E signature for quotes

Capture the entity, not just the person

Sales documents go wrong when the person who signed turns out to have been acting for a subsidiary, a franchise or themselves. Turn on the Company and Title lines of the signature block and the signer fills both in as they go. They are pre-labelled, they sit on their own rules under the signature, and a long company name shrinks to fit rather than running past its box.

Ask for their reference while you have their attention

A text field labelled Purchase order number, placed next to the acceptance line, costs the buyer four seconds and saves your finance team a fortnight of chasing. Mark it optional if the number does not exist yet, since a required field they cannot fill in stops them accepting the quote entirely, which is the worst possible outcome for a box about paperwork.

There is no approver role

It is worth being clear about this rather than implying an approval workflow that does not exist. Everybody you add to an envelope is a signer, with a signature field of their own. If a quote needs a manager to countersign above a threshold, model it as a second signer with a higher order number and their own signature block, so the document itself carries the evidence of the approval rather than a workflow state somewhere.

When the price changes

A sent envelope cannot be edited, which is exactly what you want on a priced document. The correct move is Withdraw with a reason, which kills the outstanding link and emails everyone still waiting a note explaining why, then a fresh envelope with the corrected schedule. Writing something plain in the reason box, such as replaced by a revised quotation, is what stops the buyer thinking the deal collapsed.

Following up without pestering

The status page separates a quote that was never opened from one that was read and left. Viewed only appears once the buyer has actually reached the pages, so it is a real signal rather than an email tracking pixel. For the first kind, Resend puts a fresh link in front of them and retires the old one. For the second kind, the answer is a phone call, and the record tells you which day to make it.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Upload the quote or proposal PDF

   The acceptance page is usually the last one. That is where the block and any reference fields belong.

2. Step 2

   Block with Company and Title, plus a reference field

   Turn on the Company and Title lines so the buying entity is on the page, and add an optional text field for their order number.

3. Step 3

   Send, watch, and reissue rather than edit

   If anything about the price changes, withdraw with a reason and send the corrected version as a new envelope.

The full walkthrough with screenshots is in the guide Send a PDF for e-signature.

Limits worth knowing

• There is no approver role and no copy-only recipient. Everybody on an envelope signs.
• A sent quote cannot be edited. Corrections mean withdrawing and reissuing.
• Nothing connects to a pipeline or a deal record. The envelope list is the only place these are tracked.
• Requests expire thirty days after the envelope was created, so a quote left open across a slow quarter simply lapses.

Questions people ask

Related pages