Save Time, Reduce Errors, and Track Key Data with Automated Documents

At XRay.Tech, one of our main goals is to automate common tasks that every business needs to perform on a day-to-day basis. 

While every company has a unique focus, we all have to conduct many of the same processes just to keep our businesses running. Every company has to run payroll for their employees; every company has to interview new candidates; and every company needs to draft and send contracts, proposals, and other documents.

In this post, we’ll explain why you should consider automating your document creation workflows, and we’ll show you what the finished automation might look like. 

Why automate proposals?

Save Time

The most obvious benefit to proposal and contract automation is that it will save you some time. This is true with just about any automated workflow, and it’s certainly the case with automated documents.

Depending on the length of your contracts and proposals, you’ll probably save about 10-15 minutes per document. That’s not a lot on its own, but it will add up fast if you’re churning out a high volume. For instance, if you’re sending out NDAs every week to potential recruits and vendors, you could potentially save an hour or more each week.  

But even if you don’t send out many contracts and proposals, document automation still has some great benefits.

Reduce Errors

With automatically constructed documents, your error rate will be virtually zero. You won’t need to manually search for all of the placeholders you need to fill in, or make sure that you have the right capitalization settings in Find & Replace.

The automation will fill in all the blanks for you, making sure that everything is done consistently and correctly every time. 

Track Key Metrics 

In addition to saving time and creating a more consistent process, automating your proposals and contracts also makes it very simple to start tracking the workflow and its results.

With just a couple steps in your automations, you can easily keep track of how many documents you’re sending out, how long it takes to get them approved and signed, and more. 

And everything can be tracked in the software of your choice - Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Airtable, or any other database app you prefer.

How it works

Send Proposals, Contracts, and other Docs with a Simple Form

Using a proposal automation is very simple. All you have to do is fill in a quick survey with the information you need to update.

Just fill in the form with a few names and dates, click submit, and the automation will generate the document for you. 

If you’d like, you can also configure the automation to email the proposal out right away, or use an app like Docusign to get an official signature. 

Create Each Doc with a Customized Template

Before you can use the automation, you’ll need to create a template for the document in an app like Google docs. 

Identify the information you want to update in each proposal, and replace them with variables that an automation app like Zapier can recognize. 

Start Building the Automation

If you’d like more detail, you can check out this tutorial for a step-by-step guide. But to keep it simple, you really just need three things to set up a proposal automation:

• A document to use as a template, with all of your variables correctly identified

• A form that can collect answers and trigger the creation of new documents

• An automation app like Zapier to connect the form to the template. 

You can use all sorts of apps to build an automated workflow like this: Google Docs, Zapier, Typeform, Airtable, Google Forms, and more. As is usually the case with no-code automation, you can use pretty much any software you’d like to set up this workflow. 

How to get started

If you’d like to build this automation yourself, you can check out XRay’s full tutorial on our YouTube channel or on our blog. 

If you’re looking for an agency to build this automation and more for your team, you can also contact XRay at our site linked below to discuss options and work with us.

Start Drafting and Sending Automated Documents Today

Drafting and sending documents like contracts and proposals can be a very repetitive process, making it an easy target for automation.

When you automate your documents, you’ll save time, reduce errors, and make it much easier to track the workflow. This is a very easy automation to get started with, so we encourage you to check out the tutorials we’ve linked and give it a shot.

If you’d like to learn more about automating your business processes, be sure to check out our blog or our YouTube channel. You can also follow XRay on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.