Signature request expiry

The clock starts at creation

An expiry date is written onto the envelope the moment it is created, thirty days out, before you have uploaded anything or added a single recipient. So the countdown covers the time the draft spent sitting on your list as well as the time it spent with the signers. An envelope prepared on the first and sent on the twentieth has ten days of signing life, not thirty.

Each link inherits it

When a recipient is invited, their link is given a deadline copied from the envelope. On an envelope with a signing order this is why a late signer gets a shorter window: their invitation only goes out once the person before them finished, but the deadline is the envelope's, not theirs. The invitation email prints that date in its detail panel, so nobody has to guess.

The nightly sweep

A scheduled job runs once a day, twenty minutes after midnight UTC. It looks for envelopes that are out for signature and past their date, marks every recipient who has not signed or declined as expired, moves the envelope to expired, and appends an expired event to the audit trail carrying the moment of the sweep. People who had already signed are left exactly as they were.

What an expired link shows

A clear message that the signing request has expired, on the same outcome card the signer would see for any other dead end. The check also happens live: if a signer opens a link after the deadline but before the sweep has run, their recipient row is retired on the spot and they are told the same thing. There is no window where a stale link still opens a document.

Thirty days is what you get

There is no field in the app for choosing a different expiry. The API can be told a date, but nothing in the interface ever sends one, so in practice every envelope lives thirty days. If a shorter deadline matters to you, put it in the message when you create the envelope and withdraw the request yourself when that date passes, which also has the advantage of telling the signers why.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Create the envelope when you are ready to send it

   The thirty days begins at creation, so a draft left sitting on the list is eating into the signing window.

2. Step 2

   Check the date in the invitation

   The email prints the expiry in its detail panel, which is the date the signer is working to.

3. Step 3

   Chase or withdraw before it lapses

   Resend to nudge, or withdraw with a reason if the deal has moved on. Letting it expire silently tells nobody anything.

Limits worth knowing

• Thirty days, fixed. There is no setting in the app to shorten or extend it.
• The countdown starts when the envelope is created, not when it is sent.
• Resending gives a fresh link but does not extend the envelope's deadline.
• An expired envelope cannot be revived. Sending again means creating a new one.

Questions people ask

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