What an audit trail records, and why you want one.

An audit trail is the difference between a signature you can account for and one you can only point at. It is a running record of what happened to a document, kept by the system rather than by the people involved, and it is one of the main reasons electronic signing can leave a clearer record than paper.

What an audit trail is

An audit trail is a time-ordered record of the actions taken on a document. From the moment you create an envelope to the moment the last person signs, each event is logged with the time it happened and details of who acted.

Think of it as a security camera pointed at your paperwork. Nobody can go back and change what was recorded, and the record stays with the envelope.

Paper compared with an electronic record

With a paper signature you have the signed page, and not much else. With an electronic audit trail you can see who opened the document, when they signed it, which email address the link was sent to, and the IP address and browser they used. That is a much fuller account of how the document came to be signed.

What gets recorded

The exact events depend on how the envelope travels, but a typical record follows the document through these stages:

1. Envelope created. The document is uploaded, fields are placed and signers are added.
2. Envelope sent. Each signer is invited by email with their own link.
3. Document viewed. A signer opens their link, and the view is recorded with the time and IP address.
4. Document signed. The signer completes their fields and signs, recorded with their name, email address, the time and the IP address and browser used.
5. Envelope completed. Everyone has finished, and the completed document and certificate are produced.

The details that matter

Times

Every event carries a time set by the system, not by the signer's own device. That fixes the order in which things happened, which is usually the first question anyone asks about a disputed document.

IP address and browser

The IP address and browser recorded at each event add another layer of identification. They help show that a signature came from the person you expected and not from somewhere unexpected.

Tamper evidence

A completed document is sealed so that a change made after signing can be detected. Each signed document also gets a verification ID that anyone can check online, without an account, to confirm it is the document that was signed.

Downloading your completion certificate

Every completed envelope in SignAndGo comes with a completion certificate, a standalone record of the signing process that you can keep with the signed document.

1. Open the completed envelope from your dashboard.
2. Download the signed document and its certificate.
3. Store the certificate with the signed document in your own records.

The certificate lists the document, the people who signed and when, and the verification ID. Keeping the two together means you never have to go looking for the record separately when someone asks about a document months later.