Proposals & Recurring Invoices: managing which contact(s) have signatory authority

Some of your accounts may have several contacts linked to them. When discussing proposals or recurring invoices, it's crucial to keep this in mind because you need to understand which users of the account will be required to sign. Here, we will explain this in detail along with a guide on viewing if a proposal is signed.

Covered here:

• Signatory authority, explained
• Disabling Signatory authority
• How do I know clients have signed a proposal?
• Viewing which client accounts have pending and/or partially signed proposals

Signatory authority, explained

The  Signatory authority setting in the account's profile is configured for each contact separately. Consider this setting as a type of 'access rights' for your clients. 

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Below, note how it says  Signatory authority beneath the contact’s email address.

When enabled, contacts can:

• Sign proposals and enter payment details for the invoices inside them.
• Sign recurring invoices and enter payment details for them. 

However, there is a difference in terms of how it works for both features: 

• For proposals, all users with Signatory authority enabled must sign (the last one who signs has to enter payment details if a proposal contains invoice). The proposal is considered signed when all users have signed. 
• For recurring invoices, at least one user with Signatory authority enabled must enter the payment details and sign. After one user has signed, a recurring invoice becomes active, and no other action is needed from the other contacts of the account.

Note the following about the  Signatory authority setting:

• ❌ If signatory authority is disabled for all the contacts linked to an account, there won’t be anyone to send a proposal/recurring invoice to—so if you try to do this, you’ll receive an error message and an Inbox+ notification with a list of accounts unable to sign. Such contacts will not receive any notifications.
• Once a proposal is sent, you cannot add signatories. To make changes, delete the proposal, select the desired settings for each contact, and send another one.
• If one contact signs a proposal and others do not but are then removed, the proposal will be considered fully signed. You’ll receive a notification letting you know in your Inbox+.

Disabling Signatory authority

By default, all contacts with login access have the  Signatory authority setting enabled. You can disable it by navigating to the Info tab of the client profile and clicking the three dots to the right of the name of the contact. 

This is when you may want to disable the signatory authority for the users: 

• One of the family account's contacts is a spouse. Disabling the signatory authority for them will speed up the signing of the proposal because only the main account user will need to sign.
• You have different company members added to the business account. Disabling the signatory authority for those of them who are not decision-makers can ensure that they will not sign the recurring invoice accidentally. 

How do I know clients have signed a proposal?

Once the user of an account has signed a proposal, you’ll receive a notification in your email and Inbox+. Click on the name of the document or on the Go to... link to review the signature status.

If multiple contacts linked to the account have Signatory authority enabled, you’ll see which ones have or haven’t signed the document.

Note! You can change your notification preferences anytime.

Viewing which client accounts have pending and/or partially signed proposals

You can see which proposals are partially signed by going to Billing > Proposals & ELs from the left menu bar or to the Proposals & ELs tab of a client account's profile. The first figure of the SIGNED column shows the number of contacts linked to the account who have signed the proposal; the second, the total number of signatories required.

It's also possible to filter your client account list to see which have partially signed proposals:

1. Go to Clients > Accounts from the left menu bar, then click the + Filter drop-down.

2. From   Proposals & ELs select Partially Signed.