[Account Owner] Get Started with eSignatures: Enabling/Disabling, Creating Templates & Permissions (Dropbox Sign)

In this Article:

Important: Dropbox Sign no longer supports using Safari 11 or below and will no longer work in Internet Explorer 11. We suggest using Chrome or Firefox.

AdvicePay offers built-in eSignature functionality through a partnership with Dropbox Sign to allow you to get financial planning agreements and other documents signed as part of your payment requests or independently. Easily upload your templates and become more efficient instantly!

📍 Watch this video demo on how to use eSignature

How to Enable

To enable: Go to Firm Settings > eSignature and click Enable eSignature. 

Select that you want to turn on eSignatures on your account using Dropbox Sign:

Please note that our Dropbox Sign integration does not connect or link to any existing Dropbox Sign accounts you may have set up outside AdvicePay. It is a standalone "account" only available in AdvicePay!

Choose which Offices will have access to eSignature (Advisor Segmentation)

If you are interested in learning more about how Advisor Segmentation can be used for your firm, check out this article: A Guide to Advisor Segmentation

This setting allows your firm to choose which Offices they would like to grant access to their eSignature documents. With this setting, your firm can designate specific Offices to use separate workflows (including Engagements and eSignature) that can differ from Offices within the same firm.


The Office options available within this setting are All, Some, (select one or multiple Offices), or None.

To learn more about Offices, check out this article: Setting Up and Managing Offices

Managing eSignature Permissions + Enable Signer PINs

By default all advisors with billing permissions on your account can send out their own eSignature templates to clients. To disable this so that advisors can only use templates that you add for firm-wide use, as well as prevent advisors from removing Roles you've set up when they send a document:


1. Under  Firm Settings > eSignature toggle Upload Templates to off (greyed out)

2. Click Save

Additionally, you can enable a signer PIN to make the signing process more secure:

1. Under  Firm Settings > eSignature toggle Enable signer PIN to on

2. Click  Save


When turned on, signees will receive a separate email with a PIN included that will allow them to proceed with signing a document. 

This PIN email will only be sent after the signee clicks on the initial link to sign.

To maintain security, BCC recipients established on your account will not be BCC'd on the PIN email. Instead, you can verify it was sent successfully by visiting the Email Log and looking for the subject line Your signature request PIN from [Your Firm Name]. (PINs will be hidden.)

Client can't find their PIN email?


No worries! By going to Documents and selecting Send Reminder on their document, your client will immediately receive a new email inviting them to sign.


After clicking to sign, a new PIN email will be sent from our system at info@app.advicepay.com. We recommend that your client add this address to their Contacts or "safe sender" list. 😀

Enabling a signer PIN will only apply to future documents sent. Any existing documents already sent out for signature at the time of modifying this setting will not require signers to enter a PIN.

Enable Primary Agreement changes

This setting will allow the Home Office to control whether or not to allow advisors in the firm to send out another document when edits are performed on subscriptions. Depending on your firm, you may or may not want to allow an additional document to be sent out.

Create Signers

By default all advisors on the account are permitted to manually enter any email address for signer.

To disable this setting so that advisors can only select AdvicePay users as signers, toggle Allow advisors to manually create signers to off.

If disabled, when sending documents advisors must select existing AdvicePay users as a signer recipient. If desired, the email address itself can still be edited to override their standard account email for that particular document. 

Note: If a signer's email is edited when sending a document, that document signature request will be delivered to the updated email. However, it does not change the email on the account for the underlying user. Additionally, the document can still be accessed via the signer's AdvicePay account if they log in.

How to Prepare Documents for Signing

1. Under Document Vault, Templates, click the  Add New Template button at the top right of the screen. If this is your first template, a brief tutorial will appear to guide you on the key steps of the process.

2. Fill in the Template Name, Description, and (optional) + Add New Role to add additional signees if it's possible that more than one person will need to sign the document. This is great for adding your client's partner and/or yourself as a signee on the document!

When sending out the document, extra roles can be removed whenever needed as long as they are marked as optional in the below image.

Best Practice Tip!  

Roles cannot be added or removed from a template itself, but roles can be removed on a per-document basis when sending!

For this reason, we highly recommend setting up your template so that it contains all the possible roles that might need to enter something onto the document during the signing process: Client, Spouse/Partner, Advisor, Compliance, Administrative, etc. 

When sending out a document, based on the template, you can then easily exclude any role that you don't need by clicking the check box under each signer to be optional when sending.

To set a default signing order for all documents created from this template, toggle the  Enable signing order button to on. If you don't want the populated client to be first in the signing order, you can move them around by clicking and dragging to the left of each signer to the desired order. If this is on in the template or the document page, the signing order can be changed. If off, it can't.

3. Drag and drop your document file into the  Files box, or click within the box to browse + select a file from your computer folders. 

To add multiple documents for merging into one template, click  + Add Another File. This is useful for sending a complete packet of documents to new clients.

Accepted File Types: PDF, DOCX  |  Size limit: 10 MB

4. Designate whether this template is only for use by you, or whether it can be used by all advisors on your account who have billing permissions! Under  Permissions select Only You or Firm Wide:

If you select  Firm Wide, all firm advisors with billing permissions will automatically see the template as an option when sending documents/payment requests to clients.

Tip: Only you and firm Admins can edit or delete a template that is open to Firm Wide use. Managing and Standard advisors will not be able to make adjustments to it, even if they have permission to use it for their clients!

5. Click  Add Template

6. After you're taken into the template editing screen,  click and drop or drag and place your desired fields into the document:

Tip: At a minimum, there must be one (1) non-date field -- such as signature, checkbox, initials, textbox, etc. -- assigned to each signee in order to complete the template.

