Introducing sequential signing

Most e-signature tools treat a document like a petition: everyone gets the link at once, and whoever signs first, signs first. That's fine for a one-signer proposal. It falls apart the moment a document has to move through a chain of approvals — the CEO shouldn't be asked to sign something the project lead hasn't approved, and legal shouldn't see it until both have.

Documents in ManageIt now support a sequential signing mode. Drag your signers into order, send once, and each person is notified only when it's their turn. Everyone else waits — and can see exactly where the document is in the queue.

How it works

On any draft document with multiple signers, switch the signing mode from parallel to sequential and drag the signer cards into order. When you send, only the first signer gets the request. The moment they sign, the next one is notified — and so on down the queue until the document flips to signed and the next step in your workflow unlocks.

Signers who open their link before their turn see the queue and a plain message: it isn't your turn yet. No confusing dead buttons, no accidental out-of-order signatures.

Declines are the interesting part

A chain is only as useful as its failure mode. When someone declines, you decide — per document — what that means:

• Void everything. The document is voided, along with everything after it in the workflow. The default, because a rejected contract shouldn't quietly turn into an invoice.
• Skip and continue. The decline is logged with its reason, and the queue moves to the next signer.

A rejected contract shouldn't quietly turn into an invoice.

The compliance story doesn't change

Every signature in the chain still captures the full evidence set — explicit consent, IP address, browser, timezone and timestamp — and the document is hashed at signing. Sequential mode adds one more thing to the record: the order itself, with who was notified when, and who was skipped and why.

Try it

Sequential signing is live for every plan with e-signatures, on every new or draft document with more than one signer. Open the signers section on the edit page, switch the mode, and drag. The full detail is on the documents & e-signatures page.