommended it to many of his clients – “We’ve got professionals, we’ve got dentists, some lawyers, we’ve got folks that have small businesses [as clients and] we’ve recommended it to them.”

PDFfiller “works much better” than paper-based documents or competing digital services said Boguslav. With so many forms, “it is much easier for us to use [PDFfiller].

Not only is PDFfiller an ideal solution for in-house work, but so too does it serve customers and clients. “[Clients] are happy, they’re very happy. [PDFfiller] makes life easier for them: it makes it easier for us,” Boguslav said.

For the complete paper, click on the link below:

Completing and Distributing Financial Forms Digitally

Fill out Form W-12 Online to Become a Paid Tax Preparer

August 17, 2017 No Comments

Form W-12: IRS Paid Preparer Tax Identification Number (PTIN) Application and Renewal

For the majority of Americans the US tax system is very complicated. We don’t want to spend days and nights calculating taxes, completing declarations and trying not to lose our temper and mind. But if you have a knack for numbers and like solving financial puzzles, can work under pressure and you are ready to fill in a tax form on the eve of the due date – you might be interested in becoming a paid tax preparer. Working as a tax preparer has lots of advantages. Think it over: the taxpayers usually need consulting services only during the tax season. Tax preparers don’t have to pull all-nighters every day. After the 15th of April they have plenty of time and money for vacation, self-development and relaxing. So, how do the paid tax preparers start out?

Before dealing with tax returns all tax specialists must get a preparer tax identification number (PTIN) from the IRS. They can easily obtain a PTIN by completing IRS Form W-12, Paid Preparer Tax Identification Number Application and Renewal. The tax preparers usually save time and file the form with the IRS electronically.

In this blog post we’ll show you how to fill out the application entirely online with PDFfiller, skipping the time-consuming printing and scanning steps.

Who must file Form W-12?

Any paid tax return preparer must apply for and receive a preparer tax identification number (PTIN). The PTIN must be renewed annually. A tax return preparer is any individual who is compensated for preparing or assisting in the preparation of all of a tax return or claim for refund of tax.
Now when you are sure that you have to complete Form W-12, it’s time to find how to do this.

How to Fill Out Form W-12 Online:

Step 1. Find Form W-12 in the PDFfiller online library of fillable documents

You can quickly find Form W-12 using the PDFfiller Search Engine. Go to MY DOCS in your PDFfiller account, click Add New Document and open the Search for Documents tab. Enter the name of the form and click the Search button.

Before opening the form, you can watch a video tutorial and read a short description that will help you complete the form.

Step 2. Open Form W-12 in the PDFfiller Editor

Now you just need to select the required document from the search result (Form W-12 or Instructions) and click Fill online.

This will open Form W-12 in the PDFfiller online editor.

Step 3. Fill in the document using PDFfiller editing tools

Use all the powerful PDFfiller editing tools to neatly fill in Form W-12. Click anywhere on the document and start typing. Choose the type and size of the font, avoid mistakes with the Spelling tool, add images and checkmarks if needed.
The document contains smart fillable fields. These fields will guide you through the form and make completing it fast and easy. Click Next to move to the next field.

You can always check how many fields are left by clicking on the fillable Wizard tool in the top panel.

Click anywhere on the document and start typing.
Block 1. Type in your full name and current PTIN (if you already have one). Here you also need to indicate the purpose of the application: initial or renewal.
Block 2. Check whether you want the PTIN to be valid for the current calendar year or the next calendar year.
Block 3. Indicate your SSN and date of birth.
Block 4, 5 and 6. Type in your personal and business mailing address, phone number and email.
Block 7. Provide information about felony convictions.
Block 8 and 9. Type in the details of your last U.S. individual income tax return filed with the IRS (these blocks are applicable only for an initial application).
Block 10. Provide information about preparation of Form 1040 (skip this block if you are an attorney, public accountant or enrolled agent).
Block 11. Certify that you comply with your tax obligations.
Block 12. Check all the appropriate boxes that apply to your professional skills.

Step 4. Sign Form W-12 with a legally binding eSignature

The hardest part of the job is done. Your Form W-12 looks neat and you still have the strength to go to the end. And the end is near. Just two more steps are ahead: signature and date.
With PDFfiller’s Signature Wizard it will take you only minute to add a legally binding signature using your smartphone, keyboard, mouse or webcam. Customize the signature according to your needs and save it for future use.

To add the current date, move to the date field. It will be added automatically.

Step 5. Submit the completed Form W-12

Finally, the last step of our completion quest: submission. Click DONE to save all your edits and choose what you want to do with Form W-12 next.

To view the completed form got to MY DOCS.
This step-by-step instruction shows that with PDFfiller any tax advisor, taxpayer or other professional can complete and manage their documents without additional effort and time.
Visit our website to learn more about other PDFfiller’s features.