Your engagement letters come back signed, not chased

Four letters out on Monday. On Thursday, one is signed

You send four engagement letters on Monday morning. By Thursday one has come back properly. One arrived as a photograph of a printed page, taken at an angle, with the signature block cut off. One client is certain they never received it. One has not opened the email.

So on Thursday evening you write four follow-ups, and next Thursday you write three more. None of that work needed your judgement, your practising certificate or your twenty years of experience. It is the part of the week that is pure administration, and it is the part that reliably runs into your own time.

The same thing happens with tax return declarations in October, with financial statements before a lodgment date, and with every new client who has to be onboarded while you are already busy. The document is finished. The work is finished. The only thing missing is a signature, and the only tool you have for getting one is another email.

Siggy exists to remove that last step from your week. The client gets a link, signs on whatever device is in their hand, and the signed document comes back sealed — with a certificate that records exactly who signed what, and when. If they do not sign, Siggy asks them again. You do not.

Four steps, and the fourth one runs itself

There is nothing to learn. Siggy is deliberately built the way DocuSign and the other big platforms are built, because the point is not a new way of working — it is the same way of working, without the parts that waste your week.

• One — put the document in. Upload the PDF, or pick a template you have already built. Multiple documents can travel in one envelope and still come back as separate signed files.
• Two — put the fields where they go. Drag a signature, a date, a set of initials or a text box onto the page. On a template you do this once, ever.
• Three — say who signs, and in what order. Add recipients by email or mobile number. Sequential when the partner countersigns after the client, parallel when order does not matter. Add your own subject line and message if the covering email matters.
• Four — send, and stop thinking about it. Your client gets a link, consents, and signs on a phone, a tablet or a laptop. They do not create an account or install anything. Reminders go out automatically until they sign, and the moment the last person does, the sealed PDF and the Certificate of Completion are delivered to everyone.

If a client declines, you are told by email and the reason is on the record. If you sent the wrong version, you can correct the envelope and resend it, and the revision history keeps both. If a document is sensitive, you can require an access code before it opens, and that step is evidenced on the certificate.

What you are left holding when it is over

Every completed envelope produces two files: the signed document, sealed with a PAdES digital signature so any later change to it is detectable, and a Certificate of Completion. The certificate records every step of the signing — who was sent what, when they opened it, what they consented to, how they signed and what verification they passed — and each entry is hash-chained to the one before it, so the sequence cannot be quietly edited after the fact.

That matters because the reason to sign electronically is not convenience. It is that six years later, when someone asks how a client came to agree to a scope of work, you can produce a record instead of a recollection. Electronic signatures are recognised in Australia under the Electronic Transactions Act 1999 (Cth), which sets three conditions: the method must identify the signer and indicate their intention, it must be as reliable as appropriate in the circumstances, and the recipient must consent to it. Siggy is built to evidence all three, and we have written up what that means in practice: are electronic signatures legally binding in Australia?

Not every document is covered by the Act. Deeds, and the rules for witnessing a signature, differ from state to state, and some instruments — statutory declarations, wills, certain land dealings — have their own requirements. Rather than leave you to work that out, we have written the current position state by state: signing deeds and witnessing signatures electronically in Australia.

• Your data stays here. Siggy is Australian-owned and Australian-hosted, with documents, audit trails and certificates stored in Sydney.
• Personal information is handled under the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
• Two-factor authentication is compulsory on every Siggy account, not an option a busy practice forgets to switch on.
• The delivery is not left to chance. If the sealed copy fails to reach an address, Siggy retries rather than marking it sent and moving on.
• Your client never makes an account. The signing link is tokenised and single-purpose, which is also why clients actually finish.

Checking a client is who they say they are, at the moment they sign

On Professional and above you can require an identity check before a client can open the document. The check runs against the records of the authority that issued the identity document, matches a live face capture against the photo on it, and screens the individual against politically-exposed-person and global sanctions lists. The result is evidenced on the Certificate of Completion alongside the signature, so the verification and the document it belongs to are one record rather than two.

Siggy Australia is an accredited Identity Service Provider under the Australian Government's identity-verification framework, and every check runs with the client's express consent.

Checks are bought as prepaid packs and cost $6.00 per completed check on the largest pack. The rate improves with pack size and every pack price is on our pricing page — 5 for $35, 20 for $130, 50 for $300. Screening is part of the check, not an add-on priced separately.

Two obligations bring this into a small practice's week: the AML/CTF reforms that extended customer due-diligence duties to accounting services, and the Tax Practitioners Board's proof-of-identity expectations for client verification under TPB(GS) 42/2022. We have written both up for a practice of your size rather than for a compliance department: Tranche 2 for accountants · TPB proof-of-identity requirements · how to verify a client's identity online.

One thing worth knowing, because it surprises most principals: the TPB does not want you keeping photocopies of your clients' identity documents. A verification that checks the document against the issuing authority and records the outcome is a better answer than a folder of scans, and it is what Siggy produces. The detail is in our TPB article.

One number, in July as well as January

Professional is $15 a month for 100 envelopes and 5 seats, and it is the same $15 whether you send one envelope or 100. Pay annually and it is 20% less again. That is the whole invoice: no per-signature charge, no per-user charge, and no charge for the second document in a pack.

This sounds like a small point and it is not. Almost every other way of buying e-signing charges you on something that moves — and the thing it moves with is usually volume or headcount, which are the two things a growing practice adds.

If you want the arithmetic against a specific product, with their published prices, our prices and the date we checked both, that is what the comparison pages are for: Siggy vs DocuSign — where the envelope allowance is counted per user per year rather than per month — and Siggy vs Annature — the volume at which a flat plan overtakes a per-envelope rate, and what an identity check costs on each. Both carry sources and check dates, and both show their working.

And if you send only a handful of documents a month, do not buy anything yet. The free plan is $0 for 5 envelopes a month, one user, no credit card and no time limit. Start there, send a real engagement letter to a real client, and upgrade when the volume actually justifies it.

What breaks if you move

Nothing you would notice. Siggy is built to work the way the big platforms work — upload, place fields, add recipients, send — because a practice that has been sending documents for signature for five years should not have to relearn anything. If someone in your office has used DocuSign, they can use Siggy this afternoon.

There is no migration. Documents you have already had signed are finished records, not live data; they stay wherever you keep them. Nothing has to be exported, imported or reconciled.

The honest test takes about ten minutes and costs nothing. Sign up for the free plan, take the next engagement letter that was going out anyway, and send it through Siggy instead. Watch what your client does with it. If the signing experience does not land with them, you have lost ten minutes and no money.

On integrations: Xero and MYOB integrations are in build, and Siggy already has a REST API and webhooks on Business for practices that want to drive sending from their own systems. Tell us which system your practice runs on and we will tell you where it sits in the build — send us the name and it goes straight to the people writing it.