Review: Zosh -- fill out, sign or annotate PDF documents on the iPhone

Have you ever received a PDF file containing a form that you had to fill out or a document that you had to sign or mark up?  Typically you would print out the PDF, use a pen to make your additions or changes, and then either fax the document back or scan and email the document back to the person who sent it to you.  Zosh is a useful iPhone app from a company in Austin, Texas that lets you do all of this on your iPhone, eliminating the need to find a computer, printer, scanner or fax machine to accomplish these tasks.

When you first start the app, you are asked to create a (free) account with Zosh, which simply requires you to provide an e-mail address and a password.  Once you have an account, Zosh knows who you are based on your e-mail address.  The app also creates an entry called "Zosh" in your Contacts that has the e-mail address of mydocs@zosh.com.

When you receive a PDF file that you need to fill out or sign, just forward the e-mail that has the PDF file to "Zosh" and in about a minute the document will appear on the main screen of the Zosh app.  Tap the document in Zosh and you will see the PDF on your screen. 

 

When you are ready to insert either text or a signature, tap the Insert button at the top right, or just tap and hold on a spot in the document.  Inserting text is very simple, just type the text that you want inserted.  There is a shortcuts button that lets you easily enter text that you have used in the past.

    

The text will then appear on the form, and you can re-size the text and move it around so that it appears on the correct line. You can even rotate the text, if necessary.

    

The app also lets you quickly insert a date in a short (12/15/09) medium (Dec. 15, 2009) or long (December 15, 2009) format.  Finally, you can easily insert a signature.  With the iPhone screen being so small, you might wonder how you can sign more than a letter or two using your finger before you hit the edge of the screen.  The app actually has an ingenious way of handling this; the screen automatically scrolls (at a speed you can adjust in settings) so that the "paper" moves under you as you are signing.  The makes it very easy to sign a name just using the tip of your finger.  When you are done, the signature is added to the document, and you can make it larger or smaller, move it to the right place and rotate it if necessary.

  

 

The signature feature of Zosh is really nice.  Unless you are an artist with a tablet connected to your computer, you may actually find it easier to sign a PDF on your iPhone with your finger using Zosh than it is to create a signature using your mouse and a drawing tool on your computer.

The Settings allow you to make your inserts blue, black, gray or red.  You can also change the default font of text with over 50 different choices, many of which are variants.  (For example, you can choose Times New Roman normal, bold, italic or bold & italic.)

When you are finished completing the form or adding a signature, hit the Transmit button at the bottom.  You can choose to send the revised document to you, or you can choose to e-mail to others which brings up a standard e-mail form for you to complete from within the app.

 

The recipient will receive a PDF file with all of the information that you added on the PDF document.

Here is a video from the developer of Zosh that shows the app in action:

I would like to see some more features in an update.  For example, it would be nice to be able to change the color and font of text after you enter it.  It would also be nice to have an undo button, although this omission is minor because if you don't like the way that you placed, sized or rotated something it is pretty easy to just change it again.  It would also be nice to have some sort of "save as" function or "copy" function for documents so that you can keep a commonly used form in the Zosh app and just copy it each time you want to add new inserts, a new signature, etc.

But even in this 1.0 version, the Zosh app works great.  It never even occurred to me before that I could use the iPhone to add text or a signature to a PDF file.  If you ever have the need to fill out or sign a PDF form while you are out of the office, this app is perfect.  And the $2.99 price is a bargain considering that the alternative may involve figuring out a way to print out, sign, and fax a document, such as finding a local Kinko's and paying whatever they charge to fax documents.

Also, while Zosh is advertised just as a way to complete a form or sign a document, you can also use this app is to add annotations to a PDF file, perhaps adding some large red text to suggest some changes on a document or using the signature feature to draw a circle or an arrow to add emphasis to a particular part of a PDF file.  This is so much easier and faster than trying to explain in an e-mail or even on the phone what needs to be changed in a document.  (Go to the fourth page of the document, now find the second paragraph, now go to the fifth word...  Yikes!)

If you are a lawyer or anyone who works with PDF documents while you are out of your office, this reasonably priced app is one that you will definitely want to add to your arsenal of iPhone tools.

Click here to get Zosh ($2.99): 

Comments

[Ron]

Interesting app.

Does anyone know of any competing apps? I'm trying to do a comparison of the types of things possible on the iPhone.

[Lawgeeknz]

I would want to know a lot more about privacy, confidentiality, privilege waiver, security etc before submitting my client's documents to a third party like this, but for pdfs where that is not an issue, this looks useful.

[Josh Kerr]

Lawgeekz with Zosh.com, you email your documents to a hosted server where they are kept separate and secure from other users. If you could lease your own company server or install a server in your office, would that negate any privacy concerns you might have?

[Steven Hubert]

Like Ron above "I would want to know a lot more about privacy, confidentiality, privilege waiver, security etc before submitting my client's documents to a third party like this". I don't understand how Ron could say "but for pdfs where that is not an issue..." PDFs are documents too, and they contain information which may be confidential. How does this app reassure the legal staff?

[Jeff responds: Steven, that comment was actually from Lawgeeknz -- the format of TypePad websites can sometimes make it confusing to see who the comment is from. Regardless, and at the risk of putting words into Lawgeeknz's mouth, I don't think that Lawgeeknz means that PDFs are never confidential, but instead that there are some PDFs that are not confidential. For example, in this blog post I didn't use as an example a real, confidential contract, but instead a non-confidential form from the U.S. Supreme Court's clerk's office. For those, I don't see any possible issue using this app. Perhaps Josh Kerr can provide some additional information on privacy for confidential documents.]