Send and track
Send an envelope, follow its progress, send reminders, make corrections, and download the completed documents.
Send an envelope
Click Send in the Review stage. The envelope's status changes from Draft to Sent, and the first recipients get their email:
- Everyone who acts, if signing order is off
- Only the first step, if Sign in order is on. Each later step is emailed when the one before it finishes.
People who get a copy aren't emailed until the envelope is complete. See Recipients and roles.
If you're a signer and it's your turn, click Send and sign now to go straight to the signing page. Your signing email still goes out, so you can finish later.
An envelope needs at least one signer, approver or person who needs to acknowledge before you can send it.
On the Free plan, each envelope you send counts toward your monthly allowance. See Plans and billing.
In the Sandbox you can send envelopes the same way. They're watermarked as tests, don't count toward any allowance, and can't use text message verification. See Sandbox.
What recipients receive
Each recipient gets an email from eSignStack, with your workspace's branding if you've set it up. The subject is Please sign:, Please approve: or Please acknowledge: followed by the envelope name, unless you set your own. The button opens their personal link. Recipients don't need an account.
On the signing page, a recipient:
- Sees the envelope name, its documents, and your note
- Agrees to the electronic signature disclosure, if your workspace requires it
- Confirms their identity, if you asked for a check
- Completes their fields and clicks Finish, or clicks Approve or I've read these documents, depending on their role
Signers draw or type their signature. A signer can decline from the ⋯ menu, with an optional reason. An approver can reject, with a reason. Either ends the envelope for everyone.
Owners and admins can change the disclosure wording and whether consent is required in Settings → Signing disclosure.
Write the email
In the Recipients stage, under Message:
- Template fills the subject and note from one of your message templates. Choose Standard email to clear both.
- Subject replaces the default subject
- Message replaces the default email text and appears on the signing page
You can use these variables in both. Pick one from Insert a detail to add it where your cursor is:
| Variable | Replaced with |
|---|---|
{{recipient_name}} |
The recipient's name |
{{recipient_email}} |
The recipient's email |
{{recipient_role}} |
The recipient's role label |
{{sender_name}} |
Your name |
{{document_name}} |
The envelope name |
{{workspace_name}} |
The workspace name |
Each recipient gets their own values.
Message templates
Save the subject and note you send most in Message templates, in the sidebar. Owners and admins can create, edit and delete them; everyone in the workspace can use them.
Turn on Make this the default template for one of them, and new envelopes start with its subject and note. You can still change or clear them before sending. A template with no subject keeps the standard one, such as "Please sign: Lease".
Reminders and expiry
Open Reminders and expiry in the Recipients stage to set them for this envelope:
- Remind people who haven't finished, with First after (1 to 30 days), Then every (1 to 14 days) and At most (1 to 20 reminders)
- Not on weekends
- Signing closes on, a date. Leave it empty to use your workspace default.
Workspace defaults live in Settings → Signing & reminders. Envelopes stay open 60 days unless you change the default (1 to 365 days).
Reminders go only to people whose turn it is. They stop about two days before the envelope expires. Recipients can opt out of reminder emails.
When the deadline passes, the envelope becomes Expired and its links stop working. To send it again, click Duplicate.
Track progress
Envelopes groups your envelopes into Needs you, Waiting on others, Drafts, Completed, and Voided, declined or expired. Search by envelope name or recipient, filter by status or template, and sort the list. Select several envelopes to remind, download, export, move, void or archive them together.
Open an envelope to see:
- Overview: how many recipients have finished, the deadline, each recipient's status, and recent activity
- Document: the documents, with fields filled in so far
- Audit trail: every event, with who did it and when
Each recipient shows one status:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Not sent yet | Their step hasn't started |
| Waiting for … to sign (or approve, acknowledge) | They have their link |
| Opened | They've opened the envelope but haven't finished |
| Signed, Approved, Acknowledged | They've finished |
| Declined | They declined or rejected, which ended the envelope |
| Did not finish | The envelope closed before they acted |
Delivery problems
If an invitation can't be delivered, the recipient shows Email not delivered. Hover over it to see why, such as a bounced address or a provider rejection. Fix the address with Correct recipients.
You also get one email when an invitation finally can't be delivered. Turn this off with Delivery problems in Settings → Notifications. See Notifications.
Remind or resend
For a recipient whose turn it is:
- Remind sends a reminder. You can add a message, and the dialog shows when they were last reminded and when the next automatic reminder is due. Reminders aren't sent if they're turned off for the envelope, the recipient reached the limit, or they opted out.
- Resend sends their signing email again with the same link. Use it when someone can't find the original. It also clears any verification lockout.
- Links shows their signing link so you can copy it.
You can contact each recipient at most once an hour, and send three manual nudges per envelope per day.
Extend the deadline
Click Extend next to the deadline, or Extend deadline in the ⋯ menu. Choose 7, 14, 30 or 60 days, or enter 1 to 365. The new deadline counts from today and reminders resume. Tick Email pending signers their link again to notify them.
Correct a sent envelope
From the envelope's ⋯ menu:
- Correct recipients. Fix a name or email, or remove someone who hasn't acted yet. If you change someone's email, phone or verification, their old link stops working and, if it's their turn, they get a new one. A name fix keeps their link. People who have already acted can't be changed. For an in-person signer, you can also change the host, until the device is handed to them. You can add a note for the audit trail.
- Correct documents and pages. Reorder, remove or add pages and documents, and choose who sees each document. Fields stay on their pages; fields on removed pages are deleted. Available until someone signs, approves or acknowledges. Links keep working and open the new version. Everyone whose turn it is gets an email saying the document was updated, with the same link. Anyone who has the old version open sees The sender updated this document on their next step, and the page reloads with the new version. Everyone agrees to sign electronically again.
To change fields after sending, void the envelope and send a new one.
Void or archive
Choose Void from the ⋯ menu to cancel an envelope that's out for signature. Every link and reminder stops, and the status changes to Voided. Actions already taken stay in the audit trail. You can't undo this.
Voiding asks for a Reason. Everyone who was invited gets a short email saying the envelope was voided, with your reason, including people who already signed. The reason is saved in the audit trail and shown on the envelope page. If you void several envelopes at once, one reason applies to all of them. Archiving a sent envelope voids it with the reason "The sender archived this envelope." The Voided notice setting under Settings → Notifications controls these emails.
Archive moves an envelope to Archived and keeps its documents and audit trail. Void and archive does both. Click Restore to bring an archived envelope back.
Completion and downloads
When everyone who acts has finished, the envelope becomes Completed. While eSignStack prepares the final PDF, the status reads Preparing documents. If preparation fails, an owner or admin can click Retry preparation.
People who get a copy, and anyone with Email them the signed copy turned on, are emailed the completed documents.
On the envelope's page:
- Download gets All documents (one PDF) or each document on its own
- Download original PDF gets the documents as sent, without signatures
- Evidence and certificate in the side panel has the certificate and evidence files, when available
To start a new envelope with the same documents, recipients and fields, click Duplicate.
Signing certificate
The completed PDF ends with a signing certificate. It lists the envelope's details, its documents, each recipient and copy recipient, and the audit trail with every action and its time. Approvals and acknowledgments appear here even though nothing is added to the document pages.
To check that a completed PDF hasn't been changed, see Verify a document.
Do the same with the API
You can send, remind, extend, void and download envelopes with the API, and get webhooks when they change. Resend is only available in the app; use the API's remind call instead. See Envelopes API and the API reference.