Putting a signature box in the wording

A document you write in ChekSign can say where it wants to be signed. Type [Client.Signature] on its own line and, when the document is attached to a request, a signature box appears there for whoever is set as the Client, on that line, at the size you would have drawn it.

The documents in the ChekSign library already do this. Every one of them that prints a client's name over a signing line now carries the two tags underneath it, so a request started from one of ours has its boxes without you doing anything. Your own copy of a library document does not change when we improve the original (nothing we ship edits a document you own) so if you made one yours before this and want the newer wording, use it from the ChekSign library instead. That sends our current wording and leaves your copy exactly as it is.

The editor has a dropdown for it: Insert a signing box. It is in the editor that Edit opens on a document under Templates, and it puts the same text in that you could type yourself.

The three boxes

There are three, and the spelling matters:

• [Client.Signature] is where they sign.
• [Client.Initials] is a smaller box, for initialling one particular place.
• [Client.SignedDate] is the date their signature was recorded. Nobody types into it.

An initials box goes exactly where you put the tag, like every other one. If you want a clause, a schedule or an amendment initialled, put the tag beside it. There is no way to ask for one on every page: a box per page would have to live in a header or a footer, and those are not supported yet, and a tag in one is refused when the document is attached, naming it and telling you to move it into the body.

Client is just the role. [Guarantor.Signature] works the same way, and the Guarantor becomes somebody the request asks you to choose, exactly as [Guarantor.FirstName] would.

The date one is SignedDate rather than Date on purpose. [Client.Date] is a plausible thing to write meaning a date you will fill in yourself, and stamping the signing instant into it would quietly replace a value you meant to supply.

A misspelling is not a box. [Client.Signatur] stays an ordinary placeholder: you get a text box to fill in, and the send refuses until you have. That is deliberate. A typo should not create a signature box nobody asked for.

Where the box goes

Wherever the tag is. It is put in as a picture the size of the box, so it sits on its own line and the signature rule is drawn along the bottom of it. The dropdown always inserts on a fresh line for that reason: a tag dropped into the middle of a sentence makes the whole line as tall as a signature box.

A signature box is 160 by 48 points, initials are 60 by 36, and a date is 120 by 24, the same sizes you get by drawing one by hand, so a tagged page and a hand-placed one match.

The tag itself is never in the finished document. It is replaced before the document is drawn, so there is nothing left in the PDF to hide or paint over.

What it will refuse

The tags are read when the document is attached, and if one of them cannot produce a box the attach stops and says why rather than freezing a document with a signature line and nothing behind it. There are five:

• Nobody is set as that role yet. Choose who it is first.
• The role is set to your own business. A box belongs to somebody on the request.
• The person is set only to view the document, or not to be shown it. The tag will not quietly overrule that. Change what they are asked to do, or take the tag out.
• [Sender.Signature] or [Witness.Signature]. The sender is your business, and a witness attests one named person's signature rather than a role, so both are placed on the page by hand instead. Those two are not offered in the dropdown either.
• The tag is in a header or a footer. A header is drawn on every page, so a box there would be a box per page, and this version does not place those. Move it into the body of the document.

How it fits with everything else

A tag only asks somebody to sign where nothing had been decided. If you have already said what that person is being asked to do, that choice stands.

You can still draw boxes by hand on the same document; the list on the field page says which came from the wording and which were drawn, so removing one is an informed choice. A box the wording asked for and you then removed stays removed.

Discarding the copy and attaching again re-reads the wording, so the boxes come back from the new document rather than from anything remembered.

None of this applies to a PDF you upload. The bytes arrive finished and there is nothing to type a tag into, so those are placed by hand, and that is what the saved field arrangements under Settings are for.