Build your application pack — every document named, checked and under the limit
Pick what you are applying for, drop your PDFs and phone photos, and get each document the way the portal wants it.
Free: 3 jobs per UTC day, 25 MB per file. PDF exports include a visible Made with Bindery watermark. Pro exports clean PDFs.
Prefer the full studio? Open Application pack in the app →
A visa, job, university, rental or court application rarely wants one file. It wants a passport scan, bank statements, a CV, references or exhibits, each as its own document, named sensibly and under a size limit, and turning them away one by one wastes days. Application pack starts from a checklist for the destination and places every file you drop on it by its name: a file called “bank statement March” goes to Bank statements, one called “passport” to Passport. What it can’t place waits for you to pick. Photos taken with a phone are turned upright, cropped to the page and flattened, and set on A4 or Letter pages, several files for one document are combined, and exhibits stay separate and lettered.
Each document then gets the same one-pass fix as Upload-ready: printing and copying restrictions removed, fillable fields flattened, scripts and attachments taken out, scanned pages given searchable text where the checklist asks and the free OCR allowance covers them, and the file fitted under the limit you set. You get a ZIP of files named the portal’s way, such as Doe_Jane_Passport.pdf, or one combined PDF with a contents page and a bookmark per document, plus a checklist of what is ready, missing or needs you. It all runs in your browser tab, and nothing is uploaded.
How it works
- Open Application pack and pick what you are applying for — visa, job, university, rental, court or your own list
- Drop your PDFs and photos, check where each one landed, and set your name and the portal’s size limit
- Build the pack, then download the ZIP or the combined PDF and its checklist
The checklists
| Applying for | Documents on the checklist | Starts as |
|---|---|---|
| Visa or immigration | Passport and photo (required), bank statements (required), proof of employment or income, travel itinerary, accommodation, travel insurance, invitation letter, cover letter | Separate files, 2 MB each |
| Job application | CV or résumé (required), cover letter, certificates and diplomas, references, portfolio | Separate files, 2 MB each, searchable text, no author metadata |
| University application | Transcripts and statement of purpose (required), degree certificates, CV, recommendation letters (each its own file), test scores, passport | Separate files, 5 MB each |
| Rental application | Photo ID and proof of income (required), bank statements, employment letter, references, credit report | One combined PDF, 10 MB |
| Court filing | Main document (required), declarations, exhibits (lettered A, B, C…), proposed order, certificate of service | Separate files numbered in filing order, 25 MB each, searchable text, identifiers flagged |
| Custom | Whatever your destination lists — add each document by name | Separate files, 5 MB each |
Every checklist can take extra documents: type a name such as “Birth certificate” and it joins the list, and files whose names contain its words are placed on it. Change the limit, the output and the file-name pattern for the portal in front of you. Switching the kind of application keeps the files you have placed where the new checklist has the same document, and places the rest again.
How files find their place
Each checklist document knows the words its files are usually called — Passport knows “passport” and “biodata”, Bank statements knows “bank” and, more weakly, “statement”, CV knows “cv”, “resume”, “curriculum” and “Lebenslauf”. File names are split into words, so “BankStatement-March.pdf”, “bank_statements_q1.pdf” and “Résumé Jane.pdf” are all read correctly, and a strong word beats a weak one: “statement_of_purpose.pdf” goes to Statement of purpose, not to Bank statements. A photo straight from a camera, such as IMG_2041.jpg, says nothing, so it is listed under “Not placed yet” with a menu of the checklist’s documents. Every placed file has the same menu, and arrows to change the order of the files that make one document.
What happens to each document
- Its files become one PDF. PDF pages are copied as they are. Photos are turned the way the camera held them, cropped to the page and flattened where a document is found in the picture (the same detection the phone scanner uses; untick “Straighten photos of documents” to keep them whole — the Photo slot never is), reduced to at most 2640 pixels on the long side (about 240 DPI across an A4 or Letter page) and centred on an A4 or Letter page turned to suit them. Documents marked “each file its own”, such as exhibits and recommendation letters, become one PDF per file.
- It gets Upload-ready’s one-pass fix with the checklist’s rules: restrictions removed, fillable fields flattened, scripts, launch actions and attachments taken out, author metadata removed where the checklist says so, and scanned pages given an invisible searchable text layer where the checklist asks for one and today’s OCR allowance covers them.
- It is fitted under the limit with the same search Compress uses: the best quality whose real size is at or under it.
- It is checked again, and anything still failing is listed under “needs you” in the checklist.
A document with a file that needs its password to open is left out and listed, so the rest of the pack is still built — open that file in Upload-ready, type the password, and add the result.
File names portals accept
Portals trip over spaces, accents and symbols in file names, so every name is built from letters, digits, hyphens and underscores only. The pattern uses {first}, {last}, {doc}, {n} for the filing order (01, 02…) and {date} for today’s date, and any text around them stays: “{last}_{first}_{doc}” gives Doe_Jane_Passport.pdf, “{n}_{doc}” gives 03_Exhibit_B.pdf, “Application {date} {doc}” gives Application_2026-09-25_CV.pdf. Accents are folded (José becomes Jose), and a name written in a script file systems mangle is left out rather than garbled. Your first and last names are filled in from My details if you have saved them. Two documents never end up with the same name.
