Turn the paper you're handed into contracts you can send

Which kind of paper is it?

The first two are a few minutes' work each time; how to scan a paper contract and send it walks through every tap. The third is where most of the time is saved, because you stop scanning the same form over and over.

The scanner in your pocket

In the iPhone and iPad app, Apple's document camera finds the page edges, captures each page on its own and reads the text on the phone, so the PDF is searchable. On a computer, Scan with your phone shows a QR code: point any phone at it, Android included, photograph the pages in the browser, and they arrive in your draft as one PDF. Browser scans aren't text-searchable. Both are free on every plan; see scan for the details.

A paper form, made reusable

1. 1

   Scan a clean blank

   Use a copy nobody has filled in, so a past customer's name doesn't end up on every future contract. On the web, start a New template and choose Scan with your phone.

2. 2

   Name the roles

   Customer and Contractor, or Tenant and Landlord: roles, not people. You'll fill in who's who each time you send.

3. 3

   Turn blank lines into fields

   On a scan, a blank line is just pixels. A text, date or checkbox field placed over it is what makes it fillable. Alana can place signature fields next to the signature lines for you.

4. 4

   Label what changes per customer

   Give the price, address and start date labeled text boxes. Labels let you fill them from a spreadsheet with bulk send and read them back in the template's Responses table.

Is the old form due for a rewrite anyway? Scanning keeps its wording exactly as printed. If you want to change the terms, it's often quicker to retype it once in Word, save it as a PDF and build the template from that; the text comes out crisp and searchable.

Get a scan worth signing

• Flat and well lit. A dark table under a white page helps the camera find the edges; avoid shadows across the text.
• All the pages, in order. Scan the whole contract, including the back of any double-sided page with terms on it.
• One contract per PDF. Don't bundle two agreements into one scan. An envelope can hold several documents side by side.
• Check before you send. Rescan a blurry page rather than hoping the customer can read the price.

Before it goes out

You can't edit the printed words of a scan, but the editor's markup tools can add a text box, strike through a clause or white out a line, and what you add prints into the final PDF. Changing agreed terms that way still needs the other side's agreement, so say what changed in your message. If the paper carries a previous customer's details or an account number, draw a Redact box over it: the page is rebuilt so nothing under the box survives.