Poornima G
When working within Salesforce, documents such as invoices, quotes, contracts, and reports are essential for business operations. If your customer data is stored in the CRM or in an external cloud storage, you likely want to avoid the tedious process of copying and pasting data or switching between tabs. And then reformatting the document into PDFs. Honestly, nobody has time for that.
So, how do you put an end to this?
The answer is Salesforce PDF generation.
What is Salesforce PDF Generation?
This solution allows you to create polished, ready-to-send PDFs right inside your CRM. When a grocery delivery can be done in minutes, how can your business take hours or days to get an invoice ready?
Why You Need a Salesforce PDF Generation?
It’s not just about avoiding the manual hassle of exporting and formatting documents into PDFs within Salesforce. Sure, the manual route comes with obvious drawbacks like:
- Errors in formatting or data entry.
- Mismatched or outdated data.
- Time-consuming back-and-forth between tabs.
But there’s more to it. Beyond the inefficiency, you also need to consider:
Scalability – as your business grows, manually generating documents doesn’t keep up.
- Consistency – brand compliance and standardized Salesforce PDF templates are hard to maintain manually.
- Security – manual downloads and uploads increase the risk of data leaks.
- User experience – both employees and customers expect quick, professional, ready-to-use PDFs.
Considering these limitations, the absence of Salesforce PDF generation can hold your business back. By implementing a PDF generation solution directly within your CRM, you’ll eliminate inefficiencies and gain a competitive edge over businesses that still rely on manual processes.
Master Document Generation in Salesforce
How to Generate a PDF in Salesforce?
There are multiple ways to generate a PDF in Salesforce, and the right choice really depends on your skills, implementation time, and budget. Typically, businesses choose from three main approaches, each of which comes with its own strengths, depending on the level of complexity, flexibility, and control your business requires.
Using Salesforce Native Features
Salesforce provides basic PDF generation capabilities through Visualforce pages with the renderAs=”pdf” attribute. This allows you to quickly turn Salesforce data into a PDF without extra tools. For example, you could generate a simple Salesforce quote and invoice PDF from an Opportunity record.
However, Salesforce native features lack advanced automation, complex document workflows, and integration with approval or e-signing processes.
Custom Development
If your requirements go beyond the basics, custom development unlocks more flexibility. Developers can use Apex, Visualforce, or Lightning Web Components (LWC) to design tailored solutions.
Some common methods include:
- Generate PDF in Salesforce with Apex: Ideal for structured, data-heavy documents.
- Generate PDF within Lightning Experience: Using LWC and libraries like jsPDF for modern interfaces.
- Generating a PDF on Button Click in Salesforce LWC: User-friendly, allowing instant PDFs at the click of a button.
Salesforce PDF Generation Limits
While custom solutions in Salesforce give you flexibility, they also come with certain limitations you need to keep in mind:
- Response Size: The maximum size of a Visualforce page response before PDF rendering is limited to 15 MB (a standard limit for all Visualforce requests).
- File Size: The generated PDF itself cannot exceed 60 MB.
These restrictions make it difficult to handle large datasets, detailed reports, or design-heavy documents. That’s where many businesses hit a wall, despite investing time and effort into building custom solutions.
Third-Party Apps
For businesses that want advanced features without heavy coding, the Salesforce AppExchange offers a variety of PDF generation apps. These apps provide:
- Pre-built or Custom Salesforce PDF templates.
- Brand-compliant and customizable layouts.
- Integration with approval processes and e-signatures.
- Automated document generation triggered by workflows.
XfilesPro DocGen: See How Easy it is to Generate PDF in Salesforce
End-to-End Salesforce PDF Generation with XfilesPro DocGen
XfilesPro DocGen helps you generate PDFs in Salesforce by automating the entire document lifecycle, from creation and data population to review, approval, and e-signature.
Here’s what our DocGen solution brings to your business:
Salesforce PDF Template Builder
You can pick from existing PDF templates or build one from scratch to fit your business requirements.
Our prebuilt templates come in two options:
- Industry-based templates: Finance, Manufacturing, Insurance, and more.
- Department-based templates: Sales, Marketing, Procurement, etc.
What’s in it for your business:
Ensure brand consistency across all customer-facing documents.
50% faster document preparation.
Template-Driven PDF Generation in Salesforce
Smart Data Population with OCR
Once you’ve selected a template for a document (say, a quote), you just need to select the fields from which data should be populated. This works if your data resides in Salesforce.
If your document is in external cloud storage or is a written/typed file, you can upload it to our OCR solution. This will extract the data and automatically fill in the relevant fields, which can then be used to generate a PDF in Salesforce.
Automate Data Extraction with Ease
What’s in it for your business:
99% accuracy in data population.
Eliminate manual data entry errors
In Built Workflow
With the DocGen application, you can route your PDFs for review and approval directly within Salesforce. Documents can be shared internally or externally, depending on whether approval is needed from partners, customers, or team members.
You can also define sequencing, for example, lead → manager → head of sales to match your business process. This entire process can be set up in Salesforce without writing a single line of code.
What’s in it for your business:
Reduce approval cycles by up to 60%.
Faster adoption and reduced IT dependency.
Edit Directly in Salesforce
Since you want to generate PDFs in Salesforce, we’ve provided an editing solution that allows you to edit the document directly in the CRM and route it back for approval. The best part is that we provide version control, so you can always track edits or revert to previous versions if needed.
What’s in it for your business:
Centralized editing report 35% fewer delays in contract finalization
Maintain accuracy and transparency with real-time edits and version control.
Seamless E-Signature Collection
Any document requiring a signature, internally or externally, can be routed for e-signature before being finalized as a PDF. Once signed, the PDF is generated in Salesforce and automatically attached to the relevant object, keeping everything aligned with your process.
What’s in it for your business:
85% improvement in performance, with 70–80% gains in efficiency.
Close deals and finalize documents twice as fast.
Conclusion
In today’s fast-paced business environment, efficiency, accuracy, and customer experience are non-negotiable. Salesforce PDF generation bridges the gap between data and documentation. The solution eliminates manual errors, saving valuable time and ensuring brand consistency across every document your business creates. Native and custom solutions work for simple needs but come with limitations.
XfilesPro DocGen unlocks end-to-end automation without heavy coding. Whether it’s invoices, quotes, or contracts, you can keep everything inside Salesforce, automate repetitive tasks, and focus on what truly matters: growing your business.
Generate PDFs in Salesforce Faster, Smarter!
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