Business forms and their international standards

Forms play a vital role in every business sector and creating a professional business form is like an art. The business form of today is a result of 40 years of testing and an international standard is followed in every aspect of the form, say the size of the check box, vertical distance between fields, grass mark distance, and the like. So a standard business form can be filled in using a typewriter. Reading this article helps you in knowing the technical aspects of the international form standard.

Before creating a business form, you have to decide its purpose, if it is to be printed, uploaded on to a website, or both. Whatever may be the case, the sole purpose of form is to returned with the required data captured. Forms that are intended to be published on the web can be created via various applications but many believe Microsoft Word is ideal for this task, but there are better options such as Adobe Golive or Macromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe Acrobat.

The standard size of a business form is 1/10 x 1/6 inch and with the standard templates available online, the task of creating a business form of international standard is even easier. All the author has to do is snap the element of the form to the background grid, and it is feasible to create a customized grid, provided the application supports it. One added benefit of eforms is the background color can be changed from the usual white.

Check boxes in eforms can take a maximum of 2 x 2 squares of the background grid. Likewise, it is mandatory to include the header with details like the company name and logo and the footer with contact details of the company in the business form.

Not many are aware of the form filling process so give directions on how to go about this, say use 'TAB' to move to the next field and print and fax or mail it, or just submit using the 'Send' button. It is also important to inform users what happens next, when do they get a response and when it would be processed..

Some professionals are in the belief that creating business forms requires much effort but it is not actually so and the job can be made easy with applications that focus exclusively on creating business forms. Leaving the task to experts is yet another way of getting professional business forms created.