Yesterday I talked about the top five things professional creatives need to make sure they include in their contracts. Today I’m going to talk about the best way to get those bad boys signed.
As you already know, I’m crazy about the Cloud. I am a Cloud using maniac. I run my whole business on the Cloud. One of the things I like to use is electronic signature services. I used to use another service that only allowed a few free signatures per month. But recently I came across SignNow.com, and I’m in love.
There are three main reasons I love SignNow.com
- It’s easy
- It’s thorough
- It’s free
What more could you want. I use it not only for electronic signatures, but I also use it for filling out forms that need my signature. It’s great. Some of my favorite features include:
- Electronic sticky tabs to show clients where to sign
- The ability to password protect signatures
- Ability to upload your own signature and save it for future
- You don’t have to create an account if you don’t want
They have a paid Pro version coming out soon with collaboration, tracking and ID tools. But what you get with this free version will suit a lot of your needs. Check out my demo below for a full run-down on how it works.
If you can’t see this video in your RSS reader or email, click here.
I just ordered my Square dongle. 2012 will be the year of the Human Bean. This will help too! Thanks again Mr. Dawson.
Great write up and demo Ron! I had been looking for a free contract signing cloud app a year ago before we signed up for Shoot Q… maybe I will switch?
Question: When the client gets the contract, does SignNow tell them how to use the “Signature” and “Text” buttons? Is the process easy for them or is there a learning curve?
hey Cody,
Great question. Personally, I found most of it relatively self-explanatory. But, there is a “tour” button in the upper right-hand corner. If you click that, it walks you through what to do. But, if you want to be safe, you could write up a short sentence or two instruction and send that in the note section when you send the contract.
If you’re already using ShootQ’s contrat feature, it probably make sense to keep the process all in one. But, as I mention in the post, there are other ways you could use SignNow. I recently used it to fill out my paperwork for WPPI (I’m teaching a master class) and I used it for a health insurance form I needed to fill out. In both cases, I didn’t assign a signee, so the document just comes to me.
I wouldn’t have thought to use it for contracts people send me (insurance, etc…), that’s a great use for this software since I already have Shoot Q. Unfortunately, I like how you can have them initial different parts of a contract… Shoot Q can’t do that. Shoot Q does automatically fill in all the info though which makes it pretty quick and easy (name, address, phone numbers, package, etc…).
Yeah. The ability to use it for initialing is great. But, as you alluded, you don’t have the integration with the rest of your client info. But, there are still so many other uses. I love using it to sign contracts that people send me.
Great tool. Thanks for the heads-up Ron. My practice document signing was intuitive and fast. Uploaded my own signature and it really rocks.
I just saw an article about Adobe’s EchoSign for iOS: http://blogs.adobe.com/acrobat/2011/12/adobe-echosign-esignature-app-now-ready-for-ios-devices.html
Echosign is great Chris. That was the service I used before. But it’s not worth the $15/month for the few added features it offers. One thing that’s good about it is that you can easily resend a document you’ve already uploaded, or save documents you send a lot. Whereas with SignNow each time you want to send a document, you have to re-upload. A small “price” to pay to have what they offer for free.
Hey Ron, GREAT find. I’m starting to give serious thouht to your article on the cloud. Been wanting to do this stuff for awhile but can’t justify ShootQ at this time. One quesiton I have is I have a (possibly baseless?) concern of sending out a contract with my signature already on it. I would prefer that the customer sign it first, then we sign it. To do this with SignNow we’d need to upload the original contract, send it to the customer, get the confirm email from SignNow, reupload that contract with their signature, we sign it thru SignNow, then send it again to the customer thru SignNow. Is that how you do it, or do you send the inital contract out with your signature on it? Thanks! David
Hey David. The way I do it is sign it first then send to client. I don’t have a problem signing it first if the contract is one we’ve all agreed on. But, if for some reason that concerns you, you could send it to your client to sign first. Then, when it comes back, you can download the signed copy then re-upload and DO NOT send back to them. It’ll already be signed by them. Just sign it yourself. You’ll be emailed the final copy, plus an immediate download link is created. Either way you go, you only need to send a document to a client once.
For some reason, I can’t find the where to add the sticky’s when I upload a document…? Do you think they quit using that feature or something?
I just tried it in firefox and chrome and no stickys… I hope they didn’t get rid of that feature!
They updated the app since I created this video. They stickys are temporarily gone. But I chatted with their tech support and he said lots of people have been asking for it. I’m hoping they have plans to bring it back, along with additional functionality.
just used sign now for the first time. wow. life is better, colors are brighter, and birds are singing in the trees. how did i ever live with printing out an attachment, signing, scanning, then resending. i might as well have been washing my clothes by hand.
ron, thanks, as always, for the tips that make a difference!
I felt that same way may friend! It’s a great feeling.