One combined PDF
Some destinations want everything in one file — letting agents usually do. With “One combined PDF”, the documents are joined in checklist order behind a contents page that lists each one with its page numbers, every document gets a bookmark, and the whole file is fitted under the limit for the PDF. The checklist downloads next to it.
Court bundle
When the court checklist makes one combined PDF, the Court bundle option builds an electronic bundle set up the way court e-bundle guidance usually asks; check your court’s practice direction, because Bindery does not know your court’s rules and cannot promise acceptance.
- An index first. Every document is listed with its bundle page range, and each entry is a live link to its first page. Documents go in checklist order — main document, declarations, exhibits, proposed order, certificate of service, then any you add — and the arrows order the files within each document.
- Bundle page numbers on every page, the index included and numbered first, in the bottom-right margin: “Page 1 of 240”, or with a prefix such as A, “A1”. In a single-file bundle they are the page numbers your PDF viewer shows, and the index and the bookmarks quote the same numbers.
- A bookmark for every document with its range, such as “Witness statement of J. Smith (pp. 12–30)”.
- Searchable text: pages without text are recognised while today’s OCR allowance covers them, as in Upload-ready; pages beyond it are listed so you can run OCR on them.
- Image resolution: pages whose images are above 300 dpi are reported, and the bundle’s pictures can be re-encoded at up to about 300 dpi with the engine Compress uses — pictures only, never text, though every picture in the bundle is re-encoded, not just the flagged ones.
- Opening view: the file is set to open on page 1 at 100% with the bookmarks showing, in viewers that follow a PDF’s opening settings.
- Size: a 36 MB preset (a common UK court email limit) and a 35 MB per-file preset (CM/ECF limits differ by court), or your own figure. Over it, “Split into volumes” cuts the bundle with Split under a size: the numbering runs on, so volume 2 starts where volume 1 stopped, and each volume opens with an index of the documents it holds, linked to their first pages.
- Hidden content: Leak Check’s byte-level checks — earlier saved versions, orphaned objects, and carriers such as attachments, scripts and metadata — run on the file you download and are reported before you download it.
Building a pack in the browser versus uploading
| Application pack | Bindery | Upload-based tools |
|---|---|---|
| Where the file is processed | In your browser tab, on your device | Uploaded to the service’s servers |
| Your documents | Passports, bank statements and references stay on your device | Uploaded to a service before the portal ever sees them |
| Checklist and naming | Placed by name, named the portal’s way, checked again | Usually one file at a time, named by hand |
| What exists afterwards | The original and the new file, both on your device | A server copy until the retention window ends |
| Works offline | Yes, once the app has loaded | No |
Questions people ask
Will the portal accept my documents?
Bindery can’t promise that. The checklists and limits are starting points, not any portal’s official rules, so set the limit your portal states and add the documents it lists. Every document is checked again after the fix, and the checklist that comes with the pack says what is ready, what is missing and what still needs you.
Can I use photos of documents taken with my phone?
Yes. JPG, PNG and WebP photos are turned the way the camera held them, reduced to about 240 DPI and centred on A4 or Letter pages, so a bank statement photographed page by page becomes one PDF. A photo on the Photo slot of a visa pack stays the image it is, renamed, because portals usually want the photo as a picture — check it against their photo specification.
Are my documents uploaded?
No. Placing, converting, checking, fixing, compressing and packing all happen in your browser tab. Passports, bank statements and references never leave your device, and there is no server copy to delete.
Does it work for any country’s visa?
The visa checklist is a common starting point — passport, photo, bank statements, employment, itinerary, accommodation, insurance, invitation and cover letter — not any consulate’s official list. Add the documents your application lists, remove the ones it does not need by leaving them empty, and set the per-file limit it states. Only documents marked required count as missing.
What does the free plan include?
Building a pack is one of your 3 free jobs a day, however many documents it holds, and files can be up to 25 MB each. Scanned pages count toward the 5 free OCR pages a day. Free PDFs carry a small “Made with Bindery” line on every page, including the contents page; photos handed over as images are not branded. Pro removes the caps and the line.
Can I add documents the checklist does not have?
Yes. Type a name under the checklist — “Birth certificate”, “Marriage certificate”, “Portfolio” — and press “Add to the checklist”. It becomes a document like any other: files whose names contain its words are placed on it, and it is named with the same pattern.
What if a document is still over the limit?
The pack is still built and the checklist says which document is over and by how much. The usual fixes are to drop pages the portal did not ask for, or to split a long statement into months if the portal accepts several files. A photo handed over as an image is never recompressed, so resize it to the portal’s photo specification.
Can it build a court bundle with an index and page numbers?
Yes. With the court checklist making one combined PDF, choose Court bundle: the index comes first with a live link to each document, every page gets its bundle number in the bottom-right margin, every document gets a bookmark with its page range, and the finished file is checked for searchable text, image resolution, size and hidden content before you download it. It is set up the way court e-bundle guidance usually asks; check your court’s practice direction.