Contracts Overview

Contracts are documents generated from templates (or written from scratch), filled with real data, and sent to signers. Once all parties sign, the contract is complete.

Contract Lifecycle

Each signer also has a status: Pending or Signed. Cancelling a contract marks any pending signers Declined.

Every contract has a signing deadline, 30 days after creation by default (you can set 1 to 365 days). After it passes, signing links stop working and show an expired message. A scheduled job may later mark the contract Expired; until it does, the contract shows as Sent. The deadline can't be changed, so create and send a new contract if you still need signatures.

Creating a Contract

Start from a template, a blank page or an uploaded Word document, fill in your values, add signers, and create it as a draft. Sending it costs $0.25 from your balance. The step-by-step wizard is in Creating Contracts.

Signing Workflow

All signers are notified at the same time and may sign in any order.

Signers are numbered in the order you add them (signing_order in the API). The order is for display only and doesn't gate anything. Signer 2 can complete before signer 1 has opened their email, and the contract completes once everyone has signed, whatever sequence they signed in.

Enforced sequential signing is not built yet. If your workflow depends on one party signing before another sees the document, send the contracts separately.

Each signer gets their own emailed link, needs no account, and draws their signature in the browser on desktop or mobile. See Signing Process for exactly what they see.

Managing a Contract

From the contract's page in your dashboard:

• Send for Signature: emails every signer and charges $0.25
• Resend: emails the signers who haven't signed yet and charges another $0.25. Signers who already signed keep their signature. A contract past its signing deadline can't be resent.
• Cancel Contract (sent contracts): stops signing. Signing links stop working. Signers aren't emailed about it.
• Delete Contract (drafts only): removes it permanently
• Download PDF: available once everyone has signed

The page updates live as signers open and sign, and the Activity list shows every event.

Under each signer who hasn't signed yet, the page shows whether their signing request email was delivered. If it bounced, the reason is shown. A sent contract's signers can't be edited, so if the address is wrong, cancel the contract and create a new one. The Emails list shows every email sent about the contract, including the signed copies, and whether each one was delivered. "Delivered" means the recipient's mail server accepted it. It may still have gone to their spam folder.

Test Mode

Tick Send as a test when creating a contract to rehearse the whole flow without being charged or needing a balance. The signing requests come to you instead of the signers, and the completed PDF goes to your organization's billing email (or its owner) rather than to the signers. The document is stamped TEST and isn't sealed. Test contracts show a Test badge in your dashboard.

After Completion

When the last signer signs, the contract becomes Signed and the final PDF, with your branding and a completion seal, is emailed to every signer and to your organization. Details, including how anyone can verify the PDF, are in Signing Process.

Next Steps

• Creating Contracts - Step-by-step creation guide
• Signing Process - How signing works