7 ways to conquer 2025 planning with Jotform

The new year is nearly upon us. So that means it’s time to party, right?

Not just yet. It’s always wise to assess the year that’s passed and prepare for the year to come before popping the champagne bottle.

Year-end tasks don’t have to be difficult or stressful, though. Implementing a few time-tested measures can make the wrap-up process simple and swift, especially with the help of automation software — like Jotform.

With the right tools, that end-of-year celebration is within reach, and you’ll have peace of mind during the party knowing you’ve done your best preparing for what’s next.

Here are seven ways to get ready for whatever comes your way over the next 12 months.

1. Put the previous year to bed

It’s a safe bet that you’ve accomplished a lot this year. But we’d also wager that there’s still more to do — the end of the year can be difficult, with the holidays approaching and many colleagues out of the office. Nobody wants to have to rush to complete final tasks at the last minute, so methodically knocking items off your to-do list should be a priority as December comes to a close.

If you want to jot down and organize last-minute tasks with your team, try the to-do list table template with Jotform Tables. Enter tasks directly into the table, or distribute the linked form so teammates can submit tasks that will automatically appear on the to-do list. Share the table with colleagues and assign them tasks so everyone can be on the same page.

If you have a list of simple tasks that need to be completed quickly, create a form in Jotform’s Form Builder and add the checklist widget. Share the form with employees and colleagues, and when they check completed items off the list and submit the form, automatic notification emails will keep you up to date.

It’s easy to create multiple checklist forms and assign them to colleagues in different departments as well. If you’re using multiple checklist forms, place them in a mobile app so they’re all in one place. This only takes a few minutes with Jotorm Apps.

2. Identify and organize goals and projects

Now that your year-end tasks are organized, it’s time to start thinking big about the year to come. What do you want to accomplish? And how will you get each project to the finish line?

A custom mobile app could help you achieve your objectives. Use the Jotform Apps project tracker app template to build a mobile app in minutes. The app can host a list of goals and projects, and you can use it to track progress on any device. The app is easy to customize with your company logo and colors, multiple forms, documents, images, and more.

You can add projects to your list directly from the app using a linked form. Each project is trackable via a table that’s built into the app.

If you’d like to approve projects before they’re put in motion, set up an approval process with Jotform Workflows. Once you create an approval workflow, add the linked approval form to your mobile app, allowing you to review project submissions directly from the app for added control of your team’s path forward over the year ahead.

The project approval workflow template is another great way to review project ideas with Jotform Workflows. This template is especially useful if several stakeholders need to approve a project.

3. Survey your employees

Employee surveys are a go-to method for measuring employee satisfaction and engagement, capturing thoughts and feedback, assessing wants and needs, and more. Truly useful surveys will help you foster a positive work environment and increase employee retention.

Touching base with employees is more important than ever in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Work from home, hybrid schedules, and back-to-office policies have created new work environments that pose unique challenges to employee engagement.

It’s important to regularly take the pulse of your employees — employee dissatisfaction can affect your bottom line. According to research from Gallup, unhappy workers cost U.S. companies $1.9 trillion in lost productivity in 2023. Surveys allow employees to feel heard and offer an opportunity to gather vital feedback you can use to make changes.

Use Jotform’s employee survey form templates to establish a survey strategy and easily design custom surveys. It’s best to survey employees more than once a year, but it’s also important not to survey too often and invite survey fatigue.

Focus on surveys you feel are most important to your workplace culture, such as an employee experience survey that gathers feedback on someone’s overall work experience, from onboarding to the present.

Alternatively, create a survey from scratch with Jotform’s Form Builder. If you need some inspiration, visit the Jotform blog and find survey question ideas for multiple survey types. Keep the length of the survey in mind as you work. Jotform’s conditional logic features can help here, ensuring employees see only relevant survey questions.

4. Yearly budgeting

Although budgeting spreadsheets are often a headache to manage, Jotform Tables can simplify the entire process. Jotform Tables comes with a set of advanced features, like calculations, searches, and filters, that make setting up yearly budgets a breeze.

You can get a jumpstart on your setup with a variety of customizable budget table templates.

Take advantage of automations to streamline expense record-keeping and budget approvals. Gathering approvals manually can lead to endless back-and-forth between departments, but Jotform Workflows can expedite the process with automatic notifications and task progression.

Simply drag and drop tasks into your workflow and assign stakeholders and due dates. Once the workflow begins, stakeholders will receive automatic notifications about workflow progress.

You can also incorporate integrations into your workflow. For example, you can automatically upload a budget draft to Dropbox or Google Drive. No need to upload a copy manually.

You don’t need to manually draft multiple emails to get your expenditures approved either — Jotform Workflows will take care of approval requests for you.

5. Marketing schedule

Marketing plans need to be comprehensive, and every campaign requires multiple steps. Thankfully, you can easily outline the year’s marketing plan with Jotform Tables.

Thanks to the flexibility of Tables, you can set up social media calendars, analytics tables, PR trackers, and much, much more. You can also add your tables to your workflows and see task status at a glance.

We even have a dedicated marketing plan template that allows you to list tasks, assign staff members, set deadlines, update task status, and more. This template also includes a tab for team contact information and locked columns that only certain collaborators can edit.

You can easily customize this table to fit your needs. Add tabs with different views, like calendars, cards, reports, and more.

6. Prepare for efficient growth

Businesses need to plan for growth for the next year, and that typically means hiring new talent. But hiring and onboarding requires multiple steps and significant time.

But fortunately you can turn to Jotform Workflows to build an advanced, automated hiring and onboarding process.

With multiple available workflow elements, your custom hiring workflow can simplify the entire process. Add approval steps and assign them to the appropriate stakeholders. Incorporate conditional logic, branching, and merging for more advanced processes, add due dates, include integrations, and more.

Feel free to start out with our new hire approval process template and connect it with your company’s job application form.

Integrations make your workflows even more robust. Let’s say a recruiter approves an applicant. Once the recruiter approves the application in the workflow, the workflow will automatically upload the applicant’s resume to Google Drive and forward it to the hiring manager.

Or maybe you want a hiring manager notified via direct message rather than email. Just add the Slack integration to your workflow, and the workflow will automatically send the manager a Slack message at the designated time in the flow.

7. Bolster your tech stack

You can always make your workplace more efficient. Automating tasks is the way to do it. Automations streamline entire processes and allow businesses to thrive, especially since tedious, manual tasks take people away from the work that truly matters.

Integrations are an important part of the automation toolkit. Integrations allow you to connect data across multiple systems and platforms without the need to manually transfer data. Jotform boasts a variety of native integrations, from marketing and communication tools to payment processing and scheduling platforms.

Connect Jotform submission data with your favorite CRM — like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Zoho — to replace manual data entry. Or use the Mailchimp integration to automatically add newsletter subscribers from form data.

On top of that, you can seamlessly collect payments and gather donations with one of Jotform’s 40-plus payment processor integrations.

With our automation integrations, the sky is the limit. There’s practically no end to the number of Jotform automations you can use to empower your organization.

Final thoughts

As January approaches, it often feels like the year moved too quickly and you could have done more — but remember that it’s never too late to map out growth. If you plan ahead properly, you’ll have peace of mind once the end of the year rolls around again.

We’ve covered a lot of ground here, but there’s plenty more your organization can do with Jotform’s powerful tools. Feel free to read through some of our customer stories to learn about what real users are accomplishing with Jotform, and see for yourself why people love us.

Every organization needs software that upgrades with them, so why not take advantage of Jotform’s end-of-year sale? Get 60 percent off of an annual Bronze, Silver, or Gold plan, and start the new year with a bang.