A signer’s guide

Someone has sent you a document to sign with SignSwifly. This guide is for you, the person signing: what the email is, how signing works on a phone or a computer, and where your copy is afterwards.

You don’t need a SignSwifly account, a password or an app. Everything happens in your web browser, from the link in your email.

The email

The invitation is sent by SignSwifly for the person who sent you the document. Its subject reads like Please sign: Lease renewal — from Alex Citizen, Acme Property. Someone sending for themselves, with no organisation, is named on their own. It names who sent it and the document, may carry a message from them, and has a Review and sign button with the link written out under it. It may carry the sender’s logo, or come from their organisation’s own email address, but signing links always start https://anz.signswifly.com.au/sign/. If the sender added your mobile number, the link may be texted to you as well. Someone with no email address gets it by text only.

The link is yours alone. Don’t forward it: whoever holds it can open the document as you. If someone else should sign, ask the sender: the signing page can’t hand it on.
If you weren’t expecting it, don’t sign anything. Check with the person named in it, using contact details you already have for them.
If the sender turned reminders on, you’re reminded as often as they chose while it waits for you, and once a day in the last 3 days before it expires. The last one, within a day of the deadline, says Final notice. Each has a link, and the links you were sent before keep working too.
If the sender gives you longer, you’re emailed a New deadline. A New signing link email brings another link: the ones before it keep working, unless it says they don’t.
Sent to a signing group you’re in, the email says Please sign for the group, with a Review and claim button. Read the document if you like, then choose Claim and sign: you sign as yourself, for the group, and the others’ links stop working.
Copied in as a viewer, you have nothing to sign. You can read the documents, and download the signed copy from the same link once everyone has signed.

Agreeing to sign electronically

The link opens the signing page. It says who sent the document and, if there’s a deadline, by when it needs signing. Before the document opens, you’re asked to accept the Electronic Record and Signature Disclosure. It says that your electronic signature binds you as a handwritten one would, what SignSwifly records while you take part (the time of each step, your IP address and your browser), how you’ll get your copies, and how to withdraw.

Choose the disclosure’s name to read it in full. Print or save keeps a copy for your records.
Tick I agree to use electronic records and signatures. Ticking the box is your agreement, and the document opens below it.

If you’d rather not sign electronically, don’t tick it. You can decline (see below), or contact the person who sent it about another way, such as on paper.

Filling it in and signing

Read the document. The fields waiting for you are highlighted, and Next field takes you to each one you still have to fill in. List of fields to fill in shows them all, optional ones included.
Tap or click a field to fill it in. Some fill themselves in as you sign, such as the date and your name. Your name is the one the sender gave: if it’s wrong, ask them to correct it before you sign.
When everything that must be filled in is done, choose Complete signing.

If there are several documents, they’re shown one at a time: Next document moves on.
If the sender left it to you to name a witness, or the person who signs after you, you’re asked for their name and email when you choose Complete signing. Sometimes a mobile number will do instead of an email.
If a field asks you to attach a file, it can be up to 15 MB, and the field may say which kinds it takes. The file is saved with the envelope as soon as you attach it, and Remove takes it off again while you’re still signing. If the field says so, a PDF or a picture (PNG or JPEG) is added as pages at the end of the signed document; such a PDF can have up to 300 pages, and one that can’t be opened safely isn’t attached, and the page says so: save it as a PDF again (for example, print it to PDF) and attach that copy.
If your witness signs on your device, straight after you, the page asks you to hand it to them once you’ve signed. A witness on a link of their own is emailed it as soon as you’ve signed.
Nothing is signed until you choose Complete signing.

On a phone or tablet

It works in a current Safari, Chrome, Edge or Firefox. There’s nothing to install. An iPhone or iPad needs version 15.4 or later of iOS or iPadOS.
−, Fit and + at the top zoom the page, up to 300%. Fit makes it as wide as your screen. While you’re zoomed in, the middle button shows the zoom: tap it to fit again.
Lists, ticks and attachments open in a panel of their own, with controls big enough to tap, however small the box on the page. Where the choices are separate buttons on the page, tap the one you want.
What you’ve filled in is kept in that browser tab if the page reloads, or if your phone closes it in the background while you fetch a photo. A file you attach is saved straight away.
If the link opened inside your email app and a download doesn’t work, open the link in Safari or Chrome instead.

