What onboarding paperwork actually needs
Most of it is not complicated. It is a document the company wrote, and a record that a particular employee received it and agreed to it. What goes wrong is rarely the signature. It is the copy nobody can find a year later, when somebody asks whether this employee ever signed the confidentiality agreement.
- Handbook and policy acknowledgments. One document, everybody signs it, and each signature has to be provable on its own.
- NDAs and confidentiality agreements.The company’s side is filled in and signed first; the employee signs second.
- Offer letters and individual agreements. One person, one document, with the details that are theirs.
How it works
- Upload the PDF you already useSignaCore reads the form fields already in it. On a flat PDF it looks at the layout for the likely places to sign, initial, tick and type. You check every field before anything is sent.
- Fill in the company’s partAssign fields to yourself — the start date, the employee’s name, the company signature — and answer them before sending. The employee sees them but cannot change them.
- Send it to one hire, or to everybodyEach recipient gets their own link. For something sensitive you can require a code, emailed to them, before the document will open.
- Each person gets their own completed copyIt is made the moment they sign and emailed to them straight away. You are told as each person finishes, and the copy is kept, encrypted, in your archive.
Why it suits a handbook acknowledgment
Send one acknowledgment to twenty people and twenty completed documents come back, one for each person, rather than a single page carrying twenty signatures. Nobody waits on anybody else, and the record for one employee does not contain another employee’s details.
Every completed copy carries a certificate of completion as part of the PDF. It shows who signed, the email address the document went to, when each step happened and from what IP address, and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the document as it was uploaded. If somebody later says they never saw the policy, that is what you can show. What that evidence does and does not prove.
Recipients are never counted as seats. A plan covers the people in your organization who send documents. A new hire signing their paperwork costs you nothing extra, and sending one document to the whole team counts as one document. See pricing.
What SignaCore does not do for HR
Better to know this now than after you have moved your onboarding over.
- Not for Form I-9 or W-4. Both have their own federal rules for electronic systems, and SignaCore has not been built or reviewed against them.
- No template library or approval flow. You can save a prepared document as a reusable template, but SignaCore does not yet organize templates by category or route them through an approval process.
- No signing sequence. You can set reminders after three or seven days and resend a link yourself, but every recipient can sign at once. Links expire after seven days.
- No signing order. Everybody on a document can sign at once. When the company has to sign first, do it as your own fields before sending.
- No HR system integration. SignaCore does not connect to a payroll or HRIS product, and there is no public API.
- No certifications. No SOC 2, HIPAA or ISO. Documents are encrypted at rest; the full boundary is on Trust and data.
- Identity rests on email. There is no photo ID check. What is established is that the person controlled the address you sent to.
Questions people ask
Does a new hire need an account to sign?+
No. They open the link in the email, sign in the browser they already have, and are emailed their own completed copy. There is no signer account to create, and they are never charged.
Can I send the handbook to the whole team at once?+
Yes. Add everybody as a recipient on the one document. Each person signs separately and gets their own completed copy back, and the document still counts once against a plan's monthly allowance.
Can the company sign the NDA before the employee does?+
Yes. Fields assigned to you — the company signature, the start date, the employee's name — are filled in before the document is sent, and the recipient cannot change them.
Can I use SignaCore for Form I-9 or W-4?+
We do not recommend it. Both have their own federal rules for electronic systems, covering things such as how an electronic I-9 is attested and retained, and SignaCore has not been built or reviewed against them. Use a system made for those forms, and use SignaCore for the documents your company writes itself.
What happens if somebody does not sign?+
The workspace shows who has signed and who has not. You can choose reminders after three or seven days, or resend a link yourself. A signing link expires after seven days, and resending issues a fresh one.
Something we have not answered? Ask us, and we will reply, usually within 24 hours.