Everything you need to know about using SignLab
Go to Settings in the sidebar to update your company name. Your logo and accent colour (which appear on the signing page and signer emails) are part of the Branded feature.
Agents are team members who can send documents on behalf of your company. Go to Agents → Invite Agent and enter their email address. They'll receive an invitation email to set up their account.
In Settings you can choose how dates and times appear when placeholders are auto-filled into your documents (e.g. {{signing_date}}, {{start_time}}). Defaults are DD/MM/YYYY and 24-hour time; the alternatives are DD Mon YYYY (e.g. "01 Jan 2026") and 12-hour AM/PM. The setting applies to every document sent from that point on.
Go to Templates → Create Template. Write your document content using the rich text editor. Use the toolbar to format text, adjust font size, add alignment, or insert a divider line.
If your document already exists in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, you don't need to retype it. Just open the doc, select the content (Cmd/Ctrl + A), copy it (Cmd/Ctrl + C), and paste it into the editor (Cmd/Ctrl + V). SignLab automatically cleans up the Microsoft-specific formatting cruft while preserving what matters:
Page-level layout (margins, headers, footers, page breaks) is not preserved — signing templates are continuous documents, not paged ones. You'll generally want to do a quick visual review after pasting to check that everything looks right.
Placeholders are tags in your template that get replaced with real values when a document is sent or signed. Click any placeholder in the guide panel to insert it at your cursor position.
Archiving a template hides it from the active list but keeps all previously sent documents intact. You can restore an archived template at any time from Templates → View Archived, subject to your plan's template limit.
Each template specifies how the signer completes the document. Pick the option that matches your legal / process requirement:
The chosen method is locked onto each document at send time, so changing the template later doesn't change documents already in flight.
By default, both the sender and the signer receive the final signed PDF by email after completion. You can turn off the signer's copy per-template via the "Email signed copy to signer" toggle in the template editor.
Turn this off for confidential or internal documents — HR contracts, NDAs, performance reviews — where you'd rather the signed PDF stay on SignLab's servers only. The sender always receives a copy regardless. The signed PDF is also always available from the document detail page in SignLab.
When creating or editing a template, toggle Require countersignature. Documents created from that template need both the recipient and a designated team member (admin or agent) to sign before they're finalised. Useful for contracts, agreements, or anything where two parties need to put their name on the document.
The signer receives an email with a secure, unique link. The link expires after 30 days.
Instead of using a template, you can upload a ready-made PDF and place fields directly on it: go to Documents → Send PDF, choose your file, add your signers, then click and drag on the pages to place Signature, Text, or Date zones. Each zone belongs to a specific party — pick who it's for before drawing it. Date zones fill in automatically with the date that party completes the document (the send date for your own fields, or the day each signer signs) — no one types a date.
Multiple signers: add up to 5 signers, each with their own email (and optional WhatsApp number). Everyone is invited at once and can sign in any order; each signer gets their own private signing link and only completes the fields assigned to them. You're notified as each one signs, and the final document — with every signature stamped on your original pages plus an appended audit-trail page — is generated and emailed to everyone once the last signer finishes. Every signer needs at least one signature zone.
Vendor fields (your side): assign zones to Vendor (you) to have your own content stamped automatically when you send — text and date values are typed in while placing, and vendor signature zones use your saved profile signature (add one under Profile → Your signature first). The uploaded file itself is never altered. Uploaded-PDF documents always use the drawn-signature method and don't support countersignatures. Up to 15 MB; password-protected PDFs aren't supported.
Open the document and click Resend. A new email is sent to the signer with the same link. Use this if the signer didn't receive the original email — this is independent of automatic reminders (see next section), so you can nudge a signer manually at any time.
If you entered a WhatsApp number when sending, a Share via WhatsApp button appears on the document page. Clicking it opens WhatsApp with a pre-filled message containing the signing link.
Open the document and click Revoke. The signing link is immediately invalidated and the signer can no longer sign. This cannot be undone.
SignLab automatically nudges signers who haven't completed a document yet, so you don't have to chase them manually. Each pending document can receive up to four reminder emails on this schedule:
Each reminder uses the same visual style as the original signature request but with a "Reminder" banner. Every reminder is recorded in the document's audit trail and appears in the final signed PDF.
Open any pending document — the side panel shows Auto-reminders: X / 4 sent · last X days ago once at least one reminder has fired. The full timeline at the bottom of the page also logs each reminder.
The signer receives an email with a secure link. Clicking it opens a clean signing page showing your company name (or logo), the document content, and a signature pad. No account or login is required.
The signer draws their signature using their mouse, trackpad, or finger on a touchscreen. They can click Clear to start over.
What the signer needs to do depends on the signing method set on the template:
Once submitted, the document is finalised. A signed PDF is generated server-side and (by default) emailed to both the signer and your company — see Templates for how to suppress the signer's copy for confidential documents.
After the recipient signs, the document moves to Awaiting Countersign and the designated countersigner (admin or agent) gets an email. They open the document in their dashboard and either click Use Saved Signature (if they've saved one on their profile) or draw a new one — both signatures then appear side-by-side on the final PDF.
The document status changes to Signed. You can download or preview the signed PDF from the document detail page. The level of detail included in the PDF depends on your plan:
The full event timeline is always available inside your SignLab dashboard regardless of plan, so you can audit everything from the document detail page.
