Published 15 Aug 2023
What is a Digital Form?
Digital forms are the same as paper-based forms but were made available electronically. It has an option to capture a wide array of information that does not exist with paper forms. These are used to eliminate the hassle of lost paperwork, damaged reports, and manual data re-entry.
In the work setting, A digital form is a paperless tool used by businesses to gather information in an efficient way. It helps streamline business processes and promote accessible record-keeping and data sharing.
In this article
- Why use a Digital Form?
- Benefits of Digital Forms
- Digital Forms App with Checklist Feature
- How to Transform Paper Forms into Digital Forms
- Step-By-Step Guide of SafetyCulture, a Digital Form Builder
- How SafetyCulture Digital Checklists & Forms Can Help Your Business
- Featured Digital Forms
Why use a Digital Form?
Technological advances have led to the widespread adoption of smart mobile devices into nearly everyone’s hands. Yet despite being in the middle of the digital age – many of us still rely on paper forms in our business. Making the switch between paper forms and digital forms will be the difference that propels a company forward by integrating mobile devices and apps into the business landscape. Digital forms help to eliminate paper waste and reduce the costs of printing and storage. These forms can be filled out faster by programming that allows for the rapid capture of a wide variety of information.
Benefits of Digital Forms
Transforming your current paper-based checklists and forms into digital forms will change the way you work – for the better. Here are some of the benefits of using digital forms:
Richer data
With digital forms, you can take advantage of mobile technology and capture photos, barcodes, electronic signatures, diagrams, reference links, GPS coordinates, and more.
Save Time
Capturing information is faster than writing things by hand. It can speed up the process of gathering and retrieval of information and generating business reports.
Eco-friendly
Digital forms can contribute to green living that supports conserving the environment. It helps businesses in controlling paper waste.
Data Storage
Avoid the hassle of a pile of paperwork and unorganized records. With digital forms, you can keep your data securely in the cloud.
Analytics
Standardized information with an electronic form creates data that can be analyzed. This information is easily shared with the members of the organization. The responses can be presented through dashboards and charts to make informed decisions.
Digital Forms App with Checklist Feature
Forms apps are vital tools you can use to create digital forms and checklists. The digital form builder works alongside the checklist feature and can be used for specific purposes. SafetyCulture (formerly iAuditor) is an intuitive and versatile digital form maker that is used by various businesses across the globe to transform paper checklists and forms into less hassle online checklists. Learn more about checklist apps here.
How to Transform Paper Forms into Digital Forms
Traditionally, checklists and forms are written on a notepad or printed out as a document, but making them online, using SafetyCulture, enables you to use your checklist on your mobile device. Making digital forms online is easy with SafetyCulture, so easy, that it can be done in 4 different ways:
- Getting a form from SafetyCulture’s forms library of templates. This library introduces you to thousands of forms, checklists, and templates for different use cases such as safety, quality, operations, education, marketing, etc. You can download them for free and start customizing it or creating a new one via the SafetyCulture template builder.
- Smart Scanning your form. Turn your existing PDF, Excel, or Word form or checklist into an SafetyCulture template. Smart scan your document, and it will turn into an SafetyCulture template.
- Upload your checklist or form for template conversion
- Build your own form! See details below.
Step-By-Step Guide of SafetyCulture, a Digital Form Builder
Create online checklists or forms using cloud software tools like SafetyCulture to eliminate wasteful time spent in gathering questionnaire responses and data-entry when performing business processes. With the SafetyCulture Form Maker, your team can:
- Create customizable digital forms that will suit your business needs
- Gather information using different devices such as desktop, smartphone, or tablet
- Reduce storage and paper costs
- Instantly make and distribute changes to your digital forms, checklists, and questionnaires
- Compile completed forms automatically and save data securely in a cloud
- Sign-off audits with electronic signatures which validates the assessment
Here is the step-by-step process on how to create checklists online with SafetyCulture:
- Log in to the SafetyCulture web app.
- On the left-hand side, select “Templates” and then click “New Template” on the upper-right corner of the page.
- To create a new template, click “+ Blank template”
- On the upper-left corner of the page click “Untitled template” to name the template. This is the name users see on the web app and mobile app Templates list that helps them to identify which template to use.
- To add a description to the template, click “+ Add description”. This is what users see when they select the template. A new template has a Title Page and an Inspection page by default.
- The Title Page has 3 questions capturing necessary details like date, author, and location of an inspection from the template. To capture more vital information to be displayed on the front page of your reports, You can customize the Title Page and populate inspection titles.
- Start adding questions on the template or if you have a list of items already in an external document, you can copy and paste them in.
- Add and select the most needed response type for each question, by clicking the downward arrow under the “Type of response” column on the right-hand side.
- With the “Preview” pane on the right-hand side, you can see how your template works in action. The “Preview” also updates as you edit your template.
- Once you’re finished editing the template, you can click “Back to list” on the upper-left corner of the page.
How SafetyCulture Digital Checklists & Forms Can Help Your Business
Featured Digital Forms
Checklists and Forms for Different Use Cases
SafetyCulture digital forms can be used in many ways across different industries. Browse this collection of digital forms and checklists based on your business needs and requirements.
