E-signatures for agencies

What paperwork moves through an agency?

Agencies usually work under a master services agreement with each client, then a statement of work for each project or retainer period. The SOW is where disputes start: deliverables, number of revision rounds, the date the client must supply copy and assets. A signed SOW is the document the account team points to when the scope creeps.

Behind the client work sits the agency's own supply chain. Freelance designers, developers and photographers each need a contract that assigns their work to the agency, so the agency can in turn assign it to the client.

• Master services agreement
• Statement of work per project or retainer
• Change requests and quote approvals
• Freelancer and subcontractor agreements
• Mutual NDAs before pitches

Where agency signing stalls

The person who briefed the agency is rarely the person allowed to sign. A marketing manager approves the SOW in a meeting, then it waits a fortnight for a finance director or procurement team to countersign. Meanwhile the deadline has not moved.

Change requests are smaller but more frequent. A client who approves an extra landing page in a Slack message will often dispute the bill a month later. Getting a one-page change request signed takes a minute and ends that argument.

How agencies use Sign PDF for an SOW

Set up the SOW once as a template and each new project is a short edit.

• Upload the SOW. Sign PDF places boxes for the Agency and Client signatories, plus name, job title and date.
• Type 'client marketing lead signs, then client finance director' to add a second client signer in order.
• Add a personal message summarising the fee and start date, and set an expiry so the quoted price does not stay open forever.
• Switch on reminders, then send.
• Use a shorter change request template for extra work, with a free-text field for the cost and a checkbox for approval.

What an agency pays

Light at $5 a month for 2 documents only suits a very small studio taking on a couple of projects a month. Full at $10 a month is the usual choice: unlimited SOWs, change requests and freelancer contracts, with templates and reminders.

One SOW signed by three people on the client side counts as one document. Drafts you start for a pitch and never send are free.

What agencies will miss

There are no team seats. If several account managers need to send from one agency account, with shared templates and visibility over each other's documents, we are not set up for that yet. There is also no CRM or project management integration and no API.

We do not build proposal pages with pricing tables, interactive quotes or payment collection. Agencies that sell through a designed proposal and want the signature inside it should look at a proposal tool.