When Labrador’s Workiva experts talk to people about what can they do to help them the most, the answer always resoundingly is “how can you help me save time?” Given that efficiency in Workiva comes from the credo of “linking once, updating everywhere,” here are some practice tips to consider to help save you some time:
1. Use the “Place in Table” Method: For bios or headshots, don’t just “drop” them on the page. Create a table with invisible borders and place the image inside a cell. This keeps your layout locked and prevents images from “shifting” when text is added above them. (Although, with the caveat that iXBRL generations will not hide image areas cropped off in a table cell. So, don’t use the cell to crop an image if you plan to generate iXBRL).
2. Milestone Early and Often: Don’t wait for a major draft to save a version. Use the Milestone feature before any big formatting session so you can “Blackline” (i.e. compare) exactly what changed.
3. Style Guide Discipline: Spend two hours at the start of your process setting your Style Guide (H1, H2, Bodytext, Tabletext). If you manually change fonts or colors line-by-line, you will waste dozens of hours during the “polishing” phase.
4. Bulk Link Across Documents: If you have data that appears in both your 10-K and your proxy (for example, share ownership or board names), link them to the same source spreadsheet. One change to the sheet updates both documents instantly.
