Document Signing Portal

What it is

The signing portal is the web page your customer opens when you send them paperwork to sign. It shows your company name, the document title and every page of the PDF, with coloured boxes on top marking exactly where that person has to sign, initial, tick or type. When they are finished they press Finish & sign, and their answers are stamped permanently onto the PDF.

The page has its own private web address, one per person who has to sign. It opens in any browser and the customer never logs in — they do not need a Joby account, a password, or an app.

This guide is about the signing page itself. Building the PDF template and placing the boxes is covered in Documents Hub.

When to use it

• The customer is not in front of you. Email the link and let them sign from their own phone or computer, whenever suits them.
• Your field worker is standing at the door. Open the page on the work phone, hand it over, and get the agreement signed before the job starts.
• Two people have to sign. The customer signs first, then somebody from your team countersigns using their own link.
• The customer says the email never arrived. Copy the link and send it to them yourself in a text or a message.

Use Estimates instead when you are quoting a price with line items and want the customer to approve it and pay a deposit — estimates have their own customer page. The signing portal is for a fixed PDF that needs a signature on it.

Before you start

• Your plan includes Documents. It is a Pro feature. Pro, Growth, Enterprise and accounts still on trial can use it. Free and Starter accounts see an Upgrade to Pro screen instead of the page — admins get the upgrade button, everyone else is told to "Ask your account admin or owner to upgrade to the Pro plan".
• Your role has the Documents permission. An owner or admin turns it on under Settings›People›Team Roles, in the Management group, where it is listed as Documents. Without it, Documents is hidden from the left menu.
• A template exists with the boxes already placed. The signing page can only show boxes that were drawn onto the PDF in Settings›Quotes & Docs›Documents Hub›Templates. A document built from a template with no boxes gives the signer nothing to fill in.
• Every box is assigned to the right person. A signer only sees, and can only fill, the boxes assigned to their own role. Boxes meant for your team will not appear to the customer.
• The signer has an email address — that is where the link is sent. For in-person signing you can skip the email and open the page yourself, but you still need the person listed as a signer.
• Your company name is filled in under Settings›Business›Company Settings. It is printed at the top of the signing page and is the name on the email the customer receives.

Step-by-step

1. Send the signing link by email

1. Click Documents in the left menu, under Work.
2. Click New Document at the top right (on a phone, the New button in the page header).
3. Pick a Template, then use Search for a client… to find the customer.
4. Check the Signers boxes underneath. The customer's name and email come from their client record; anyone from your own business is marked (your team). Fix anything wrong here — the email address you see is the one the link goes to.
5. Click Create & send. You get a confirmation reading Document created and sent for signature.

The customer receives an email titled Your Company: please sign "…" with an orange Review & sign button, and the plain link printed underneath in case the button does not work in their mail app.

If you already have a draft, open the document's ⋮ menu on the Documents list and choose Send for signature instead. On a document that has already gone out, the same menu item reads Resend for signature.

2. Have somebody sign in person

1. Open Documents and click the row for the document. That opens the document page, where you can see the PDF and who still has to sign.
2. Click Sign now at the top right. The signing page opens in place of Joby (in the phone app it opens in its own window).
3. Hand the phone, tablet or laptop to the person signing.
4. When they are done, use your browser's back button — or the window's close button in the phone app — to return to Joby.

Copy link next to it puts the same address on your clipboard (you get a Signing link copied confirmation), so you can paste it into a text message, a chat, or your own email. Both buttons always point at the next person who has not signed yet.

3. What the person signing actually does

1. They open the link. Your company name sits at the top, the document title under it, and the PDF pages below.
2. At the bottom of the screen a bar stays with them as they scroll. On the left it counts their progress — 0 of 4 completed — and on the right are the Start and Finish & sign buttons.
3. They click Start. The page scrolls to the first box that needs them and outlines it. A small bouncing tag appears above it saying Sign here, Initials here, Choose date, Check here or Type here, depending on what the box wants.
4. They fill that box in, then click Next — the same button, renamed once they have completed one — to jump to the one after it. The counter goes up each time.
5. When every box is done, Finish & sign becomes clickable. They press it, and a green tick panel appears reading Thanks — your part is signed, or Document signed if they were the last one.

They can also just scroll and click boxes in any order — Start and Next are a convenience, not a rule. Nothing is saved to your account until they press Finish & sign.

4. Signing a signature box: draw or type

1. Clicking a signature box opens a window titled Draw your signature.
2. It opens on the Draw tab: a blank white pad with the hint Sign above using your mouse or touch screen. They sign with a finger, a stylus or the mouse.
3. Prefer typing? Switch to the Type tab, enter the name in Type your full name, and it is written out in handwriting style underneath. The page notes that typing your name here acts as your legal signature.
4. Clear wipes the pad and starts again. Switching between the two tabs also clears whatever was there.
5. Click Apply to drop the signature into the box, or Cancel to close without using it. Apply stays greyed out until something has actually been drawn or typed.

Before they submit, clicking the box again reopens the pad so they can redo a signature they are not happy with. Drawn and typed signatures end up looking the same on the finished PDF.

5. When two people have to sign

1. The first signer finishes. The document moves to Partially signed and the signer chip for that person changes to signed.
2. Open the document and click Send to email the next person, or Sign now / Copy link to get their link — Joby always hands you the link for whoever is next in line.
3. The second person sees the pages with the first signer's boxes already accounted for, fills in their own, and presses Finish & sign.
4. The document flips to Completed and the finished PDF is emailed to everybody who signed, with the subject Signed copy: … and the file attached.

How to check it worked

• The link went out. A confirmation says Sent for signature, and the row on the Documents list moves to the Sent status badge.
• They opened it. The Viewed column on the Documents list fills in with a date the first time anybody opens the link, and a document that was Sent changes to the Viewed badge. That date is also stamped when you open the link yourself for in-person signing.
• They signed. The Signers column counts how many are done out of the total — for example 1/2 — and the Signed column fills in the day it was finished.
• Nothing is outstanding. Open the document. An amber pill under the title counts N fields to fill while anything is still empty, and each empty box is drawn on the PDF as an amber dashed outline. Hover one to see Outstanding — awaiting … with the name of the person you are waiting on.
• The paperwork is finished. The status badge reads Completed and a Signed PDF button replaces the send buttons at the top of the document. Click it to open the finished file with every signature stamped on it.
• The signer has their copy. Everyone who signed gets an email titled Signed copy: … with the PDF attached. The signing page itself also offers a Download signed PDF button once the document is complete.

Common mistakes

• Closing the page before pressing Finish & sign. Nothing is kept until that button is pressed. If the customer wanders off halfway through, their typing and their signature are gone and they start again from the link.
• Sending before the email address is right. If nobody has an email address you get No signer with an email address to send to. Open the ⋮ menu, choose Edit, fill the address in, and send again. Edit disappears once somebody has signed.
• Expecting the second signer to be chased automatically. When the document is Partially signed, send it on yourself with Resend for signature, or hand the next person the link.
• Clicking Sign now and losing your place. On a computer the signing page replaces Joby in the same tab. Use the browser's back button to come back — nothing is lost.
• Waiting for the customer to fill in your team's boxes. Each person only gets the boxes assigned to their own role. If a box is assigned to the wrong person, change it on the template under Settings›Quotes & Docs›Documents Hub and create a fresh document — documents already sent keep the layout they were made with.
• Assuming the signer can see everything. Details filled in automatically from the customer and company records are visible to everybody, but what another signer typed is not shown on someone else's copy of the page. You see the full picture inside Joby, on the document itself.