Practice Tip: Electronic Signing
Lots of technology has moved from “could use” to “must use” in the last 3 months. One of those is e-signing documents. Making it easy for clients to sign and return documents benefits not only the clients but your practice.
Especially when dealing with clients who are quarantined at home and don’t have access to scanning, faxes, etc., our shift to using an eSignature program has made things a lot easier – on us and our clients! Our office has done this by subscribing to an electronic signature service which enables our clients to sign documents quickly and effectively on their computer, smartphone, or tablet. Retainer letters and credit card authorization forms get returned in record time when a client does not have to print, sign, scan and email a document back to you.
We looked at a few services when we were considering making the change to eSignatures including PandaDoc, HelloSign, DocuSign and AdobeSign. Look and see what works best for your firm. Some things to consider in your decision: how many senders you will want on your plan, do you need it to integrate with software you have, do you want to be able to upload templates, and how much is your budget.
Pricing is complicated…it is based on lots of different variables so it can be difficult to compare but ranges between $0-$50 per month. PandaDoc is only $9 for their entry level plan but you can only send 5 documents per month and then it jumps to $49. With HelloSign (which we use) you can send unlimited documents for $15 but only one sender and one template. DocuSign is the same as Panda but $10 a month then jumps to $25 and then $50 depending on the features you want. Adobe starts at $20.99 but did not seem as user friendly as the other programs and is geared towards Microsoft Outlook users. Last point: Integration is big…you should pick one that integrates with the software you have.
To read our first article, discussing Faces on Screens vs. Masks in Person, click here.
To read our article discussing the differences between child support in NY and NJ, click here.