For many of us, filling in government forms is a necessary, yet loathsome, part of doing business. In some cases, like the ATO’s e-tax, technology has been used to make the process simpler. In many other cases, getting business done still requires a pen and paper or, in my case, papers, as even the simplest mistake means having to start all over again.

Chris Carpenter (you may remember him from a previous stoy we did on Widgely) thinks he has a solution to this issue and I tend to agree.

“The power of the Internet is being embraced for things as diverse as social networking, dating and playing games, so why not use it to make a boring task like filling in forms, that little bit better?” he said, “I was getting frustrated with having to handwrite onto printed forms before faxing them off - not only is it inconvenient but when your handwriting looks like mine, you really wish for another solution.”

That solution? Recreate the most common ASIC forms on a website where members can save their progress, fix mistakes in seconds and download the completed form whenever they are ready.

The website, Australian Business Forms provides subscriptions if you need to complete multiple forms a month, but also individual purchases for just a few dollars each.

Chris explained a little more about his plans - “I wanted to offer something for just a couple of dollars - something that could save people an hour or more of their time. There’s a large and growing number of entrepeneurs and small companies in Australia, but the majority of ASIC forms still need to be handwritten, some of which are in excess of 11 pages. We are offering something that’s easy and cheap … but much, much better.” he said.

Membership at the site is free and allows people to fill in forms, save their progress and see how the system works. Members don’t need to pay anything until they want to download the form for submission. Chris explains that “… we wanted it to be easy for people to try out our system.”

Compared to similar sites, like Incorporator, which focus solely on automating forms for forming a company and charge $150 in the process, Australian Business Forms is a bargain.

What makes the technology even more interesting is that are a whole bunch of other applications for it outside of ASIC. Already I can think of all the Insurance and Banking forms I’ve had to fill in lately. I asked Chris about whether or not he’d be moving into those markets and he said that solutions to those and other use cases “will actually be released in a different application - based on the same tech, but not just limited to business forms. Again, this will be a commercial application though this time with a “freemium”/subscription payment model.”

Devlopment for this ”different application” is underway and on schedule to launch in the middle of October.

Could this finally be the end of annoying forms?

Here’s hoping.