The Day Your Critical PDFs Betrayed You

The Day Your Critical PDFs Betrayed You It was 3 PM on a Tuesday when your top salesperson walked out. Two hours later, you discovered they'd encrypted every client contract PDF with a password only they knew. Your entire sales pipeline — €127,000 in pending deals — was suddenly frozen. For 17 days, your team manually recreated documents while clients got antsy. Three deals collapsed. You lost €42,000 in revenue and 120 hours of productivity. All because of a forgotten PDF password. This isn't a rare nightmare. It happens to 35% of businesses when employees leave without proper documentation . The panic is universal: that sinking feeling when you're staring at a locked PDF containing your tax filings, legal agreements, or client deliverables. You're not careless — you're human. And there's an ethical way out. The Real Cost of Being Locked Out Every hour you spend wrestling with password-protected PDFs costs your business: €1,200/day in delayed contract approvals (based on average SME r