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.

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 & 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 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 signature then carries which channel proved it and when, 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.

Change orders are not yet behind a code. 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.

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.

You send it, your client accepts it, and the acceptance is recorded with the same audit trail and frozen as its own signed PDF.

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.