Get any document signed

Send any document for signature — a contract, an NDA, an offer letter, a consent form — to one person or many, in any order, or sign it yourself. Everyone gets the signed PDF with a certificate of completion, and anyone can check later that the file has not been changed.

Before you start#

• Anyone who can edit documents can send documents for signature. Anyone in your organization can sign what is sent to them inside Bookmaker.
• The people you send to need only an email address. They sign from a link, on a phone or a computer, without creating an account.
• You see the requests you sent and the ones you have to sign. Owners and admins see every request in the organization.

Start a request#

Open Sign in the sidebar. Requests are grouped by what they need: Needs your signature, Waiting for others, Needs attention, Completed, Drafts and All. The page opens on the first of these that has something in it for you.

Each row says where the request stands: who it is waiting for, who declined it, or when it was completed. A request out for signature shows how long it has left, in amber in its last three days. Needs attention collects the requests you sent that someone declined, that expire within three days, or that expired in the last 30 days.

Search finds requests by title, or by the name or email of anyone on them; the number beside each group follows the search. Sort changes the order: Most urgent puts what is still in play first, nearest its expiry (or past it) at the top, then what has waited longest; Waiting longest, Recently updated and Title A–Z do what they say. Needs your signature, Waiting for others and Needs attention open most urgent first; the other groups open most recently updated first. The ⋯ menu on a row reminds whoever it is waiting for, downloads the signed PDF, copies the request's link for a colleague, duplicates it as a new draft, or voids it, without opening it.

Press N anywhere on the Sign page to start a New request. It does nothing while you are typing in a field or have a dialog open.

Choose New request. There are four ways to bring the document, or start from a template. Your three most recent drafts are listed under Pick up where you left off.

Places for the parties inside the document#

A signed agreement is usually initialled and filled in as it goes, not only signed at the end. Documents written in Bookmaker have:

• Initials on every page. Each page ends with a line for every party's initials and the page number. Turn it off under Signature blocks with Initials on every page.
• Initials lines between sections, where both parties confirm what they have read. Choose Initials line in the toolbar to add one where the cursor is. In the text it reads [[initials]].
• Fill-in lines, one per party, such as each representative's full name and position. Choose Fill-in line and type the label; in the text it reads [[fill: Full name]], or [[fill Client: Account number]] for one party only. A full name is filled in for the person automatically when they sign.

Every ready-made document and every AI draft has these. A document you write starts from an outline that has them, and one without them shows Add them.

Fill the blanks#

Ready-made documents, and AI drafts, mark what only you can supply in [square brackets]: [effective date], [your address], [amount and currency]. Under Fill the blanks, each one has a box: type the value and choose Fill to put it everywhere that blank appears. A suggested value such as [14] (days) can appear in several clauses with different meanings; choose Next to fill only the one selected in the text, one at a time. Choose a blank's name to see it in the text. Some blanks offer a choice, such as [Or: …]; fill it with the wording you want, or with nothing to remove it.

If you choose Continue while blanks are left, you are asked first: anything still in brackets is printed as it is in the document people sign.

Written and AI-drafted documents get a signature block for every party, with Signature, Name and Date lines. Add, rename or remove blocks under Signature blocks. Choose Continue when the document reads right.

Change the document before sending#

Until a request is sent, its document can still change. Choose Document in the steps at the top of the request (any step can be chosen there):

• Edit the text reopens a written, ready-made, AI-drafted or Word document in the editor. Saving makes a new PDF.
• Replace with another file puts a different PDF in its place, or a Word file, which opens as text to check first.
• Open the PDF shows the document exactly as it will be signed.

After a change you are taken to Fields to check them: fields stay where you put them, so check each one still sits on the right line. Fields on pages that no longer exist are removed, and you are told how many. A request named after its document takes the document's new title.

Once a request is sent, its document is fixed. To send a changed version, open the request, choose Duplicate as new draft, and change the copy: it keeps the text, ready to edit.

Choose who signs#

You appear as yourself and sign inside Bookmaker. Nobody emails you a link.

