Signing & verification

Signing: from PDF to evidence

An emailed PDF with a typed name is a signature until someone disputes it. An electronic signing tool records who signed, from where, with what authentication, and produces a certificate the firm can show. For a practice the documents that matter are the engagement letter, the authority to act with the tax authority, the declarations on returns, the financial statements and the minutes. Some jurisdictions require a specific identity check before certain tax forms can be e-signed; the tool has to support that check, not just a drawn signature.

The practical value is speed: a return that used to wait a week for a printed signature is signed on a phone the same afternoon, and the busy season shortens.

Verification: knowing the client

Identity verification checks a person against a document and a liveness test, and a business against a register, and keeps the evidence. It is required by anti-money-laundering rules wherever accountants are supervised, increasingly by company registries, and by tax authorities for particular processes. A firm that verifies by photocopying a passport into a folder has evidence it cannot search, cannot re-verify and cannot show a supervisor quickly.

The tool should verify at onboarding, re-verify on a schedule the firm sets, screen against sanctions and politically exposed lists where the rules require it, and record the risk assessment beside the evidence.

What to look for

For signing: templates for the firm's standard documents, bulk sending for the season, reminders, an audit certificate, the jurisdiction-specific identity check where tax forms need it, and a link to the document system so the signed copy files itself against the client. For verification: document and liveness checks in the countries the firm's clients come from, business register checks, sanctions screening, scheduled re-verification, and an evidence pack a supervisor will accept.

For both: integration with the practice system so onboarding is one sequence, and with the proposal tool so acceptance, signature and identity happen in one visit.

Onboarding as one sequence

Firms that do this well have a single onboarding flow: proposal accepted, engagement letter signed, identity verified, authority to act signed, client created in the practice system with the folder made, all in one sitting from the client's phone. The tools are chosen to link, and the sequence is written down. That is the difference between a client who is set up in a day and one who is chased for a month.

Pricing and how firms recover it

Signing tools price per user or per envelope volume; verification tools per check, sometimes with a monthly minimum. The directory records what vendors publish; it does not say what a firm should charge for onboarding, and nothing here is fee advice. Firms describe treating signing as overhead and passing verification costs through in an onboarding fee or absorbing them inside the first year's engagement.

What to avoid

Typed-name signatures on anything evidential. Photocopied identity documents in folders. Verification at onboarding and never again. Signing tools that do not file the signed copy against the client. And onboarding as four separate emails when it can be one sequence.