How to Make eSign-Compliant Signed Agreements and Contracts

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Contracts and agreements need names and other identifying details, the clauses you’re agreeing to, and all parties’ signatures.

And so we default to paper forms, as humans have for centuries. Whether you’re renting a house or car, or starting a new company or job, odds are you’ll write in your personal details and sign your name at the bottom.

Then the team processing the contracts is left to scan the paper, copy the text into CRM and HR software, and figure out what to do with the hard copies.

There’s a better way. You can build onboarding and sales forms that include signature fields, to create signed agreements and contracts without ever touching a physical document.

All it takes is a few extra steps to be eSign-compliant, and you can build a more efficient signature workflow, no documents needed. Here’s how.

A brief history of the signature

A signature and the authenticity it granted made this paper worth nearly half a million dollars (via RR Auctions) — *A signature and the authenticity it granted made this paper worth nearly half a million dollars (via* *RR Auctions*)

The first signatures were pressed into wet clay. Before humans had invented paper, early scribes in Mesopotamia would add their names to the end of clay tablets to verify authenticity.

Over time, as ink replaced styli and paper replaced clay, “wet signatures”—or signatures made with wet ink on paper—became the default way to show you agreed to a contract. For something as monumental as starting a country or as mundane as servicing a loan, signatures were what proved intent.

Fax machines were the first crack in wet signatures’ dominance. If you could send a facsimile of any document over phone lines, why not signed documents as well? Thus began the electronic signature. You’d sign a paper document, scan it, and send along a copy—essentially the same workflow you use today to sign a PDF in Preview on a Mac or Acrobat on a PC, then email a copy to confirm a contract.

Most documents you sign electronically look exactly like paper documents. You could add your signature on your screen and print out the document, for an exact copy of a signed paper document. The only difference is how you send the document.

Yet pen, paper, and documents are all in declining use. Outside of contracts and official forms, it’s rare to use paper or even PDF documents these days. And it turns out, the document isn’t even needed. You could instead add info to a form and include your signature, as a much easier way to eSign agreements, contracts, and more.

What’s required for an electronic signature?

What you do need to include are options.

The official eSign regulations in the United States—the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act that was passed in 2000—codified how digital signatures work.

“A signature, contract, or other record relating to such transaction may not be denied legal effect, validity, or enforceability solely because it is in electronic form,” opens the act. Just because a contract or document is signed electronically cannot make it invalid.

But it added a few things you need to make sure your contracts include to be valid, electronically signed documents:

Intent to sign: Everyone signing the contract must willingly enter their information and know that they’re signing an agreement. You can’t just auto-fill someone’s signature, for example.

Consent to sign digitally: The people signing the contract must agree to sign digitally—and if they’d prefer to sign a paper form, you need to give them that option.

Record retention: A copy of the signed document needs to be saved and stored by all parties—and when someone signs your document, it’s good to return a signed copy to them as well.

The signature itself? It could be anything your counterparty wants, as according to the eSign bill, “the term ‘electronic signature’ means an electronic sound, symbol, or process, attached to or logically associated with a contract or other record and executed or adopted by a person with the intent to sign the record.” As long as the person signing the document added something to your contract that they consider a signature, it counts, regardless of how legible it may be.

That’s the basics, at least for the United States, and electronic signature rules around the world tend to be similar. You might want to also log the date and time when the form was filled out, and maybe even verify the signee’s contact info if you want hard proof of who signed the document.

Notice what wasn’t included? A document—at least, unless your counterparty asks to sign on paper instead. A form with a signature field is enough, as long as you cover the basics.

Note: It's important to remember that we are not lawyers. While we strive to offer reliable and accurate guidance, if in doubt always consult legal professionals for advice specific to your business and needs.

How to build a signed contract or agreement with a form

All you need is a form builder that lets you generate long-form text with variables, and lets you gather signatures, as Fillout does. Build your form, add a signature field along with some disclaimers, and you’re ready to replace your signed documents with forms.

Imagine you’re working with a contractor to build something for your company, and you’d like a contract to show that they’ll deliver the work, and that you’ll pay them for the work delivered.