Your signature: Draw, Use text or Upload image

The first time you tap a signature or initials box, you’re asked for your full name and initials, and how you’d like to sign:

Draw: sign with your finger, a mouse or a pen. Clear starts again.
Use text: your full name or your initials, written in a handwriting style. Choose this if you can’t draw on your device.
Upload image: a photo or scan of your signature, as a PNG or JPEG, up to 10 MB.

Choose Insert signature, or Insert initials if it was an initials box you tapped. Your signature, and your initials, then go into each signature and initials box you tap. When Next field takes you to one, choose Insert again. Tap a signed box again to change your signature, which changes it in every box, or choose Remove from this box to clear just that one.

If you have a SignSwifly account and you’re signed in on that browser, your default saved signature is there to start from.

Signing in person, on a device the sender hands you, you can draw or use text, but not upload an image: the photos on that device aren’t yours.

Declining

If you won’t sign, choose Decline, in the bar at the foot of the page. Say why if you like, then confirm. Declining ends the signing for everyone, not just for you, and the sender is told, with your reason. If you change your mind afterwards, contact the sender: they can send you a new one.

An Approve or Decline button in a box inside the document is different: it only records your answer to that item, and you carry on signing.

Your copy

When you’ve signed, the page says whether others still have to. Once everyone has:

You’re emailed that everyone has signed, if the sender chose to send that email. Its subject starts Completed:, and it has a Download the signed documents button. If the sender chose to, the signed files are attached too, when they fit in the email.
Your signing link becomes your download page. Open it, or the most recent email about the document, for each signed document you were given and the certificate of completion. If the sender asked for everything as one PDF, and you were given every document, that’s there too.
Each file has its own button, such as Signed lease.pdf, that downloads it (on an iPhone, to Files, under Downloads). View beside it opens it in your browser.
Your copies stay there for as long as they’re kept available, so save them somewhere of your own. If the page or the email gives a date your access ends, download them before then.
If you signed in person on the sender’s device, there’s no link for you to download from. You may still be emailed when everyone has signed, with the files attached if the sender chose that. Otherwise, ask the sender for a copy, or email SignSwifly support.

To check that a copy you’re given is genuine and unchanged, see Download and verify.

Questions

The page says it’s not my turn yet.

The people before you still have to sign. Keep the link: it works once they have, and you’ll be emailed as well.

I’m asked for a code from my mobile.

The sender asked for a check that whoever opens the link also holds your phone. A 6-digit code is texted to the number they have for you, and the page shows the end of it. Enter the code to carry on. It lasts 10 minutes, and Send another code sends a new one, up to 5 codes in all. After that, or if the number isn’t yours, contact the sender.

The page says the link has expired.

The time to sign ran out. What you typed wasn’t kept, but any file you attached had already gone to the sender. Ask the sender to send it again.

Nobody told me it had ended.

If the sender voids it, someone else declines it, or the time to sign runs out, you aren’t emailed. The signing page says so when you open your link.

The page says the link doesn’t work.

A link stops working when the sender corrects your details, or when SignSwifly support replaces it. Use the link in the most recent email about the document.

I’m asked to sign as a witness.

You sign after the person you’re witnessing. If you’re signing on a link of your own, it’s emailed to you as soon as they’ve signed, even if others are still to sign; if you’re signing on their device, they hand it to you straight after they sign. Before you sign, you confirm that you saw them sign the document. If you’re on a link of your own, you also say how you saw it: in person, in the same room as them, or by video call, watching as they signed.

I have a question about the document itself.

Ask the person who sent it: their name and contact details are at the top of the signing page. SignSwifly can’t advise on what a document says. For help with signing itself, contact SignSwifly support.

Each page’s words are read out as the PDF holds them, and List of fields to fill in takes you to each field. A scanned page has no words to read out: ask the sender for an accessible copy.

What happens to my information?

The Privacy Policy explains what SignSwifly collects and why. It’s linked at the foot of every signing page.