[Account Owner] Get Started with eSignatures: Enabling/Disabling (DocuSign)

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AdvicePay's DocuSign integration allows you to connect your existing DocuSign account to get financial planning agreements and other documents signed as part of your payment requests or independently. Easily access your templates through AdvicePay and become more efficient instantly!

How to Enable

All DocuSign plans can be integrated with AdvicePay.

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

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

You will be prompted to log in to DocuSign to link your account to AdvicePay:

Click Accept to allow AdvicePay to create and send documents on your behalf, and obtain links for signing:

And that's it! Once enabled, all firm advisors with billing permissions in AdvicePay can send out templates you've added to your DocuSign account. 

Enable Signer PIN

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

2. Click  Save

When this feature is turned on and Recipient Authentication is enabled in DocuSign, the signee will receive an email letting them know that they have a document that requires signature. Once they click on the View and Sign button in the email, they will be taken to a DocuSign screen (see example below) where they will see the phone number the PIN will be sent to. 

Signees will need to click on the Send SMS button to receive a SMS message via the phone number listed. Once the PIN has been entered into the box, signees will be taken immediately to the document to sign.

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.

❗️Important Notes:

  • Home Office can add a new client attribute named phone number under Firm Settings > Client. Once Advisors add phone numbers in the client's profile under the Clients tab, AdvicePay will auto-populate the phone number when Advisors go to send the document.
  • When sending a document, Advisors will see the requirement to enter in a phone number (if there is not one already auto-populated from the attribute in the client's profile).
🎉  New feature alert: Home Office and Advisors now have the ability to edit a phone number or email address on an already sent document (as long as that signer has not completed their portion). If a phone number or email address was added incorrectly and the signer has completed their portion, the document would need to be canceled and re-sent.  Note that changing the email address and/or phone number on a document does NOT change the signer’s profile in AdvicePay. It is only relevant for that particular document’s routing.

To edit a phone number or email address on an already sent document, navigate to the Document tab in the left main menu, open the drop-down menu next to the document and choose Edit Document (can also get to the edit document page directly in the client's page) . A pop-up window will appear where you can edit the email address and/or phone number for signers who have not completed their portion. If they have already signed, their information will be greyed out and unavailable for change.

Important: Once edits have been made to an email address and/or phone number on an already sent document, a reminder email will need to be sent to trigger a new message to your client with the corrected information. To send a document reminder, you will want to go to Documents and select Send Reminder for the document that needs to be resent.

How to Enable Recipient Authentication in DocuSign

For SMS authentication to work properly, this feature also requires Recipient Authentication to be enabled under DocuSign's Security Settings. Here's how to do that!

1. Ensure Signer PIN is enabled (see above).

2. Navigate to your DocuSign Authentication Settings ( Security Settings > Authentication Settings) and enable your Recipient Authentication Triggers to Every time a recipient accesses an envelope. 

This setting ensures that every time the signed document is viewed, it will require SMS authentication.

Note: The Account Owner, Firm Admins, and Advisors will be still able to view the document as normal (without SMS authentication) under the Documents tab in the AdvicePay portal.

How to Reconnect Authorization

If for some reason the connection with your linked DocuSign account were to break, you can easily reestablish the integration by navigating to Docusign Authorization and clicking  Reconnect.

Doing this will prompt the Account Owner for the Docusign login credentials again!

Note: Only the Account Owner has the ability to interact with the Reconnect button.

Require identity verification for all signers

If within your DocuSign account, you have the identity verification setting to require all signers on any DocuSign template have a phone number for SMS authentication, you must also toggle on the Require identity verification for all signers setting within AdvicePay. 

Enabling this setting below within AdvicePay is important if the identity verification setting within DocuSign requiring all signers to have a phone number for SMS authentication is toggled on. 

Note: Only the Account Owner and their Admins have the ability to require identity verification for all signers.

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.

Template Setup Tips

Take advantage of more advanced options -- like auto-populated (or pre-filled) fields -- to make a stellar template!

Auto-Populated Fields

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

  1. When creating or editing a template in DocuSign, go to Pre-fill Tools and place a Text field into your document template.

  2. In the field's drop down menu under under Sender Permissions, ensure that Mandatory is unchecked unless this template will ALWAYS have the item required (e.g. an attached payment request, an upfront invoice, etc). See the callout below for more info!

  3. In the field's drop down menu under Data Label, enter one of the following as written: 
    1. advicepay_client_name -- when sent, this will auto-populate the printed name of the client signer for that role (as entered in AdvicePay)
    2. advicepay_engagement_name -- when sent, this will auto-populate the printed name of the engagement template
    3. advicepay_invoice_amount -- when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the invoice amount
    4. advicepay_invoice_frequency -- when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the invoice frequency (e.g. one-time, monthly, etc)
    5. advicepay_upfront_invoice_amount -- when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the upfront invoice amount for one-time invoices attached to subscriptions
    6. advicepay_due_date -- when sent with a payment request, this will auto-populate the due date

      Example:
Sender Permissions: Mandatory?

Please note that if you mark a pre-filled Text field as Mandatory and we do not have information to populate for the item that is required, when a signer goes to sign it will say “the document may still be in drafts” and they won't be able to proceed. (For example, if a field for "advicepay_upfront_invoice_amount" is Mandatory but the document is sent when there is no upfront invoice attached, signatures cannot be obtained.)

If a pre-filled field is something that may or may not be filled out depending on the circumstance when sending out the document for signatures, as a best practice we recommend leaving Mandatory unchecked!

How to Disable eSignature

Visit Firm Settings > eSignature and toggle Enable eSignature to off. Then confirm that you want to disable!

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.

If you have signed or voided documents, they will still be viewable!

Need to switch to a different DocuSign account? 

1.  Log out of all DocuSign accounts.
2.  Disable eSignature in AdvicePay by visiting  Firm Settings > eSignature and toggling  Enable eSignature to  off. Then confirm that you want to disable.
3.  Re-enable eSignature at  Firm Settings > eSignature by clicking  Enable eSignature.

More context on how the DocuSign integration works

Pass this info on to your IT team!

AdvicePay uses Docusign’s OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code flow to act on behalf of a Docusign user. When you enable Docusign in your Firm Settings, we’ll request the “extended” and “signature” scopes so we can create envelopes, view envelopes, and send signing requests on your behalf. We don't save your credentials -- in AdvicePay we store the refresh token and access token.

Once you’ve authorized the integration, you’re all set! The systems are connected and you’re ready to send documents. 

If you’ve done a Docusign integration in the past, this might sound a little different than what you’re used to. Following Docusign’s best practices, AdvicePay uses a single integration key and relies on the OAuth flow to give us permissions to act on behalf of your user. This means that you don’t need to do any complex key configuration in your Docusign instance. It just works. 🙂

When an advisor is ready to send a new document from AdvicePay, we’ll request the available templates for the Docusign user and present that to the advisor as a list. 

Best Practice Tip: Create a specific user within Docusign that AdvicePay will use! This ensures that your advisors only see the templates you want them to see. Grant this user the DS Sender permission. They do not need DS Admin permissions for the integration to work.

Once the advisor has set up the signers, we’ll give them the option of sending the document right away or saving it as a draft and entering the embedded Docusign editor so they can edit it before sending. 

Behind the scenes, we’re going to create a new envelope via the Docusign API, including a callback URL so Docusign can notify AdvicePay of status changes to the envelope. When it’s time for a signer to sign, AdvicePay will send an email to them letting them know it’s their turn. Following the link in the email, they’ll be directed into the Docusign embedded signing flow.

Ready to do more with eSignature via DocuSign?

Check out the articles below!

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