*Drag-and-drop contract fields in—or use Fillout’s form AI to add them automatically*

Start out by building a new Fillout form. Add questions requesting the contractor’s details—their name, address, company details, the date work will start, and anything else important. You could speed things up with AI-generated form fields, too. Click the purple sparkle button in the top left corner, choose Multiple Questions, and list the data you need to gather for your contract.

*Add names, dates, and more to your contract text, with Fillout form values*

Now build out your contract. Add a long text field, and enter the details that you’d normally include in a paper contract—such as indemnity clauses and non-disclosure agreements. Fillout includes rich text formatting, so you can add as much detail as you want, with headers, italics, links, lists, and more.

Then customize the contract text with the form details. Anywhere you need to reference unique data to this contract, in Fillout’s form editor just type @, select Page, then choose the field name that has the data you need. You could also add a date to the contract, without entering any extra info, by typing @ then choosing Date Utilities.

*Add a caption to your signature field for eSign compliance*

Finally, drag a Signature field into your form. Here, you’ll want to add a consent to sign digitally, to make sure the person signing is ok signing electronically. In your field settings, add a caption with something like “By digitally signing, you agree that this digital signature is legally binding, authenticates your identity, and confirms your consent to signing the contract with an electronic signature.”

*As soon as someone fills out your form, the contract text will update with their details*

And with that, you’ve got a form that can replace your paper and PDF contracts. As soon as the contact details are entered, your long-form text will automatically update with your contractor’s name and location, the date the contract was started, and any other details you included. They’ll see details about electronic signatures, then can sketch their name on their screen to complete the contract.

Turning your signed contracts back into documents

One thing left is the eSign requirement of storing your signed data. Fillout’s built-in Results tab will show all of the details your contractors entered, and you can download a CSV spreadsheet complete with links to each person’s signature.

Want to turn those into actual documents? There are a few ways to automate the process.

*Airtable’s Page Designer can create PDF documents from your signed form contracts*

One would be to link your signature form to an Airtable database. Match up each form item in your Fillout form to an Airtable column—and be sure to include the Fillout signature as an image field in Airtable.

Then, in your Airtable database, add the Page Designer extension. That lets you build a letter or A4 document with any text you want—including your form data. You’ll need to copy over your contract text from Fillout manually, including names and other details in curly brackets like {name} instead of the @field_name used in Fillout.

Back in your database, Airtable will automatically generate a contract document for each person that fills out your form. Best of all, that works in a free Airtable account, too.

*A contractor agreement template in Google Slides, matched with a Zap to fill it out automatically*

Another option is to build a template document with Google Docs, then use an automation tool like Zapier to watch Fillout for new form entries and copy the data over to make a new document. Google Docs itself doesn’t let you send images automatically to new templates, so for a workaround you can use Google Slides—the presentation app—instead.

Open Google Slides, and set your page size to match your document size (8.5x11” for Letter, 21x29.7cm for A4). Add each of your contract details, adding variables with double curly brackets like How to Make eSign-Compliant Signed Agreements and Contracts. For the signature, add a separate text box with {{signature}} as the entire box will be replaced with the image.

Now, in Zapier, build a workflow that watches Fillout for new entries, and match its fields up to your Google Slides template. When your Zap runs, Google will make a new presentation and automatically save it as a PDF, so you could then email that signed document automatically to your contractor or save it to Google Drive or Dropbox for your records.

Oh, and one extra thing: You still may need a way to let people fill out your contract on paper, if they ask to do so, as a final eSign requirement. Now that you’ve built your template document, save a blank version of that as a PDF. Then if anyone asks to sign your contract with a traditional wet signature, you’re good to go.

Digitize your paper contracts

And with that, you’ll never have to make a print or PDF contract again. You can instead build forms that gather the contract data you need, send it directly to your CRM database or HR software, while remaining eSign compliant. You can even digitize your older paper forms, using Fillout’s AI to build out all of the form fields you need quickly.

We finally have a signature workflow that doesn’t just duplicate the paper process on-screen.

Image Credits: Signature Icon by Andrejs Kirma via Noun Project