E-signatures and change orders

An electronic signature is legally valid when the signer clearly consents and clearly intends to sign. This is how SMG Tools meets that standard: a real signature, an explicit agreement, a code that proves who signed, and a frozen copy of the document as it stood at the moment.

Sign a proposal

Your client opens the proposal link with no account. When they are ready to accept, they choose how to sign:

• Draw — sign with a finger or a mouse, the way they would on paper. Works on a phone.
• Type — type their full name, which appears in a script hand as they type.

Both are legally equivalent. Neither is a lesser signature than the other.

When the proposal offers options, your client chooses one — and ticks any add-ons — before signing, and the page says exactly what the signature is for: You are accepting Better for $2,700.00, plus applicable tax. The choice is recorded with the signature. See Proposal options.

Below the signature is a box they have to tick, stating that they agree to conduct the transaction electronically and that their electronic signature has the same legal effect as a handwritten one. The Accept and sign button stays unavailable until they have entered their name, signed, and ticked that box — all three, not two of the three.

Prove it was really them

Before a proposal or a change order can be signed, a six-digit code is sent to the contact already on the client’s record — not to an address typed into the form, which would prove nothing.

On Starter the code goes by email. Sending it by text needs Professional, because a text costs us per message. The text comes from SMG Tools’ number and names your business: Rivera Plumbing via SMG Tools: Your signing code is 482913. Beside the button that sends it, your client is told the code may come by text — to their mobile ending in its last four digits — that message and data rates may apply, and that replying STOP stops texts. Verification codes by text says the same for anyone who wonders why SMG Tools texted them.

The signature then carries which channel proved it and when — verified by email, by text message, or both, on the document’s page and its signed PDF — alongside the time, the IP address and the browser used. That combination is the audit trail, and it is what you would produce if the signature were ever questioned.

Signatures captured before this check existed remain valid and are shown as unverified rather than quietly presented as though they were checked.

Keep the document as it was signed

At the moment of signing, a PDF of the document is generated and stored, frozen, exactly as it stood. With options, it names the option chosen in full, the others as not chosen, and each add-on as added or not taken — and its contract is the proposal’s own sections and the chosen option’s, never another option’s. That includes a proposal that waits on a required deposit: your client’s copy is stored and sent when they sign, and when the deposit is paid the proposal is accepted from that same signature — nobody signs twice.

This matters more than it sounds. Without it, a change to how proposals are laid out a year from now would change what a signed proposal appears to say. The stored copy cannot be altered by anything that happens to the product afterwards.

Both sides can download it: you from the proposal’s page, and your client from their own link.

Send a change order

Once a proposal has been accepted, changes to the work are change orders against the job rather than edits to a signed document.

A change order carries:

• Written sections you can arrange and edit, the same content blocks proposals use — so a change order can properly explain itself rather than being one paragraph in a box.
• Line items showing what the change actually costs, so your client can see the arithmetic instead of being handed a number.
• Photos that show why: choose Add photos while you write it, and pick from the job’s photos or add new ones, which are filed as the job’s Change order photos. Each is shared with your client by being chosen, and they see it — with any marks you drew and its note — on the page they accept or decline from, above the buttons, and on a page of its own in the PDF. Once you send the change order, its photos are fixed. If you stop sharing one of them later, it leaves your client’s page too; the signed copy keeps what was signed.

You send it — by email, to the client’s own address or another of their contacts chosen under Send to (see Choose who a document goes to), as a short link that works like a proposal’s: it stops 30 days after your client answers, and Revoke link on the change order’s card stops it at once — your client accepts it, and the acceptance is recorded with the same audit trail and frozen as its own signed PDF. The card then reads Accepted, with the date and how the code was sent. An accepted change order raises the job’s agreed price, or lowers it for a credit, so what is left to bill always includes it.

Your client can also answer No thanks, with a reason if they want to give one. Either answer is final on that link, and you are emailed either way; the change order then says Declined, with their reason. To change one before they answer, void it — its link stops working — and send a new one. A repair shop can make a change order the price a customer says yes to before any work starts: see Work at your own place.

Having the product draft change-order wording for you needs Professional, since it spends your AI allowance. Writing it yourself works on every plan.

What this costs

Signing is on every plan — proposals and change orders both, including the stored signed PDF. It replaces the acceptance step every plan already had, so nothing you could do before is now behind a payment.

Two things around it need Professional, and both because they spend on somebody’s meter: having the product draft change-order content, and delivering the verification code by text instead of email.