App for digital signatures?

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W

Whale Rage Forever

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Location
Missouri
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Electrician
I know there's a million different service management type apps, but I'm mainly just looking for the ability to upload a custom set of terms and conditions that a customer can electronically agree to from a phone/tablet/etc...when they see the quote and before work begins.

I'm not concerned with time tracking or supply management or anything like that. I just need the abilty to electronically sign documents.

What's out there?
 
What makes you think that a digital signature gives you any more protection from the customer's later whims then having him just respond to your email that he accepts your proposal?

In any case, how many customers are set up for digital signatures?
 
petersonra said:
What makes you think that a digital signature gives you any more protection from the customer's later whims then having him just respond to your email that he accepts your proposal?

In any case, how many customers are set up for digital signatures?
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Do you honestly believe that every customer has to be setup with their own personal trusted digital certificate just to sign a form on a tablet?
 
Right.
Classically a digital certificate is a way of bonding a cryptographic key, which can be used for authentication of a signature with another way of identifying that entity. That other way is typically the combination of a name with other identifiers to make it unique


Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk
 
Not all signing applications are equal. I was involved in a (messy) real estate transaction and the other party's realtor used what was apparently a popular offer/counteroffer presentation, acceptance and signing app.
I was astounded to learn, after carefully archiving a copy of the final contract, that the app allowed the document owner to edit it after it was signed!!!

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk
 
I recently heard on a local news channel that a Canadian court upheld a (y) as legal proof of acceptance of an legal contract !
 
MTW said:
Would that be Docu Sign, just experienced a very similar similar thing with a buyer.
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For Docu Sign or any other digital signature app, if the document is modified it's supposed to break the verification. It doesn't prevent modifications; it is supposed to alert you to the fact that the document is modified.
 
petersonra said:
What makes you think that a digital signature gives you any more protection from the customer's later whims then having him just respond to your email that he accepts your proposal?

In any case, how many customers are set up for digital signatures?
Click to expand...

You have the various E Sign laws behind you, which if you are compliant, give that e signature the same force of a wet ink signature. Replying 'ok' to an email can take years in court to determine intent of what the ok thought he was agreeing to.
 
MTW said:
Would that be Docu Sign, just experienced a very similar similar thing with a buyer.
Click to expand...
I believe it was in fact DocuSign, but I have not gone back to the transaction to confirm that. The important thing is that no indication was given that the digital signature was invalid for the edited document.
If I had not deliberately archived a file copy of the original that I signed, I would have had no evidence of the change. The document owner may have had access to a change log, and earlier versions of each document, but as a third party user I did not.
 
There is also the uniqueness of the signatures which while it can be faked adds to the security of an ink signature.

But as somebody else mentioned notarization or witnessing is the big deal with signatures. Even if you have a signature it doesn't mean that much. If the guy has no money or just does not want to pay, you're out of luck.

And there are plenty of court rulings that make email replies enforcible.
 
Seems to me that electronic signatures are a kind of automated witnessing. That's why these things have audit reports and such. You at least have a trail that it was done through a link sent to a particular email address, which person associated can then then testify as to whether they had true control of the e-mail or not.

Compare to notarization which I guarantee you was not done for the vast majority of residential home improvement projects before the digital age. I'll bet $10 that nowadays more residential home improvement contracts have some kind of auditing/witnessing available through electronic sigs than were notarized 30 years ago. For whatever flaws the new methods might have (and I don't question they have some), it's arguably an improvement to have something and not nothing more of the time. Heck, I bet more contractors also actually get something signed nowadays, rather than work on verbal, because the tech makes it easier. That's a benefit to us too.

Regardless, it's ultimately up to the humans to pay attention and raise the alarm when there are issues of forgery. That hasn't changed.
 
Todd0x1 said:
You have the various E Sign laws behind you, which if you are compliant, give that e signature the same force of a wet ink signature. Replying 'ok' to an email can take years in court to determine intent of what the ok thought he was agreeing to.
Click to expand...
Or maybe not.

 
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