For small businesses
PDF tools for small business
A small business needs perhaps six PDF operations and is usually sold a subscription for sixty. Invoices that keep their layout, quotes that open anywhere, contracts that stay final, and files small enough for a customer portal — all of it runs in the browser, at no cost and with no per-seat license.
By Suprabhat Updated How we write these
What tends to go wrong
- Per-seat PDF licenses are an annual cost for software most of the team opens twice a month.
- Quotes and invoices sent as editable documents can be altered, and open differently on the customer’s machine.
- Supplier and customer records pile up as separate files with no order to them.
- Customer and supplier portals enforce upload limits that nobody mentions until the upload fails.
The workflow
Every one of these works today, and runs on your own device.
- 1
Send quotes and invoices that hold their shape
Column widths, currency formats and totals come through as they were set. The customer sees the document you built rather than a spreadsheet reflowed by whatever opened it.
Excel to PDF - 2
Issue contracts and terms with fonts embedded
Typefaces travel inside the file, so terms and conditions arrive laid out correctly on any device. Headings become bookmarks, which matters on a long contract.
Word to PDF - 3
Make a returned, signed document final
Fields and drawn signatures stay editable until they are flattened. Flattening writes them into the page, so the executed copy in your records cannot be altered afterwards.
Flatten PDF - 4
Keep one file per job or per supplier
Quote, purchase order, delivery note and invoice combined into one document per job, which is what makes a query six months later answerable in one click.
Merge PDF - 5
Break a supplier statement into its invoices
Where a supplier sends a month as one long PDF, split it wherever the invoice number appears and file each one separately.
Split PDF by Text - 6
Fit a document under a portal limit
Customer portals and tender systems cap uploads, often at 2 MB or 5 MB. Type the limit and check the result before submitting something that has to be right first time.
Compress PDF
What a subscription still buys that this does not
Being straight about it makes the choice easier, and for some businesses the subscription is the right answer.
If none of those are requirements, the recurring cost is buying convenience you already have in the browser.
- Certified e-signatures with an audit trail and identity verification. Flattening a drawn signature fixes its appearance; it is not the same thing, and where a signature must be legally provable you need a signing service.
- OCR, for making scanned supplier documents searchable. Not live here yet.
- Shared team workflows — approval routing, shared folders, version history. Everything here happens on one person’s machine, which is the point, and also the limitation.
Questions
Is there a per-user cost or a business license?
No. The tools run in each person’s browser, so there is nothing to license per seat and no account to provision. A team of one and a team of thirty cost the same.
Can we use this with customer and supplier data?
Yes, and it is the safer option: files are processed in the browser and never uploaded, so commercial and customer data is not transferred to a processor you would otherwise have to assess.
Can I add a signature to a contract here?
You can put one on the page: in Edit PDF, draw it or add a picture of it, place it, and save. That is a signature on the page, not a certified e-signature with an audit trail — and flattening the signed copy afterwards makes it permanent.
How do we stop a quote being edited before it comes back?
Send it as a PDF rather than a spreadsheet or document, and flatten it if it contains form fields. A PDF page is fixed artwork, so figures cannot be changed by simply opening it.
More in PDF to Word, Excel & PowerPoint, or browse every tool.