7. Click  Continue. Your final template will now appear under Templates in the left sidebar under the Document Vault.

8. To send a document using this template, you will need to either start from the Documents tab in the left sidebar under Document Vault and then use the blue button top right and Create New.

Alternatively, you can create a document from within the client's profile and click the Documents tab, then Create New at the top right from there with or without a payment request.

Template Setup Tips

Whether you need to assign specific fields to different signees or want to take advantage of more advanced options like AdvicePay's auto-populated fields, textbox options, or sender completion options, there are a variety of features available to you to make a stellar template!


Multiple Signees

If your template has more than one signee role (established in the first step of setup/roles!), drag and place another Signature field into the document. Assign the field to a different signee by using the field's drop down selector as shown below once on the box it is assigned on the right.


All fields -- initials, checkbox, sign date, etc. -- can be assigned to specific signees.

Important: Templates cannot be edited to add more signee roles once created. To add more signees, you will want to upload a new template from scratch. 

Auto-Filled Fields

Please note: This function will not automatically auto-fill the boxes before or when sending.

It will auto-fill fields in all locations with the same field request, only once the information has been entered in the first box. It is meant to reduce the repetition of the input of information throughout the document each time for the same field.

If your template requires you to enter the same information in multiple field boxes, you can now use the Auto-fill fields to make this process easier!

When multiple of the same Auto-fill fields are used in a document and the Assigned To: is the same person, that person only has to type the information in once during the signature process and it will automatically fill in the same subsequent fields with the same information. 


(This is super helpful, for example, when you may have multiple identical fields and do not want the signee to have to type the same information over and over.)


Auto-Populated Fields

Important: if you would like for AdvicePay to auto-filled information in your template, this feature option only works with the Sender as the assigned person, and the Standard Fields-Textbox field box the type of information to be filled.

Below is a quick overview of how to use the Sender option for AdvicePay to pull and automatically fill these options onto your template from your account.

*These fields can be found on the Edit Fields in the dropdown on the main template page and can be edited on any template.



To set up fields that automatically populate when the document is sent out for signature:

  1. Select the Textbox field, then drag and place it into your document template.
  2. In the field's drop-down menu under Assigned To, select: Sender
  3. In the field's drop-down menu under What text goes here? select the following for each box as needed, each will need to be assigned individually to reflect the auto-filled type:

    1. Advisor Email (when sent, this will auto-populate the email of the advisor)
    2. Advisor External ID ( when sent, this will auto-populate as an Advisor ID the firm assigns on their profile)
    3. Advisor ID (when sent, this will auto-populate as an ID AdvicePay creates for the Advisor)
    4. Advisor Name (when sent, this will auto-populate the printed name of the client's advisor)
    5. Advisor Signature (this is another way to add your printed name to the document if you don't add yourself as a signee on the template!)
    6. Client Display Name (when sent, this will auto-populate the printed name of the signee for that role)
    7. Client Email (when sent the client email will auto-populate from their AdvicePay profile)
    8. Client External ID ( when sent, this will auto-populate as a Client ID the firm assigns on their profile)
    9. Client ID (when sent, this will auto-populate as an ID AdvicePay creates for the Client)
    10. Client Name (when sent, this will auto-populate the printed name of the client's name on the profile)
    11. Due Date (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the due date for that payment request)
    12. Engagement External ID (when sent on an engagement, this will auto-populate to show the External ID the firm assigns)
    13. Engagement ID (when sent on an engagement, this will auto-populate to show the ID)
    14. Engagement Name ( when sent on an engagement, this will auto-populate to show the name)
    15. Engagement Total Fee (when sent on an Engagement with a Total Engagement fee, this will auto-populate to show that Total Engagement Fee)
    16. Invoice Amount (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the invoice amount)
    17. Invoice Due Date ( when sent, with a payment request, this will auto-populate the invoice due date)
    18. Invoice Frequency (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the invoice frequency)
    19. Invoice Services (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the description of services on the payment request)
    20. Rep Code (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate any advisor Rep Code added to a payment request)
    21. Split/Rep Code (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate any Split/Rep Code added to a payment request)
    22. Additional Roles Names (when sent, this will auto-populate any additional role(s) name(s), (e.g Spouse, co client) that are on the template to auto-populate)
    23. Total Engagement Fee ( when a total engagement fee is part of a payment request)
    24. Up Front Invoice Amount (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the upfront invoice amount for one-time invoices attached to subscriptions)
    25. Upfront Due Date (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the upfront invoice due date)
    26. Upfront Invoice Services (when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the upfront invoice description of services for the invoice)

Edit Field Size & Placement

To adjust the field size to better fit your document or to allow clients to enter lengthier inputs (e.g. email addresses), grab the corner of the field with your cursor and enlarge/reduce it. Making the box larger in height will increase the text size!


Click and drag the entire field to move it around the page:

To remove a field you've added, click on the box and hit delete on the keyboard, or once the box is selected, click on the trash icon at the top shown below here:


How to Disable eSignature

Visit Firm Settings > eSignature

If you toggle Enable eSignature to off. Then confirm that you want to disable it, the below will show:


"This will remove the ability to attach documents with payment requests. If you had open documents out for signature, signing will no longer be required before a client makes a payment. Also, if you have signed or voided documents, they will still be viewable!"


When disabling and re-enabling Dropbox Sign, everything will continue to work as normal -- so there will be no need to re-send or re-create documents and/or invoices.

Ready to do more with eSignature?

Check out the articles below!

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