For a document you wrote, drafted with AI or took from the ready-made ones, the people are already listed, one per signature block and labelled with its role, such as Client. The block with your organization's name is yours; fill in the others. To change the document, choose Document at the bottom of this step, or in the steps at the top.

Place the fields#

Each person has a colour. Pick whose fields you are placing under Fields for, then drag a field onto the page or click it to add it to the page in view.

Every field except a signature, initials, date or name can be optional: clear Required. For a choice, Required applies to the whole group.

The first time you open Fields for a document with none placed, Bookmaker places them on the document's lines for you: signatures, dates, initials, full names and anything else introduced by a label and a line, such as "Position: ____". A line that names its party, such as "Initials (Client): ____", goes to the person with that role; each signature block goes to the person whose block it is. Check each field, and drag in anything else. Suggest fields runs the same search again, for lines added since.

Select a field to move it, drag its corner to resize it, nudge it with the arrow keys (hold Shift to move further), change who it belongs to, or delete it.

Review and send#

Review and send lists who signs and how many fields each has. Anything that stops the request from going out is listed under Before you send, with Fix to jump to it.

Choose Write summary to add a plain-English summary of the document for signers. They see it above the document, labelled as written by AI.

Choose Send for signature. Each signer gets their own link by email. When you are the only signer, the button is Sign now and you sign straight away.

Sign a document#

When a request needs your signature, it appears under Sign › Needs your signature. People outside your organization open the link in their email. Either way, the signing screen is the same:

To decline, open ⋯ › Decline to sign and give a reason. The request closes for everyone, and the sender is told. ⋯ › Download PDF saves a copy at any time.

Pass it to someone else#

If someone else should sign in your place — a director with the authority to, say — open ⋯ › Pass to someone else, enter their name and email, and say why. They get their own link, with a note that you passed it on; the sender is told; and your link stops asking you to sign. Anything you had filled in does not carry over.

The request page and the certificate record that you passed it on, to whom, when and why, and count only the person who signed. The option is not there when the sender turned it off, or when your place is protected by an access code.

Follow a request#

The list says who each request is waiting for. Open one to see each person's progress, in order, with when they were invited, opened it and signed. Remind emails a person again with a fresh link; their first link keeps working. The timeline lists everything that happened.

When the last person signs, everyone — signers, copy recipients and you — gets an email with the signed PDF attached. Open the request to Download signed PDF. Files signers attached are listed under Attachments, and are also in the signed PDF, after the document and before the certificate.

Names are printed as real, selectable text in the signed PDF in Latin scripts with any accents (Yoruba, Igbo, Hausa, Vietnamese), Greek, Cyrillic, and — where the server has the fonts — Chinese, Japanese and Korean. Names in scripts whose letters join or read right to left, such as Arabic, Hebrew or Hindi, are drawn as a picture of the text, so they look exactly as written; the PDF's search keywords still carry every name.

Templates#

Send the same document often — an NDA, a tenancy agreement, a consent form? Prepare it once and save it as a template: the document, every field in place, the message and the settings. Each person becomes a role, such as "Client" or "Witness", filled in each time.

Find templates under Sign › Templates. Use starts a new request with everything in place and opens on People, each row labelled with its role. Fill in who signs, check, and send. To change a template, start a request from it, change what you need, and choose Save as template › Update.

Templates belong to your organization. The person who saved one, or an owner or admin, can update or delete it. Deleting a template does not affect requests already started from it.

Send to many people at once#

To send one template to many people — the same consent form to every parent, the same policy to every employee — choose Send in bulk on the template. Each person gets their own request, with their own link and record; nobody sees anyone else.

Choose Track these requests afterwards to see the whole batch on the Sign page, with how many are completed.

Check a signed PDF#

Open /verify in Bookmaker, or the address printed on the certificate, and choose the PDF. Its fingerprint is calculated on your own device; the file is never uploaded. If the file is exactly the one produced when everyone signed, the page says who signed it and when. If even one character has changed, it says there is no match.

Read Electronic signatures and evidence for what the certificate records and why a signature made here holds up.