Signing order

Off means everyone at once

With the switch off, sending emails every signer immediately. Nobody waits, nobody blocks anybody, and the envelope completes whenever the last of them happens to finish. This is right far more often than people assume. Two directors signing the same board resolution have no reason to take turns, and making them do so adds days for no benefit.

On means one wave at a time

With it on, only the lowest order number is invited when you send. As each of those people finishes, the next outstanding number is worked out and invited then. Order numbers are not required to be unique, so two people can share position one and be invited together, then a single approver at position two hears nothing until both of them are done. That is how you model a pair of parties plus a countersigner.

The order is enforced, not just scheduled

Waiting for an invitation is one thing, being unable to jump the queue is another. Every signer route checks the turn before doing anything: opening the challenge, requesting a code, verifying, fetching the document and submitting. If anybody at a lower order has not signed yet, the request is refused with a message saying it is waiting on an earlier signer. So a forwarded link, or one dug out of an old email, cannot be used out of sequence.

Each signer sees the document as it stands

Because signatures are stamped as they arrive, a sequential envelope means the second signer opens a copy that already carries the first signature. That is usually the point of ordering: the countersigner wants to see the other party has committed before they do. With the switch off, both people may open an unsigned copy at the same time, and both signatures are stamped in whatever order they arrive.

Choosing between them

Use the order when one person's decision genuinely depends on another's, or when someone senior should not be bothered until the groundwork is done. Turn it off when the parties are peers. The cost of a wrong choice is asymmetric: an unnecessary order just makes things slow, while a missing one can put a director's signature on a document before the person it commits has agreed to it.

How it works, in three steps

1. Step 1

   Number the recipients

   Each card has an Order box. Give the same number to people who should be invited together, and higher numbers to those who come after.

2. Step 2

   Set the switch to match

   Sign in order sits under the field palette. Off invites everybody now; on invites the first number now and the rest in turn.

3. Step 3

   Confirm on the send dialog

   The confirmation tells you which behaviour you are about to get, so a wrong switch is caught before anything leaves.

Limits worth knowing

• The order is set by numbers on the recipient cards, not by dragging the list around.
• The switch applies to the whole envelope. You cannot make two signers sequential and a third parallel.
• Order numbers start at 1. A value below that is raised to 1 when saved.
• A declined signature stops the envelope, so nobody further down the order is ever invited.

Questions people ask

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