Looking for a better system to create, organize, and send requests to customers? Template management is an excellent way for busy office managers to simplify these repetitive tasks.
Well-designed templates save time and reduce human error, whether you’re:
- Setting up electronic signature agreement templates
- Setting up a process for accepting credit card or check payments.
- Sending customer documents or notifications
Template best practices ensure your team communicates consistently, complies with company policies, and delivers a professional customer experience with every interaction.
What is a Template?
A template is a preconfigured workflow created by administrators to help teams follow an approved communication or payment process. In PDCflow’s software, for example, templates define many characteristics of a workflow, like:
- Fields (both required and optional)
- Messaging (like disclosures or other information)
- Steps needed for digital transactions (payments, esignatures, document uploads)
Template management helps your office maintain compliance, create consistent branding, and provide a smooth user experience.
Common PDCflow template examples
PDCflow templates can be added or updated to automate repetitive tasks and standardize how companies manage payments and customer interactions.
With PDCflow, you can create unlimited templates at no extra cost. Set up:
- Card, cash, and check payment templates: Guide employees through in-person or assisted payments with your preferred settings.
- Flow templates: Help employees send specific digital requests for payments, signatures, files, or document reviews.
Template Best Practices
Template management is essential for organized staff processes. The better your management software works, the faster it is to streamline esignatures, payments, and other request workflows.
The goal is to create repeatable systems. Every customer should have the same experience, no matter which employee makes a request.
This system only works if you take a thoughtful approach to creating templates, audit them regularly, and keep them easily accessible. Here are some template best practices to create better templates and keep them organized.
Only require the necessary fields
If your company needs to gather essential information from forms, you should make those fields required. This guarantees that your document templates will capture all necessary information, every time they are used.
Adding these required fields makes information capture easy for staff. They can send documents to be filled out, knowing that recipients have clear instructions for completing them.
If fields are irrelevant or unnecessary, don’t include them in the workflow. This will help your finish rate by making forms as simple as possible.
Offer drop-down options
Sometimes, it’s better to give customers a list of choices, rather than letting them fill in a blank field. This can be helpful if you need one of a few specific options, or just to make it easier to complete a document.
To offer a pre-set list of options on a form, use a drop-down on templates instead of a text box.
Keep consistent naming conventions
For fast customer interactions, staff need to be able to select the right template quickly. Create clear, consistent rules for naming templates, so staff know what they are selecting.
Don’t waste employee time making them click through templates that sound the same, and don’t introduce errors by keeping old templates after creating an updated version.
Store in a central repository
For the easiest template management, use PDCflow or another software system as a central storage area for all your templates. That way, when employees need to get signatures or take payments, they just select the right one and complete the task.
Don’t recreate settings before every transaction or refer back to SOPs for instructions. Without organized, stored templates:
- Work slows down
- Customer experience suffers
- Risk of error increases
Stored templates also make it easier to keep templates updated, in order, and accessible, since you can complete these tasks within one single system.
Perform regular audits and update templates as processes evolve
Review templates at regular intervals for consistent content management. Make sure they follow company requirements and are up-to-date, using compliant documents.
Schedule time to make regular updates as part of your template management process. This makes sure the right documents or payment requests are being used.
Encourage employee feedback
Get input from front-line employees about how current templates are working. Ask:
- Are customers getting confused about what goes in a field?
- Do recipients routinely forget to fill out a section of a form?
- Are there areas of the process where requests keep getting stalled?
Understanding real customer and employee struggles will help you refine workflows and fix issues, so they don’t keep impacting your business.
PDCflow Tools for Template Management
Required fields
Document Overlays
With an overlay template, you can set up all the inputs you need from a recipient. That way, when they view a document, it’s easy to enter the correct information.
For example, customers may not understand how to answer a question on a form. Other times, your company may require one of just a few select answers for more efficient information collection.
That’s where drop-down menus become essential in your templates. Drop-down menus in PDCflow let you create a list of choices to select from on a document. Eliminate guesswork and reduce the chance of confusing answers that require customer follow-up.
Other available document overlay elements include:
- Checkboxes
- Date signed stamp
- Linked text area
- Text input
- Initials
- Digital signature
Organization Management
Robust user permissions help you ensure team members use current, approved templates. Avoid problems caused by employees accessing the wrong template to send a Flow request or accept a payment.
PDCflow’s organization management feature lets administrators lock down user permissions and employee access to templates by group, department, or location. That way, staff only see the templates they need. No more errors.
Easy template creation
PDCflow’s most recent development has improved the way your company creates templates for payments, esignatures, and other requests.
Spend less time clicking around for the options you need. Edit field settings directly within the template preview, so you see updates as you make them.
PDCflow’s Better-Than-Ever Template Creation
PDCflow simplifies workflow template management, organization, and access. But most importantly, we’ve improved the look and feel of template creation, so it’s easier to make all the essential Flow request and payment templates you need to run your business.
Here’s what’s new:
- Configure templates with fewer clicks and less searching for options with PDCflow.
- Change field settings by clicking directly on the live preview.
PDCflow for document templates, esignatures, and payments
PDCflow is an all-in-one solution that gets you from agreement to cash faster, in one single platform. No switching between software platforms, no getting documents signed in one system, and accepting payments in another.
Make it easy for all of your staff to collaborate. No charges per user make it simple for everyone to send requests, view a customer’s request status, and recall completed documents and payments.
Try it for yourself. Sign up for a 14-day free trial.
Start a 14-Day Free Trial:
Want to know more about PDCflow Software?
Press ▶️ to watch our explainer video
ONE-STEP PROCESS
- ABOUT THE AUTHOR -
Hannah Huerta, Marketing Specialist
Hannah Huerta is a Marketing Specialist at PDCflow. She creates content for the accounts receivable and payment industry.
Related Articles
