Forem: PDFAutoSigner

INFOGRAPHIC – YOUR GUIDE TO DOCUMENT SIGNING SOFTWARE

PDFAutoSigner — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 06:30:51 +0000

Every business (whether small or big) produces tonnes of documents like sales invoices, business contracts, purchase notes, credit notes, etc. These documents do require the signature of the respective signatory. This guide is designed to give you complete information about how to document signing software that can ease the process of document signing.

Every signatory, on average, signs 5-10 documents per day.

That amounts to roughly 300 signs per month.

What is more? these documents need to be printed and managed separately which calls for different efforts as well as cost. Some stats say that 20% of the staff time gets consumed in searching for physical documents.

Mounting costs to manage documents call for some sort of automation that can reduce all the efforts to sign documents, not only that, it should also make locating documents as easy as possible when needed.

If you have been experiencing the mounting pressure of signing the document, then read on for the available solution.

Before you jump on the more details of this article, I have a gift for you which could be your handy guide. Yes, I will offer you an infographic at the end of this article.

What is document signing software?

Traditionally document signing has been a tedious task for signatories within a department or sometimes spread across the various departments. This effort sometimes takes multiple hours or days.

To address these challenges, we have come up with document signer software. It completely removes your effort of printing the documents and asking respective signatories to sign it manually. This software requires a digital signature token of the respective signatories to be configured.

Document signing software is the app that automates the manual signing efforts.

This software is generally a computer application that gets installed on an individual computer or server. It automates the document signing function automatically.

How document signing software works

If you have understood about document signing software from the above step, then let’s get deeper into how it actually works.

As document signing software is designed to reduce all your manual efforts to sign documents, it also needs to be configured before this software can be actually used. Here I will be focusing on how this software works rather than how it can be configured.

If you are a starter at this software then how to configure document signing software is your guide.

General steps:

Digital signature profile configuration
Input file repository configuration
On-page signing location configuration
File output repository configuration

In case you want to drill deeper then here is a step by step guide to sign PDF documents digitally. This is a detailed guide that explains how this software actually works to ease your document signing efforts.

Meanwhile, I have a quick video tutorial that is a really easy and short guide that explains what it actually does.

Now that you have probably understood how this software actually works, then this the best time that I can walk you through the benefits of the software.

Benefits of document signing software

Softwares are generally designed to ease some type of manual effort that takes time to execute. It provides some functionalities that are most sought-after for user convenience.

For that matter, this software also provides you benefits that are designed to ease out manual efforts. Below are benefits of the same,

It eliminates the need for physical paper.
Signed documents are legally valid and accepted across every business.
No dependency on various signatories or departments for signing.
Document location gets easy for future reference.
Reduces staff time and effort to manage the physical documents.
Eliminates any mistakes while manual signing.

There are many other benefits of document signing software but I have tried to give you the most relevant benefits.

If you have been using any document signing software then here is your chance to get a PDF signer software trial. This is the industry-leading software that is fully automatic for your document signing need.

As per my promise, below is your infographic. Keep it handy when you need to understand document signing software in a minute.

Don’t forget to share your comments on which document signing software you have been using and what is that feature that you liked most in the software.

How to Digitally Sign PDF Documents

PDFAutoSigner — Fri, 22 Nov 2019 11:40:12 +0000

Note: This guide considers that you have a digital signature token and have installed the PDF signer software. In case you don’t have a digital signature then you can buy digital signature online. Also, you have installed a PDF document signer software.

1.Signatory Profile Configuration

This is the most important step, ones configured you will be signing the document automatically with ease.

A) Profile Name:

You have to insert any naming convention i.e. “Test”, “Invoices” for your reference.

B) Status:

Checkmark it as enabled which will let you digitally sign your PDF documents automatically one’s configured.

C) Token Brand:

Basically, it indicates the DSC (Digital Signature Certificates) token brand which you are using to sign PDF documents. In the drop-down menu, there are some known brands, if they don’t fall in that field then just select “others”.

D) Token PKCS11 Library:

Locate the .dll file under the driver folder of your respective token (ideally you should find this file under System32 folder)

E) Select Token:

Once browsed the file just click on the “Get tokens” button, it will automatically display the DSC token brand name.

F) Token Password:

Just enter your DSC Token password which you had set up while setting up the DSC Token.

G) Select Certificate for Signing:

By entering the correct Token Password it will display the Digital Signature Certificate. If in case there is more than one Certificate select the correct one and Click “Get Certificates”.

Recheck the entire field once again, if there is any error then rectify it and proceed by click on the “Signature Appearance” tab.

2.On-Page Signature Placement Configuration

(This is the step which allows us to configure signature placement on the page.)

A) Signature Box Type:

In this field select the following type “Text only”, “Image only”, “Image & Text”, “Invisible” according to your signature preferences. If it’s just a signature then select the Text only in the drop-down menu and if its signature with company logo then selects Image & Text.

B) Image Path:

If you are inserting the Company logo or signature image if any then browse it for the folder in the computer where it is placed.

C) Signature Box Location:

In this field, it lets the user select the placement of the signature according to their needs.

There are four types of Placement they are as followed:

-Bottom left which allows the signature to place at the bottom left of the page.
-The bottom right which allows the signature to place at the right of the page.
-Absolute allows placing the signature anywhere on the page.
-Custom Text which allows the placement of the signature above the custom text in the page mention in the custom text field.

D) Height/Width:

The user can insert the number according to their need for the position of the signature box on the page in the attribution of height and width. Then further click on the “Pages to Sign” tab.

Signing reason and Signing location are optional.

3. Signature Page Configuration

(Here we configure the page to be signed)

A) Select Pages to Sign:

User can select multiple options such as:

All Field: It is for signing all the pages.
First Field: It is for signing the first page only.
Last Field: It is for signing the last page only.
Even Field: It is for signing the even pages.
Odd Field: It is for signing the odd pages
Range Field: It is for signing the selected range of the pages.
Custom Field: It allows signing the selected pages mentioned in the custom Pages field.

B) Custom Page:

In this field, the user can mention the custom pages that are to sign i.e. 1,2,5,6 pages.

C) Page Range:

In this field, the user can mention the range for signing PDF documents. The user has to enter the start and the end page i.e. starting from the 5th page to ending on the 15th page.

Now let’s move on to the next step “Watch Folders” to configure the folders.

4. Folder Configuration

A) Unsigned PDF Folder Location:

Just locate the folder where you want to assign all unsigned PDF documents. This is the folder where users have to drop the unsigned PDF documents and software will pick the file from here to digitally sign PDF. Also, give a proper naming convention to the folder.

B) Signed PDF Folder Location:

User has to set the path for output (signed) files

This is the folder location where the signed PDF documents are saved after placing unsigned PDF documents in the input folder.

C) Logs Folder Location:

Locate the logs folder with proper naming and placement. Logs folder is where the log file is placed which displays the status type as success or failure of the signing process of PDF documents with additional information of Date, Profile, and Description.

Now your PDF signer software has configured completely all you have to do is:

Place your unsigned PDF documents in the input folder.
And get your digitally signed PDF documents in the output folder automatically.
It’s that simple!

You can read this full article on How to digitally Sign PDF Documents