How to Send a Document for Signature

The simple email method

If you only need a quick signature from someone you trust, you can email a PDF and ask them to sign it with Preview, the Files app or Acrobat Reader and send it back. You will not get a formal record of when and how it was signed.

Need a document first?

eSignSimple offers contract templates, such as NDAs and freelance agreements, that you can fill in before sending.

What mistakes slow down signatures?

Wrong email addresses (especially a personal address when the signer checks work mail), too many required fields, no signing order when a manager must approve first, and sending a draft that still has tracked changes. Check the addresses twice, keep fields to the essentials, and use a signing order when one signature depends on another. Paid plans send automatic reminders every 3 days, up to 3 times; see pricing.

Sending one document or hundreds?

For a one-off contract, upload and send. For documents you send repeatedly, save a template with fields already placed. For the same document to many people, bulk send from a CSV creates one signing request each. Starting points are in our templates. If the signers are in other countries, how to get a contract signed remotely covers the cross-border points, and what is an audit trail explains the record you get at the end.

Which documents do people send most?

Client contracts, NDAs, offer letters and leases make up most of what small businesses send. If yours was drafted in Google Docs, see how to sign a document in Google Docs for the download step. Landlords will find the tenant and landlord side in how to sign a lease online. If you are moving from another provider, how to cancel a DocuSign subscription lists what to download before your plan ends.

Walkthrough: sending a client contract you also sign

Say you are Maria, a bookkeeper, and you have agreed a monthly service with a small bakery. You upload the agreement as a Word file, and it is converted to PDF. You add the bakery owner, Tom, as the first signer and yourself as the second, so you countersign last and only once his signature is in. On the pages, you place Tom's signature, date and a text field for his job title on the last page, plus an initials field on the page with the fee schedule, and your own signature and date beside his.

You send it with a short message: what the document is, that it takes two minutes, and when you need it back. Tom opens the email on his phone that evening, signs in the browser without creating an account, and you get his signature in your queue. You sign the next morning, and the final PDF, with the certificate of completion appended as its last page, goes to both of you. The whole thing used one of the 3 documents a month on the Free plan.

What does the signer see?

The signer gets an email with your name, the document name and your message, plus a button to open it. The link opens the document in the browser, on a computer or a phone. Fields assigned to them are highlighted, and they complete the required ones before they can finish. They can also decline instead of signing, which ends the request rather than leaving you waiting.

Knowing this helps you write a better message. Tell them who you are if they might not recognise the sender name, say what they are signing in one sentence, and mention that no account is needed. A signer who is unsure whether an email is genuine will often do nothing, so a quick heads-up by phone or chat before you send the link speeds things up more than any reminder.

Something went wrong after you sent it: how do you fix it?

Wrong email address: void the request and send it again to the right address. The old link stops working, so nothing is left hanging. A typo or wrong figure in the document: do not ask the signer to sign anyway and fix it later; void, correct the file, and send the new version, so the signed PDF is the one you actually agreed. A field in the wrong place: same answer, because fields are part of the document the signer sees.

If the signer declined, read their reason before doing anything else. It is usually a question about a clause rather than a refusal, and a short call often settles it. When the request simply sits unopened, check that the address is the one they actually read, then nudge them yourself or rely on automatic reminders on paid plans. If you send the same kind of document often, these fixes are a sign to save a checked template, as described in how to send a document to multiple signers.

Before you press send: a short checklist

Is this the final version, with no comments or tracked changes? Are the signer names spelled as on their ID or company registration, and do the emails belong to the people with authority to sign? Is the signing order right, with the person who approves first and the person who countersigns last? Does every signer have at least a signature field, and have you avoided asking for anything you already know, such as their address?

Finally, read the message once as if you were the signer. If it tells them what, why and by when, you have done the part that most often decides how quickly a document comes back. For the legal side of what you are collecting, see are electronic signatures legally binding.

Our take

Sources and further reading

• ESIGN Act, 15 U.S.C. § 7001 – general rule of validity (Cornell LII)
• Uniform Electronic Transactions Act – Uniform Law Commission