The first document is the one that decides whether your organisation adopts electronic signature or quietly goes back to printing. Get it right and the second one takes four minutes. Get it wrong — the wrong file, a signer who cannot open the link, a field in the wrong place — and everyone concludes the old way was faster.
So pick an easy one to start. Not the shareholder agreement. A two-page service contract, an NDA, a supplier form, something where a mistake costs you an apology rather than a renegotiation.
Before you upload: get the file right
Three checks, and they take a minute.
It is final. Not “final pending one clause”. Once signing starts, changing the document means starting over, and every signer who already signed has to sign again. That is not a limitation, it is the point: the whole value is that the file cannot drift after someone agreed to it.
It is a PDF. Export from Word rather than uploading the .docx. Word files reflow depending on the fonts installed on the reader’s machine, which means the paragraph you placed a signature field next to may not be there when your signer opens it.
It is readable on a phone. Open it on your own phone before you send it. If you have to pinch and zoom to read clause 4, so will your signer, and phones are where most people sign.
Step 1: Upload and name it
Upload the PDF and give the envelope a name your signer will recognise in an inbox. “Contract” is useless. “Service agreement — Diallo & Fils — March 2026” tells them what it is before they open anything, and it is what they will search for in two years.
Step 2: Add the signers
List everyone who has to sign, with the email address or phone number you actually reach them on. Each person gets their own link.
Decide whether order matters. If your director has to sign before the document goes to the client, set the order. If two people can sign in any sequence, leave it open and save yourself a day.
Two things people get wrong here. A shared inbox is a bad signer address, because “who signed” then means “somebody at that company”. And a person who only needs to see the finished document is not a signer, they are a copy recipient. Adding them as a signer means the document waits for someone who has nothing to agree to.
Step 3: Place the fields
Drag the fields onto the pages where they belong: a signature box, a date, initials on a page you want individually acknowledged, a text box for a client reference.
Two habits worth forming immediately. Place a field for every person on every page they need to touch — an unassigned box is the most common cause of a stalled document, because the signer finishes, submits, and is told something is missing. And mark fields as required only when they truly are. Optional fields that are actually required turn into phone calls.
Step 4: Choose how signers prove who they are
This is the step most people skip, and it is the one that decides how much your signature is worth if it is ever challenged.
At the lowest setting, the proof is that the signer received a link at their address. That is genuinely enough for routine internal paperwork.
Turn on an SMS code and the signer has to type back a one-time code sent to their phone. Now the record shows control of both an email address and a phone number, which is a much harder thing to fake. For anything commercial, this is the setting to use.
Where a document warrants it, you can also require the signer to upload a supporting document, an ID or a mandate, which is attached to the record.
The rule of thumb: match the proof to what it would cost you to lose the argument.
Step 5: Send, then leave it alone
Send it, and resist the urge to follow up within the hour. Most documents are signed the same day.
You can see where each signer stands. If someone has not opened the link after a couple of days, a reminder is one click and does not require you to write a new email.
What to do when it stalls
The link never arrived. Check the address for a typo first, then spam. Reissuing to a corrected address is normal and takes seconds.
The signer says it will not open. Almost always a very old browser or a nearly full phone. The signing page runs in a browser with nothing to install, so the fix is usually to open the link in a different browser.
The signer wants a change. Cancel the envelope, fix the document, resend. Do not talk anyone into signing “and we will amend it after”. An amendment to a sealed document is a second document, and now you have two things to keep track of instead of one.
The signer refuses to sign electronically. They are allowed to. Print it, sign it on paper, and pick this fight another day. A person forced through an unfamiliar process against their will is not a story that helps you roll this out.
When it is done
The sealed PDF lands with everyone, with the certificate page attached listing every signer, every timestamp and the document fingerprint. File it where you file contracts. It is a normal PDF and it does not need special software to read.
Then send the second document. That is the one where the time saving actually shows up.
The e-signature product page shows the sender’s screen, and pricing covers what a plan includes.