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When someone declines to sign
What declining does to an envelope, and what you can do afterwards.
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When a recipient declines, the whole envelope stops. Every signing link for it is closed immediately, no signature is added to the document, the reason they gave is written into the record, and you are told. An envelope is the bundle you sent for signature: the documents, the people and the fields.
How a recipient declines
Decline sits in the bar across the top of the signing page, and on a phone it appears as Decline to Sign in the menu. Either opens a short form asking for a reason. The reason is required, and the confirming button stays out of reach until something is typed.
They then land on a page headed You declined to sign, which tells them their decision has been recorded, that the sender has been notified, and that no signature was added. It also tells them to contact you directly if that was not what they meant.
What it does to the envelope
- The envelope moves to Declined and stays there. It is a final state, like completed.
- Every other recipient's link is closed at the same moment, including people who had already signed. Nobody else can act on it.
- The reason, the person, the time, their IP address and their browser are written into the envelope's evidence. See The audit trail.
- A certificate of completion is still produced, and it records the decline rather than a completion.
How you find out
You get an email, and an Envelope Declined entry appears under the bell in the top bar naming the person and the document. The envelope itself shows the status and the reason on its own page.
What to do next
Talk to them first. A decline is usually a question about the document rather than a refusal of it, and the reason box is short.
When you have agreed what should change, open the envelope and use Resend with previous answers. It creates a fresh envelope from the same documents and recipients and carries forward everything people had typed, so nobody retypes an address or a reference number. Signatures, initials and signing dates are never carried forward: each signature is a separate act, made against the document actually in front of that person on the day. The declined envelope is left exactly as it was, and the new one records which envelope it came from.
If the document itself needs rewriting, start a new envelope from the corrected file instead.
A few things worth knowing
- A decline cannot be undone, by them or by you. The record of it stays, which is the point of having a record. The way forward is a new envelope, not an edit to the old one.
- Signatures already collected on that envelope are not lost from the record. They remain in the evidence, and the certificate shows who had signed and when before the decline.
- If you are signing a document yourself, there is nothing to decline to. Leave it unsigned, or use Void envelope on its page if you no longer need it.
- Voiding is the sender's version of the same idea. Use it when you want to withdraw a document rather than record that somebody refused it. See Cancel an envelope someone has already opened.