The Best Ways To Sign Documents Electronically When On The Go
Susie Morrow
Picture this. The sun is shining, the sky is blue. You’re in your home office waiting for that contract – you know, the one that you finally got the go-ahead on. Waiting and waiting for it to come through so you can sign it and hey, ho, off you go on a great project. But that blue sky beckons, and wants you to come out and play, and maybe have a cold beer down by the river. But instead, you have to wait in for that contract to turn up so you can sign it, scan it, email it back, and then finally you’ll be able to go out and enjoy the sunshine. Life is too short for that scenario, which is why ApproveMe lets you sign documents electronically, on the go.
Hey, Ho! Let’s Go!
The freedom to roam and sign is something we take seriously at ApproveMe. This is because we are watching the way that we work change dramatically.
In a survey, 85% of millennials expressed a desire to work remotely 100% of the time, with 39% wanting to be freelancers. At the same time, mobile device access has reached a tipping point as it overtakes traditional desktop access as a means to get online.
These two variables are aligning at the same time as people are starting to look at ways of attaining a life/work balance that is real and achievable. Millennials, in particular, are placing work/life balance at the top of the “I want” list in life. So finding that golden chalice, which lets you have the freedom to live, whilst letting you build your business on the go, is an important workplace aspiration.
The Golden Chalice: Sign Documents Electronically
So back to that contract and the sunshine. What’s the point in software if it doesn’t work with your lifestyle? An e sign platform is one of those golden chalice software applications that has the potential to let you have that work / life balance. It does this by accommodating a number of features which build automation and accessibility into your business processes.
One of the most important aspects of an e sign platform is that it can encapsulate your document creation and signature workflow. This means you shouldn’t have to download other software – like apps, for example, to use it. That just adds extra steps and layers of complexity to the process, defeating the point. Also, you shouldn’t have to go off and create accounts with third party websites. All that does is annoy you, and make you have to remember additional passwords. A workable solution to allow you to sign documents electronically means that the whole has to be under one umbrella – no extra pointless pieces of software and accounts.
To sign documents, you want to have them under your control. Keeping them on your website, creating workflows and signing events directly from your website, not someone else’s. This means that the e sign platform has to be built to allow you to:
- Use your own website to do all of the electronic signing work, including:
- Create a document or contract (or better still use pre-existing templates),
- Sending out automated alerts to people involved in the signing of the document – no need to do back and forth emails to get things to happen,
- Collect audit events so you can trace what’s going on and in the event of a worse case scenario, refer back to them,
- Manage signatures from your own website – directly,
- See the status of your contracts from any device, anywhere,
- Finish the process and managing it all from your own site
ApproveMe works via a simple plug-in to your WordPress website. Once you have that plug-in installed, you are ready to create contracts, and automatically send them to recipients to sign. It is this automation that gives us the freedom to e sign documents on the move. The automation means you have only to set up the people you want to sign the contract, then set the process away. And because it’s all done from your site, it is accessible across mobile devices.
From phone to ipad
Using the ApproveMe WP Plug-in you can literally do the whole document signing process from your mobile device if you want to. It works on Android, iPhone, and iPad and you can synchronize everything with Dropbox if you want. One of the other key features of a good e sign platform is its security and compliance with standards. There is no point in automating everything and making it accessible across mobile devices, if the electronically signed document won’t stand up in court. So the e sign platform has to abide by laws like ESIGN which enforce the legality of electronic signatures. And just to make sure that your signed documents and contracts are water proof, it should also have full auditability with tamper proofing built in.
So, back to working on the go. While you’re sitting there, in the sunshine, drinking a cold beer and looking at your iPad, an alert comes in. That contract you set up using ApproveMe, has been sent out and signed, all automatically at the click of a button. You look at your alert letting you know the contract is complete, sit back, and smile, as life is good on the go.