Until now, getting something signed meant leaving InfoLobby. You exported the contract, uploaded it somewhere else, chased the signature, downloaded the result, and pasted it back onto the record. The agreement lived in one system and the work lived in another.
That round trip is gone.
What's new
- Signature fields. A new field type that signs a rich text document on the same record. The signer types their name, confirms they intend it as their signature, and the field locks. From then on the record holds a permanent account of who signed, when, and exactly what the document said at that moment.
- Signature web forms. A third kind of web form, alongside create and edit forms. Send one record's document out for signing with a private link. The signer reads the agreement, signs or declines, and changes nothing you did not open to them.
- Certificates of completion. A printable PDF of the signed document plus the full audit trail, available to you from the record and to the signer from their link.
Built to hold up
Signatures are designed to meet the US ESIGN Act and UETA, the laws that make an electronic signature as binding as a handwritten one. That takes more than a name in a text box:
- Intent and consent are recorded, not assumed. The signer affirms both before the name box will accept anything, and the exact wording they agreed to is stored on the record. Neither box is ever ticked for them.
- The time comes from our servers, not the signer's device, so a signature cannot be backdated by changing a computer's clock. Their own local time is kept too, marked as reported rather than verified.
- The document is retained, not just fingerprinted. A fingerprint proves a document changed; it cannot show what was signed. InfoLobby keeps a complete copy at the moment of signing, so you can produce the signed agreement years later.
- Edits are loud. You can still edit a document after it is signed. Nothing is silently overwritten: the signature immediately shows a red warning on the record, and the copy taken at signing is still there.
- Declining is recorded too. A refusal is as final as a signature, with a reason if one is given, so a record shows the difference between "nobody has signed yet" and "this was refused on 12 March".
What the signer sees
The document, at the top of the page and at full height, with no form furniture in front of it. Someone sent a link to sign should see the agreement, not a form with the agreement somewhere inside it.
Below it, the two confirmations and the name box, then Sign and Decline to sign. Everything else you put on the form sits in between, read-only, so they have the context without being able to rewrite it.
Collect what you need along with the signature
A signature is often not the only thing you need back. The signer's job title, a PO number, the delivery address they want it sent to.
Tick those fields onto the form and unlock the ones you want filled in. Everything starts read-only, so a field is writable only if you say so, and the document being signed can never be unlocked at all.
Two parties, two links
A table can hold as many signature fields as you need, all signing the same document. A two-party contract typically has a Client Signature and a Contractor Signature, signed independently in any order.
Each gets its own signature form, so the link you send one party cannot be used to sign for the other, and each of them downloads their own certificate.
Mail the signed copy automatically
The certificate is not something you have to remember to send. An automation can do it: trigger on the signature field changing, and attach the certificate straight from the Send Email step by picking the signature field.
It is generated at the moment it goes out, which matters more than it sounds. The copy the signer receives reports whether the document has been edited since they signed it. A PDF frozen at signing could never tell them that.
Where it fits
The point is that the signature is a field. It sits on the record beside the amount, the status, and the due date, which means everything else InfoLobby does still applies: an automation can mail the signing link when a quote reaches "Ready to sign", another can start the job when the signature lands, and a view can show you everything still waiting on one.
Read up on it in Signature Fields, or start by adding a Text Area field set to HTML Rich Text and a Signature field beside it.