Use case
Some documents havenobody to send them to.
A form that came back to you, a letter you issue, an approval that has to be signed rather than just written. There is no recipient, no waiting and nothing to chase. There is still a signature, and there still has to be a record of it.
No credit card required.
What people actually sign this way
The documents that would otherwise be printed, signed and scanned back in.
The form somebody sent you
A supplier questionnaire, a bank or insurer form, a client asking you to confirm something in writing. It arrived as a PDF, it needs your signature on it, and it goes straight back to whoever sent it.
The one you issue
A letter, a reference, a certificate, a policy or a set of terms that carries your signature before it goes out. You are not asking anyone to agree to anything: you are signing your own document and keeping a copy that proves when.
The internal one
An approval, a sign-off, a note to the file that has to be signed rather than merely written. It never leaves the firm, and it is exactly the kind of document that otherwise gets printed, signed and scanned back in.
Where this is the wrong tool
Some documents are not finished by a signature alone. If yours has to be witnessed, attested or executed as a deed, or if the law that governs it requires a particular form of signing, this is not the way to sign it, and no electronic signature product you are being sold makes that requirement go away by itself. Check what the document needs before you sign it electronically at all.
The other case is simpler. If anybody besides you has to put their name on it, send it in the ordinary way with both of you on it. Self sign is for the document where you are genuinely the only party to it, and it is not a way to sign for someone else.
How it works
The job takes about a minute, and most of the design went into the part people usually get wrong. Products that offer this tend to stamp a signature at a fixed spot on the first page, because they have no way to ask you where it belongs. On a seven-page agreement whose signature block is on page six, that leaves a signature sitting in the middle of the recitals with no way to move it.
So nothing is placed for you. You put your own fields exactly where the document wants them, and the document is created only once you have.
Pick the document, or upload it
Anything already in your library, or a file you drop in on the spot. PDFs, Word files and images all work, and Word files are converted for you.
Put your fields where they belong
Drag a signature, your initials, the date, or a text box onto the page it belongs on. Nothing is placed for you and nothing is guessed: a signature block on page six goes on page six.
Sign it
If all you placed was a signature, your initials or the date, and you have a signature saved, one dialog finishes it. Anything you have to type, tick or choose opens the ordinary signing page instead, which is also where you draw a signature if you have not saved one yet.
Download it, with its certificate
The finished PDF arrives with a certificate of completion, and both sit on the document afterwards. There is no separate step to remember and nothing to file by hand.
It is not a lesser record
The reasonable assumption about a document you signed yourself, on your own screen, with nobody watching, is that whatever gets recorded is thinner than for a document a client signed. It is not. The same audit trail is written, the same certificate is produced, and the completed file is fixed the moment it is finished.
That matters most for the documents in the first section, because those are the ones somebody asks about later. A form you returned in March, a reference you issued last year, an approval that has to be produced for an audit: what is worth having is not the signature, which anybody could paste on. It is being able to show when it was signed, by whom, and that the file has not moved since.
Signed, and fixed
The certificate arrives with the completed document rather than filed somewhere separate, and every step is written into an append-only record whose head is anchored to independent timestamping authorities each night.
Checkable by somebody else
Whoever you send the finished document to can check it themselves, without an account and without asking you, which is the part that makes it worth more than a signature image on a PDF.
Verify a document →Questions about signing something yourself
The first two decide whether this is the right thing to use at all.
Does anybody get an email?
What if somebody else has to sign it too?
Can I move a field after I have started?
Do I need to have saved a signature first?
Is the record any weaker than a document I send to a client?
Does it use up part of what my plan allows?
Can I do this on a phone?
Can I change my mind halfway through?
What to read next
The parts of the help centre this page assumes, in the order you would meet them.
- Uploading a documentHow to get a file into CecurSign, and what happens to it once it is there.
- Placing signature and other fieldsWhere a person signs, what else you can ask them for, and which fields are required.
- Getting the signed documentWhere the finished PDF lives, who receives it, and how to download it.
- The certificate of completionThe evidence page attached to every finished document, and how to read it.
Everything else is in the help centre.
Sign the next thing that lands on your desk
Take the form you were about to print, and put it through instead.
No credit card required.