Automated Document Assembly: Not Just for Law Firms
It’s no surprise that most articles about automated document assembly software focus on lawyers and law firms — they’re well-known for the carefully producing massive amounts of documents.
Here’s the problem with that — the benefits of automated document assembly go way beyond helping lawyers create better legal documents, and too many people like you are missing out because no one has ever told you how document assembly helps you and your business.
We’re here to change that. Our mission in this article is to firmly establish document assembly software as a helpful business tool for everyone — not just lawyers — and explain what it is, how it works, and how it can help your business create accurate, high-volume documents in a fraction of the time you’re currently doing it.
What is automated document assembly?
Document assembly is simply the process of collecting and entering all the information you need for a particular document. It’s not hard, exactly, but it’s repetitive and requires time and attention to detail to do correctly.
Automated document assembly enables you to gather data and create high-quality documents automatically with the help of easy-to-use document assembly software. There’s no more searching for data and copying and pasting it every time you need to create a new document — automated document assembly lets you assemble and create documents individually or in bulk. It’s quick, efficient, and a great way to boost productivity for any business.
How does document assembly software work?
Document assembly software is based on templates. It makes sense — most types of documents are pretty standard and require you to enter the same type of data in the same place every time. All insurance policies require the same type of input, and the same goes for receipts, contracts, real estate forms, and other common documents.
Templates made easy
Document assembly software allows you to create templates for the documents your business uses most frequently. You set up each document’s structure and populate it with custom design elements like logos and standard text such as terms, conditions, policy disclosures, etc. You can build templates based on document type, account, customer, or any other customization you need.
When you’re ready to create a new document, you simply choose the type of document you want to assemble. Your document assembly software will then guide you through a series of questions to help you gather the required information such as names, addresses, dates, coverage limits, or payment amounts. Once you’ve entered your answers, the document assembly software automatically inserts them into the correct spot in the document — no copying and pasting required.
Who needs document assembly software?
The short answer is everyone who creates documents on a regular basis, but we’ll provide a few more details. Document assembly software is very helpful for law firms, financial institutions, government agencies, insurance companies, publishing operations, and other businesses that produce a high volume of documents, but you don’t have to assemble thousands of pages every day to benefit.
If you create any of the following documents on a regular basis, you need document assembly software.
- Contracts
- Invoices
- Receipts
- Proposals
- Letters
- Policy documents
- Customer presentations
- Account statements
- Budgets
- Estimates
- Work orders
What are the benefits of document assembly software?
Whether your business is large or small, document assembly software provides big benefits. Here’s a look at the top three.
Major time savings
With the help of document assembly software, you can assemble and create documents in a fraction of the time you usually spend. Think about all the documents you assemble — and how much it takes you and your team to manually search for the correct version of the document, figure out the data you need, and copy and paste everything individually.
Now think about what it would mean for your business if you use the time you used to spend on document generation to pursue new leads, nurture customer relationships, and do other things to help your business grow. It’s exciting, right?
Significantly fewer errors
Manual document assembly leads to frequent errors such as typos, incorrect addresses, omitted clauses, and mixed-up numbers. Depending on the situation, these errors can be minor annoyances or lead to big, expensive problems. The best solutions take document compliance very seriously, incorporating a myriad of built-in document control capabilities like template creation, access controls, and more.
Using templates, generated by dynamic interview forms, helps you avoid both big and small mistakes by eliminating the most error-prone parts of the process. You’ll have higher-quality, more consistent documents and much less rework and frustration.
Better customer and supplier experience
Your customers and suppliers will love your ability to quickly produce and send consistent, accurate high-quality invoices, statements, contracts, letters, and other important documents.
Which document assembly software should you choose?
If you’re excited by the possibilities of document assembly software and ready to make automated document assembly part of your business, your next challenge is finding the right solution. There are lots of options available, and you could easily get overwhelmed with evaluating all the different solutions.
We suggest you take a shortcut and start with HotDocs! With over a million customers in 60 countries, we’re an established leader in document automation. We offer document assembly solutions specifically built for the legal, insurance, banking, publishing, and government industries as well as high-quality products to help large and small businesses in any field.
Visit our solutions page to learn more about what HotDocs offers and see customer reviews and testimonials. You can also get in touch to schedule a demo and discuss how we can help automate document assembly for your business.