Placeholders are inserted into your template using double curly braces, e.g. {{signer_name}}. They are automatically replaced with real values when the document is viewed or signed.
| Placeholder | Description |
|---|---|
| {{signer_name}} | Full name of the signer |
| {{signer_email}} | Email address of the signer |
| {{signer_phone}} | Phone / WhatsApp number (optional) |
| Placeholder | Description |
|---|---|
| {{company_name}} | Your company name from Settings |
| {{signing_date}} | The date the document is signed |
| {{document_id}} | A unique 8-character document reference |
Placeholders use double curly braces with a key inside. The key can be lower or upper case and may contain letters, digits, and underscores — for example {{Position}}, {{client_id}}, or {{ reference }} (spaces inside the braces are fine). When the template is saved, all keys are normalised to lowercase, so {{Position}} and {{position}} behave as the same field.
If a placeholder isn't filled in when the document is sent, it shows up in the signed document as a subtle [not provided] note rather than the literal {{key}} text.
You can turn any placeholder into a dropdown by listing the options after the name, separated by pipe characters (|). When sending a document, you'll pick from the list instead of typing the value freely — useful for fields like job titles, departments, or anything with a fixed set of valid answers.
Example — in the template:
Position: {{role|Manager|Director|VP|CEO}}
Using the @ shortcut: type @role|Manager|Director|VP|CEO and press Enter or click outside the editor. The text converts automatically. Options can contain spaces (e.g. Senior Manager) — pipes are the only separator.
Add a type after the placeholder name (separated by a colon) to control what kind of input the send form shows:
The @ shortcut works too: @notes:textarea converts to {{notes:textarea}}.
Start a placeholder name with signer_ (or type @signer- in the editor) and the field is completed by the signer on the signing page rather than by you at send time — useful for details only the signer knows, like an ID number or emergency contact.
Example: {{signer_id_number}} or {{signer_comments:textarea}}. Until signed, these show as an amber [Completed by signer] marker in previews; the signer must fill every one before they can sign. (signer_name, signer_email, and signer_phone are exceptions — those are system fields you provide when sending.)
When you create a new account and choose any paid plan (Lite, Starter, Business, or Enterprise), you automatically get a 14-day free trial — no credit card required to sign up. During the trial, you have full access to your plan's features and limits.
The trial is granted once per company at the time of registration. You'll receive a reminder email 3 days before it ends. After the trial, your plan activates and your card is charged — or you can leave your account on the Free plan without entering payment details.
To activate your subscription during the trial, go to Billing in the sidebar and click Subscribe to [Plan]. This saves your payment method and schedules the first charge for when the trial ends. If the trial expires before you subscribe, your account moves to the Free plan — you can still subscribe to a paid plan after that, but no trial will apply.
Your plan determines how many documents you can send per month, how many templates you can have, and how many agents you can invite. Your current usage is shown on the Dashboard and in the sidebar quota bar — visible to admins and agents on every page.
Go to Billing in the sidebar to view available plans. All changes take effect immediately and are prorated to the day. Upgrades charge the difference to your card straight away. Downgrades apply the unused credit to your Stripe account balance, which reduces your next invoice — no refund is issued to your card. Yearly plans give you 2 months free versus paying monthly.
The monthly document limit resets approximately every month from your billing start date. If you reach your limit, you won't be able to send new documents until the period resets or you upgrade.
If a payment fails, your account stays fully active for 2 days while we wait for the payment to clear — you'll see an amber banner with the deadline. After 2 days, the account is automatically paused: existing signed documents stay accessible, but you can't send new ones until the payment method is updated. Use Manage billing in the banner to update your card.
If your needs don't fit a standard plan — higher limits, multiple teams, or specific requirements — contact us and we'll set up a custom plan for you.
Signed documents on Business and Enterprise plans include a unique QR code embedded in the PDF. Scanning the QR code or visiting signlab.app/verify lets anyone confirm a document was genuinely signed through SignLab — without needing a SignLab account.
Free, Lite, and Starter plan documents do not include public verification or QR codes. Their PDFs still carry the full audit trail (Lite / Starter) but recipients cannot independently verify the file via signlab.app/verify. Upgrade to Business or Enterprise to enable third-party verification.
There are three ways to verify a signed document at signlab.app/verify:
A1B2C3D4). Type it at signlab.app/verify to see the document details.sha256sum document.pdf), paste it on the verify page to check it matches.The verification page confirms: the signer's name, the company that requested the signature, the date and time of signing, and the document template name. It also shows the SHA-256 hash of the signed PDF for integrity checking.
Signed PDFs are never publicly downloadable — the verification page shows metadata only. To obtain a copy of the signed document, contact the company that requested your signature.
The premium signed PDF shows two identifiers in the Document Integrity card on page 2:
1NGLNMFRQE) that's also printed in every page footer. This is the verification key — type it at signlab.app/verify, paste it into a URL like signlab.app/verify/1NGLNMFRQE, or scan the QR code.A SHA-256 hash is a cryptographic fingerprint of a file. If even one character in a PDF is changed after signing, the hash changes completely. By comparing your copy's hash to the one stored at signing time, you can confirm the document is authentic and unmodified.