A Practical Guide to Electronic Signature

To gain space in the contemporary market, it is essential to offer agile and reliable solutions to your clients, so knowing how to sign an electronic signature is essential to help your clients to be dynamic when signing or renewing contracts. In this post you learn how to implement this feature in your business!

What is an electronic signature and its validity

An electronic signature is a form of digital authentication quite objective. Protected by cryptography on both ends, it is legally valid as long as it is executed through a system that guarantees its authenticity, the Systems of Agreement. It guarantees greater agility, less red tape and costs and high scalability, in addition to the opportunity to be accessed exclusively by the parties that contain the appropriate permissions. It is also stored in the cloud to be accessed from anywhere with virtual security. We have a post that explains in more detail What is an electronic signature, which you can check out here on the blog. Now let's go to the step by step on how to make an electronic signature:

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Making your electronic signature

In a few minutes you can create a secure and objective dynamic to have your documents signed:

1. Upload the contract to the platform page

When choosing your platform for digital signatures, simply register or log in to your account and find the electronic signature section. There you will find a field for upload the document to be signed. It is preferable that it be in .PDF or .DOC formats, so that it preserves its settings and definition. You can convert it from any format to .PDF online and upload it from your machine or even from the cloud. Find the file and wait for the platform to process it.

2. Designate additional signers and authentications

At that moment you add all the parties involved in the contract, indicating data such as full name, date of birth, social security number, telephone number, and the email address to which the authentication will be sent. You can designate the role of each party to the contract and indicate the fields where your signatures will appear. It will also be possible to indicate what types of additional authentication the electronic signature will have, such as:

• facial recognition;
• selfies;
• official document;
• and handwritten signature.

3. Receiving and signing the file

Each party will receive their respective e-mail containing information about the subscription request, with the option of viewing the entire document to fully understand its content. If all the data is correct and the document is reliable, it is enough generate a confirmation token through the link in the email itself. This will generate a new email, containing a key that can be copied or authenticated by other alternatives to validate your signature. With this authentication performed, simply access the file contained in the email again and find the signature button. There may be different requests, involving handwritten signature or just via token. In the first case, you can use any device, such as a computer, cell phone, or tablet to draw a signature and insert it over the given field.

4. Keeping track of subscriptions

When your file is sent for the parties to sign, you can follow in real time who has already signed it. When the file is signed by all parties, you can download the copy and Store safely your contract in the cloud.

What does the signed file look like?

Each person who signs their electronic contract adds new information to the cryptographic key that protects the authenticity of their document, so that an extra page containing all of the signers' registration keys is attached to the final file. There it is possible to verify the data provided, date, time and signature platform. According to the permissions granted, all parties can have access to the document to verify its information and authenticity at any time.

The validity of the electronic signature

Today the electronic signature Does it have legal value and, more than that, it is already a requirement when filing some types of legal and accounting documents, increasingly transforming this practice into something mandatory with public agencies. In fact, electronic signatures guarantee even more veracity to a document than its counterpart. The data contained in the documents can be validated on online platforms and are stored in a restricted environment, so that anyone can verify its veracity but only those who have access to it can generate it. For those who work managing a series of documents, this is certainly one of the most important and dynamic solutions to reduce costs as well as to ensure greater transparency, reliability and especially accessibility for the parties involved. Clicksign offers a specialized set of digital solutions for authentication and, more than that, solutions for its storage and security. If you still have questions about how to electronically sign documents, we recommend that you access our help page.Here on our blog you can see the main discussions on the subject and the emerging business technologies to transform your business!