Use case · PDF paperwork
Fill PDF forms online and keep every answer as data
Put a form in front of the PDF you already have to send. People answer the questions once; Matiks places the answers on the real page, keeps the filled document with the response, and keeps the answers as data you can work with.
The paperwork that will not go away
A lot of work still ends at a PDF somebody made years ago: an enrolment form, a consent form, a county or funder document with boxes in fixed places that has to arrive looking exactly like itself. The usual answer is to email the PDF and ask people to fill it in — which means handwriting, scans at an angle, missing pages and somebody typing every answer into a spreadsheet afterwards.
Filling the PDF online solves half of that. The other half is what happens to the answers. A filled document is a picture of the data; you cannot filter it, chase the people who left a field blank, or send the next email from it.
Place the questions on the page once
Open the PDF and drag each question onto the spot where its answer belongs, then set the size and font. That is the template. A placement is a page number and a position, not a form field the file has to expose, so it works on a clean export and on a scanned photocopy with no fields in it at all.
Long answers wrap inside the width you gave them instead of running off the edge. A checkbox answer draws a mark rather than printing the word "true". A placement can carry a condition, so the guardian section stays empty on an adult’s copy instead of filling with "N/A".
People fill in a form, not a PDF
The person on the other end opens an ordinary web form: it reads properly on a phone, needs no account and no PDF reader, and can be translated into any of 20 languages. Required questions are required, choices are choices, and conditions hide the parts that are not about them — none of which a PDF can do on its own.
If the document needs a signature, the form can ask for one drawn on the page, and it is placed on the PDF like any other answer. Matiks is not an e-signature service with an audit trail, and it does not pretend to be one.
The filled document stays with the answers
Each response comes back as a filled copy of the PDF. It is recorded on the submission and shows as a column in Results next to the answers that made it, and it opens in the viewer without being downloaded first.
The file name is built from the answers — a surname, a programme, the date it arrived — so a folder of them sorts itself. From Results you can select responses and export their documents merged into one PDF or as separate files.
And the answers become records
This is the part a PDF filler on its own does not do. The answers are data in your workspace, not just ink on a page. Each respondent becomes a record with the attributes you track, so you can sort, filter and group the responses, add a person to a list for the next stage, and see everything that has happened to them in one place.
Fill it when it should be filled
Filling a PDF is also a step a workflow can take. The document can be made the moment a response arrives, only after somebody approves it, or only for the answers that need one — and a workflow can branch and fill whichever document a particular case needs.
- On arrival: the document exists before anybody opens the response.
- After an approval: only accepted applications become paperwork.
- By case: different answers, different templates.
Read more about PDFs and records
Stop typing it in twice.
Upload the PDF you already send, place the questions on it, and let every response fill its own copy.