Copies, hand-offs and declines
Documents go to the wrong person, land in the wrong inbox, and get refused. Each of those has one clean path, and none of them breaks the evidence.
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People who receive a copy
Someone copied is emailed at the start and at the end and has nothing to fill, and can be added at any point.
A recipient can sign or receive a copy. Someone copied is emailed when the document is sent and receives the signed PDF when it is complete, but never has anything to fill. You can add a copy after sending, and even after completion: they receive what exists at that moment, a link to follow along or the finished copy. Copies are free on every plan. A copy is not a seat, not a signature and not a document against your allowance.
Passing a document on
A signer passes the document to the right person, with their fields and their place in the order.
A signer who is not the right person can pass the document to the one who is, with a reason. Their own fields and place in the signing order go with it; their link stops working; the new person is emailed; you are told who passed it to whom and why, with replies going to the person who passed it on; and the trail shows both names. It happens once per signer: a second hand-off goes back through you. It cannot go to someone already on the document.
Hand-offs are allowed by default and can be turned off per document before sending. A signer of a document that does not allow them is asked to decline and say who should sign instead.
Declining
A signer refuses with a reason, nobody else can sign, and the reason reaches you and the trail.
A signer who is waiting to sign can decline, with a reason of up to 1,000 characters. The document is marked declined, nobody else can sign it, you are emailed the reason with replies going to the signer, and the decline and its reason are in the trail. To try again, send a fresh document.
A wrong name or address
What the page says when an email does not arrive, and how to correct a name or an address before they sign, on the certificate.
When an email does not get through, the document page says so beside the recipient rather than leaving you to wonder. Until a person has signed or declined, you can correct their name, their address, or both, from Actions on their row. A new name keeps their link. A new address stops the old link, clears anything filled in through it, and sends a new one when it is their turn; their fields and order stay as they were.
Each correction is in the document’s activity, and the certificate lists it under the person: what it was before, who corrected it, and when. Once someone has signed, their record stands and cannot be changed.
| Send the link again | For any signer who is still waiting. The old link dies; the new one is emailed. The trail records it. |
|---|---|
| Automatic reminders | On the schedule you chose, 3 and 7 days by default, counted from when each signer's turn starts, to a signer who has not signed. You can change it after sending. |
| Suggestions | When you type an address you have sent to before it is offered; an address that has bounced before is offered with a warning, not silently. |
Replies, and keeping your address private
Show your address, or keep it private behind a relay made for that one signer on that one document.
Every email about a document comes from ShareSign’s own domain, named for you: “Your name via ShareSign”. What happens when a signer presses Reply is yours to choose, in your profile. Show your address, and their reply comes straight to you. Keep it private, and the reply goes to a relay address made for that one signer on that one document; ShareSign passes it on to you, and your answer goes back the same way, so neither of you ever sees the other’s address. On the Business plan a confirmed reply-to address for the whole workspace takes the place of both.
| Who may use a relay address | Only the two people it joins: the signer it was made for (after a hand-off, the person it was handed to) and whoever owns the document. Mail from anyone else, mail that fails authentication, spam and automatic replies are not passed on. |
|---|---|
| Tagged addresses | A document sent to alice+lease@example.com is answered from alice@example.com by every large mail provider; the relay knows they are one mailbox. |
| Attachments | Passed on up to 25 MB a message. A larger one is refused, and the writer is told why. |
| How long it stays open | While the document is open, and for 30 days after it is completed, voided, declined or expired. After that the writer is told the conversation is closed. |
| What is kept | What happened to each message: passed on, or why not. The message itself is never stored. |
If a signer thinks something is wrong
A signer reports a document they do not trust, and it reaches us rather than the sender.
Every signing page lets the signer report the document: that it looks like fraud or phishing, that they do not know the sender or were not expecting it, or that something else is wrong. A report reaches us, not the sender, and we answer within two working days. Nobody is asked to sign anything they do not trust, and a signer never needs an account, so there is nothing for a bad actor to harvest.
What every one of these events leaves in the record is on how a signature holds up.
Tell us what you were trying to do and we will fix the page. Write from the support page.
Last changed 18 September 2026.