Proposals (Basic): Manage signers & signature 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 and set up which account users will be required to sign. Here, we will explain this in detail, along with a guide on viewing if a proposal is signed.

Signers in proposals, explained

If you have only one contact in the account, then the signing logic is simple—you send a proposal, the client signs, and that’s it. However, what if you have multiple contacts in the account? Do they all need to sign it, or is one signature enough? How can I manage it?

It depends on your needs:

You're sending a proposal to a business client, and both the financial director and executive need to sign.
You're sending a proposal to an individual client (married couple), and either of the spouses can sign
You're sending a proposal to a client with dependents linked as contacts; only the main contact can sign.

All cases could be easily handled on TaxDome using the following features:

Signatory authority: An individual contact's right to sign. If you know that some contacts shouldn't be able to sign (e.g., dependents), disable it beforehand.
The Signature requirement setting: When preparing a template or sending a proposal, you can decide if you need signatures from all contacts or only one.
Managing signers: Even when your proposal is already sent, you can check and delete the unneeded signers.

Signatory authority

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

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, you set up whether all users with Signatory authority enabled must sign or only one of them for the proposal to be considered signed. If multiple users are signing and a proposal includes an invoice, all users can input the payment details before signing. However, inserting payment details is required only for the last one signing; for other signers, it can be skipped.
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.

Disable 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 or a dependant. Disabling the signatory authority for them will ensure the proposal or recurring invoice is sent only to the main contact.
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.

Signature requirement

By default, all account contacts with the signatory authority must sign a proposal. However, when you create a proposal or its template, you can select One signatory must sign in the Signature requirement dropdown. Then, after any signatory signs the proposal, its status changes to Signed. If the proposal impacts a job automove, the proposal is considered signed as well.

Manage signers

If you have sent a proposal already and want to remove one or more of its signers, you can do it:

1. Go to Billing > Proposals & ELs from the sidebar menu.

2. Click three dots next to the proposal you want to update and select Manage signers.

3. Remove one or more signers and click Apply. At least one of the contacts must remain on the list.

View client accounts with pending/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.