Documents Overview

A document is the centerpiece of a transaction. You send someone a document, they sign it, and you retrieve it and process it. The process is simple, but in reality, documents and everything about them can get complex: who’s preparing them, the content, the signing designations, where they come from, where they go…the list goes on and on.

At a high level, a document will take on the following lifecycle on the Proof platform:

Upload Documents

Via the UI or API, a document is uploaded to a transaction. A transaction can contain multiple documents. They must be in PDF or DOCX format.

Set Requirements

You decide whether the document requires an eSignature, a notarization, an identity check, etc. Read more about document requirements here.

Tag Documents

You, your code, your document generation software, or your document preparation team applies tags to tell the signer where to apply their signature. While not a hard requirement, it’s strongly recommended you tag your documents to create a “definition of done” – this simplifies things both for your signers and your business. Read more about your different document tagging options.

Review Documents

For notarizations, a signer will have the chance to review their documents prior to meeting with a notary. If you set customer_can_annotate to true, they’ll be able to fill in text during the review process.

Sign Documents

The signer(s) signs their documents, and receives a notary stamp (if applicable).

Retrieve Completed Documents

Completed documents are retrieved either by hand in our UI, or via API.

Test Documents

You may use this white-text-tagged document for testing purposes: https://static.notarize.com/Example.pdf

Document Data

You can retrieve plenty of useful information about your documents via the API. See the document object for more details.