Have you spent hours perfecting a business document only to learn that you’re working on the wrong version of the file?

Your coworker casually mentioned over Slack that a new document version was created (and buried) somewhere. Turns out your client requested a couple of contract changes over email.

Imagine the overwhelm and frustration you get the moment you read that note.

So much for trying to optimize your contract workflow. It’s difficult when everyone’s not on the same page.

You’re not alone.

According to a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, 4 out of 5 workers lose time every day because of document versioning problems.

Whether working on manuals, invoices, requests, quotes, briefs, reports, or contracts, it’s massively better to collaborate right on the documents.

For you to make working on the documents smoother, we’ll talk about 12 document workflow solutions that will help you not just manage, but automate your document workflows.

Let’s first establish a common understanding of what document workflow management is.

What is Document Workflow Management?

Document workflow management is the system that is set in place to generate, track, revise, approve, capture, retrieve, retain, and destroy documents that are linked to particular business processes.

It’s not restricted to legal documents like contracts. You can work on invoices, quotes, and other general business docs — it’s still considered as a document workflow.

Why do you need document workflow solutions?

As an organization that uses documents for business, it helps to start with these questions.

• How much time, manpower, and money are you spending to keep documents in place?

• How do you make sure that documents are passed on to the right person or department at the right time?

• Are your workers forced to merge documents manually? If yes, are you aware of the productivity loss incurred?

It’s important to find out how significant is the amount of manpower and time spent on managing your documents.

If you’re often set back by issues on document workflow, it’ll be worth your while to look into these.

12 Best Document Workflow Solutions

Here, we’ll share 12 of the best platforms that offer document workflow solutions, what they’re best at, their top 3 features, and price range.

This will help you know which one would suit your business’ needs best.

1. Avokaado: Best for legal documents & workflows

Avokaado is best for managing and automating business documents and workflows, especially legal ones. It can be used at every stage of your document lifecycle — from drafting, managing approvals, executing contracts, and even digitally signing the documents.

Plus, users both inside and outside of your organization can collaborate here. Teams can work on documents simultaneously, search for correct clauses and wordings, and collect input pieces from involved parties.

Everyone with access can access the document database, track progress, re-use data. Most of all, it’s compliant, limiting risk when delegating to teams and clients.

Top 3 features

• Collaborate on documents at every stage of the document lifecycle
• Document drafting based on smart templates with a wide range of predefined templates
• Clause-based contract automation so you can easily search and use common clauses

Price range and free trial option

Avokaado offers a 7-day free trial for every plan. Plans start at 29€ for one user, and up to 60€ per user for customized services.

2. Zoho: Best for HR documents & workflows

The HR department is home to a lot of documents: company policies, handbooks, offers, contracts, appraisals, and other confidential documents as well.

Zoho allows its users to upload, organize, and share public documents while giving the option to keep confidential documents secure.

Top 3 features

• Get custom documents signed upon job completion. Automation can be done according to a particular signing order
• Personalized copies of template documents from form details. No need for HR or sales executives to manually edit names and addresses each time they receive a request
• Creation of documents from APIs (i.e. personalized form letter that can be stored, signed, downloaded, or mailed)

Price range and free trial option

Zoho offers a free 15-day trial for all their plans, except for the 30-day trial offered to potential clients looking into purchasing their Ultimate plan. It starts at $14-$52 per user, monthly.

3. Docsumo: Best for invoices and bank statements workflows

Docsumo leads document workflow software when it comes to managing invoices and bank statements.

They make use of OCR technology that helps convert documents like invoices, bank statements, and pay stubs to intelligible data that is easy to digest, process, and use to make smarter business decisions.

Top 3 features

• Extract totals, invoice numbers, payment terms, and more from multiple invoices and validate them with APIs
• Reduce back and forth with customers by identifying if they have submitted all documents
• Integrations with Google Docs, Dropbox, Zapier, Salesforce, and Webhook

Price range and free trial option

Docsumo offers a free demo and starts at $500 a month for up to 1000 documents monthly.

4. eFileCabinet: Best for inter-departmental workflows

eFileCabinet automates work for the HR, Finance, Legal, and IT department. It gives you an in-depth look at your workflow stages so you can plan for efficiency across the entire organization. Documents are secured in an encrypted portal so you don’t have to worry when sharing and sending legal documents.

Top 3 features

• View different documents or document versions side-by-side to compare and pull information
• Use harvested form data to automate the routing of documents for efficiency and compliance
• Document workflow tools for people inside and outside your organization (i.e., they may send and rename files that will automatically go to a specified folder

Price range and free trial option

They offer a free trial option and start at $15 per month, per user.

5. DocuWare: Best for distributed and remote teams

Docuware enables organizations to go through digital transformation while still keeping all business processes secure and automated. 

With their cloud document management and workflow automation, this tool helps distributed teams digitize their business documents and optimize those new processes so they can still operate at full productivity.

Top 3 features

• Digital invoices with intelligent indexing for secure retrieval and preconfigured workflows for faster turnaround times
• Flexible search options including wildcards and logical links searched through a document’s content and even indexed metadata
• Add stamps, annotations, or image corrections without altering the original document.

Price range and free trial option

DocuWare offers a 30-day free trial. DocuWare starts at $300 a month for a small organization with around 4 users.

