How to get a contract signed online in five steps

Getting a contract signed used to mean printing, signing, scanning and chasing. Online signing removes the paper but not the decisions: which file, who signs, in what order, how sure you need to be that the right person clicked, and what you keep afterwards. Make those decisions once, in the right order, and a two party contract can be signed within the hour. This is general information, not legal advice, and signing rules differ by jurisdiction and document type.

Step 1: prepare the PDF

Finish the contract before you upload it. A sent signing request cannot be edited, so any change after sending means withdrawing it and starting again.

Export one PDF. The upload limit is 25 MB, and two kinds of file are refused: a PDF with rotated pages, which is rejected with the page number so you can fix it, and a password protected PDF, which cannot be read. One request carries one PDF, so if a schedule or annexure has to be signed too, merge it into the same file first.

The NDA signing example starts from a two page mutual NDA between two fictional companies, Sable Robotics and Northwind Components. Everything that follows is placed on those two pages: an initials spot on page 1 and a signature block on page 2 for each company.

Step 2: place the fields

Fields are where each signer acts. There are ten types: signature, initials, date signed, name, email, title, company, text, checkbox and signature block. A request cannot be sent until every signer has at least one signature, initials or signature block field; a date field alone does not count.

Three habits make a contract stronger.

Use a signature block for companies. A block prints a role heading above up to four lines, Name, Title, Company and Date. On the NDA, each block reads FOR SABLE ROBOTICS PTY LTD or the Northwind equivalent, the signer types their title and company, and the Date line is stamped from the moment they submit. Nobody types a date.

Initial the pages that get argued about. The sales contract signing example puts the buyer’s initials on pages 1, 2 and 3, where the price, the delivery window and the warranty sit, before the execution blocks on page 4. One drawn signature fills every initials spot and the block at once.

Do not rely on the checkbox as a tick. In the signer’s view a checkbox is a small box the signer types into, and the finished PDF prints an X whenever it holds any value. It records a mark, not a yes or no.

Put fixed values in the PDF, not in fields. The sender cannot pre-type a value into any field; every text field is filled by the signer it belongs to. So the price, the start date and the parties’ details belong in the document before you upload it. Use text fields only for what the other party genuinely supplies, such as their purchase order number or a licence number, and mark a field required when the contract should not complete without it.

Step 3: add signers and set the order

Add each party’s name and email, up to 25 recipients and 500 fields in total. Then decide on order with the Sign in order switch.

With order on, only the first signer is invited when you send, and each later signer is invited once the one before them finishes; nobody can sign out of turn. On the NDA, Sable signs first and Northwind’s invitation is only generated after Sable’s signature lands, so Northwind signs a page already carrying the other side’s block.

With order off, everyone is invited at once. The service agreement signing example uses that for a managed IT contract with a fixed start date, where neither party needs to wait for the other, and both invitations went out in the same minute.

One caution: set the switch deliberately. On a new request the stored setting and what the prepare screen first shows can disagree until you touch it.

Step 4: choose how each signer proves who they are

Each signer gets one of three checks. Email link means holding the inbox is enough. Access code means you set a code of at least four characters and share it yourself, by phone or message, and it is never sent in the email. Emailed one time code means a six digit code is sent when the signer opens the link, lasts ten minutes and works once.

Wrong answers are limited: five failed attempts lock that signer out for fifteen minutes. Both NDA signers used the emailed code, so a forwarded invitation alone would not open the contract. The choice is covered in depth in how to verify a signer’s identity.

Step 5: send, and keep the signed copy

Give the request a title and a short message of up to 2,000 characters. Keep anything sensitive out of the title, because the title and message are shown before any identity check. Each signer then receives an invitation showing the document title, the address they are signing as and the expiry date, with a Review and sign button.

Every request expires 30 days after it was created, and that period cannot be changed. If an invitation goes missing, resend it: that issues a fresh link and the old one stops working.

On the signer’s side, consent to sign electronically is a required step, the signature can be drawn or typed, and one signature fills every spot assigned to them. On a phone narrower than 560 pixels the page becomes read only and typed fields move to a panel above it.

When the last signer finishes, the PDF is certified so that any later change invalidates it, and the completion email carries the certified file to every signer and to you. A separate certificate of completion lists each signer’s identity check, signing time, IP address, consent and document hash, over a hash chained event log. The table below lays out the whole sequence, including what the system does at each step.

Common mistakes

Sending a draft. Sent requests cannot be edited. Proofread first.

No field for one of the signers. The request will not send, which is better than it arriving incomplete.

A sensitive title. It is visible before the identity check.

Initials on every page by habit. Initial the pages that carry the terms people dispute, and let the certification protect the rest.

Assuming the law is the same everywhere. Australia’s Electronic Transactions Act 1999 sets out, for Commonwealth laws, when an electronic method meets a signature requirement: it identifies the person, shows their intention, is appropriately reliable, and the other party consents. State Acts and document specific rules sit alongside it. Overseas counterparts frame it differently: the US ESIGN Act defines an electronic signature as a sound, symbol or process adopted with intent to sign, the UK’s Electronic Communications Act makes electronic signatures admissible on questions of authenticity and integrity, and eIDAS sets four requirements for an advanced signature, including that later changes to the data are detectable. The country by country picture is in electronic signature laws by country. A contract can also record, in its own terms, that both parties consent to signing electronically and which evidence they will accept, which is the job of an electronic signature clause.

Build it

The send a PDF for signature page shows exactly what the invitation says and what happens while you wait, and the tutorial on sending a PDF for e-signature walks through the editor screen by screen. Every fact above comes from the signing flow as built: ten field types, up to 25 recipients, three identity checks, a Sign in order switch, a fixed 30 day expiry, a certified PDF emailed to everyone and a separate certificate of completion. Contracts written in the document builder can skip the upload through send a document for signature, and a one signer contract, such as the contractor agreement signing example, follows the same steps with a single recipient. What a request actually is, as a unit of work, is explained in what an envelope is.