6. TrackVia: Best for manufacturing and warehouse document processes 

TrackVia provides a platform for automating and streamlining your manufacturing resources, projects, and inventory across teams and even multiple locations.

It’s a no-code platform that lets you edit a template, convert a spreadsheet or build document databases. It can replace spreadsheets and automate manual processes.

Top 3 features

• Specialized for managing Supply Chain Workflows to instantly process details, metrics, and processes. See milestones in real-time through highly customizable dashboards.
• Flexible. As a no-code app, it’s easy to modify it whenever your processes change.
• Step-by-step guidance for each task with document workflow systems.

Price range and free trial option

TrackVia offers a free trial and starts at $499 for their mobile plan, where 1 admin and 5 mobile-only users can use the platform.

7. ProcessMaker: Best for SLA monitoring

ProcessMaker helps businesses make sure they comply with Service-Level Agreements (SLAs). It has a Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) that notifies users the moment certain business process conditions aren’t met. It also has forms that capture data, getting approvals directly from email, and dashboards that ensure objectives are met, and more.

Top 3 features

• SLA alerts whenever certain business process conditions aren’t met (stakeholders are notified in real-time)
• Drag and drop design so you can easily and create various decision points (fun and easy way to create your workflows)
• Powerful dashboards that help you track your milestones with clear graphs

Price range and free trial option

ProcessMaker offers a free trial and starts at $1,495/mo for the standard plan for workflow automation. To use low-code iBPMs and access case management, pick the $2,479/mo Enterprise plan

8. Integrify: Best for Pharmaceutical Companies

Integrify makes building custom document and file approval workflows easy to create even with numerous business units and legacy systems. This way, companies can build on their existing systems rather than starting anew. It’s best for use by businesses that are transitioning to digitization (like global Pharma companies).

Top 3 features

• Share information, upload and download documents, and leave comments as part of the workflow
• Free pre-built process apps that can be customized for your own needs
• Unlimited forms that can help automate processes and capture data

Price range and free trial option

Integrify starts from $38 per user, per month. No details on whether a free trial is available on the website, but they do provide a free demo upon request.

9. Nintex Process Platform: Best for Business Process Automation

Nintex is a workflow automation software platform that helps businesses improve existing processes by eliminating repetitive tasks through easy-to-set-up automation.

They also offer visual process mapping, workflow automation, and robotic process automation for every major industry there is.

Top 3 features

• Easily approvals with just one click for easier and faster collaboration
• Visual representation for your collaboration so you can build better business processes
• Smooth integrations and open APIs that work with apps and tools you’re already using

Price range and free trial option

The Nintext Workflow Standard plan starts at $910 per month. They also offer a free 30-day trial.

10. Comindware Tracker: Best for Project Tracking and Task Automating 

If you’re still using spreadsheets and still rely on Outlook to track your team’s activities, then Comindware Tracker will save the day.

This workflow management software enables you to adjust quickly with your changing business processes, all without the long IT developmental cycles and cost spend.

Top 3 features

• Flexible online document management workflow for tracking and managing documents, their lifecycles, related workflow processes, and people involved
• Drag-and-drop workflow, making it best for non-technical users who would like to make the most out of automation
• Flexible business rules so you can always create modifications as needed without coding skills

Price range and free trial option

Price starts at $9.99 per feature, per month. A quote can be requested from the website. They also offer a free trial.

11. PandaDoc: Best for sales documents workflows

Panda Doc offers an all-around solution to create, manage, and sign documents with ease, making it ideal for fast-moving teams dealing with sales. 

It also allows for the creation, editing, and signing of documents. Let’s just say it helps you close deals and generate more money faster.

Top 3 features

• Create, send, and track documents by replicating your existing workflow and approval process
• Wide range of documents from proposals, quotes, contracts, e-signatures, and forms
• Customized per industry with the ability to secure legally binding signatures

Price range and free trial option

Panda Doc offers a free service, while their essentials plan starts at $19 per user, per month.

12. KissFlow: Best for procurement process workflows

KissFlow focuses on making the procurement process quick and easy with automated and intuitive process automation.

It’s a simple, low-code platform that uses forms to collect data, APIs and Zapier to link to your workflows and real-time custom metrics to make smart decisions.

Top 3 features

• Invoice approval made easy by letting you connect POs, GRNs, and other relevant documents to your invoices
• Customize and easily share purchasing and vendor reports
• Multilingual catalogs for easy onboarding vendors from all over the world

Price range and free trial option

KissFlow offers a free trial and starts at $1,990 yearly.

Eliminate unstructured work with document work solutions

A document workflow solution is the answer to messy processes, inefficiencies, and lagging business processes. The solutions range from customization, collaboration and could span to document workflow optimization.

Depending on the documents that you want to optimize and the workflows that you’d like to automate, choose the platform that fulfills your needs.

Avokaado is made for legal workflow automation. Avokaado is made for end-to-end contract lifecycle management from one place: smart drafting, co-editing with parties, negotiating, approving, e-signing, document management, metadata search, and tracking dashboard.

Take the mess and inefficiencies out of your legal document organization and workflows starting today. Try Avokaado for 7 days for free here.

👉 Enjoy our library of pre-lawyered document templates that you can instantly use for your business.