Overview of electronic signatures in Personio – Personio

This article provides an introduction to Personio's electronic signature feature, powered by Docusign. With this feature, you can request, track, and sign employee and applicant documents directly through Personio.

Access electronic signatures

To access the electronic signature feature for documents in Personio, your organization needs a Core Plan or higher.

You need to access different areas of Personio depending on the actions you want to take:

Request electronic signatures
Sign documents
Monitor and manage signature requests

Request signatures

You can request electronic signatures in Personio in several ways:

When creating documents from a template.
While uploading a document to an employee's profile.
On a document already saved in an employee's profile.
When viewing all documents in the Documents Hub.
When sending offer letters to applicants through Personio Recruiting.

The number of signers you can request per document depends on how you create the document.

Your Personio plan and license count determine how many signature requests your organization can create each month. Learn more about how to check your electronic signature usage.

Signature types

When you request a signature, you can choose from up to three different signature types depending on your plan. Each type offers a different level of legal weight and security:

Simple electronic signatures: A single-step process best for documents with less strict legal requirements.
Advanced electronic signatures: Offer a higher level of security through a multi-step verification process.
Qualified electronic signatures: The highest level of security. This is the only signature type that's legally equal to a handwritten, wet ink signature according to the EU-wide eIDAS regulation. It requires identity verification, you pay per use, and is only available on the Core Pro plan. Find out more about requesting a qualified electronic signature.

Read more about the legal validity of electronic signatures.

Sign documents

The signing experience depends on whether users can log into Personio:

Active employees with a Personio login or employees invited to Personio: sign directly in Personio.
Employees with an Onboarding or Leave status, active employees without a login, or Recruiting applicants: sign documents through an email request from Docusign.

See how to sign a document with an electronic signature.

Monitor the status of signature requests

Administrators and users with permissions can:

Check the status of signature requests.
Track the progress of each request.
Send reminders to signees about requests that are about to expire.

See how to monitor signature requests in Personio.

Active Signatures widget

Administrators can access the Active Signatures widget to track, manage, and troubleshoot electronic signature requests across their organization. To access the widget, go to Automations > Overview.

With this widget, you can:

See how many requests are Signed, Declined, Pending, or Failed.
Click a status to view the related documents, signers, and expiration dates.
Go to the Signatures Overview page.
Click a signer's name to open their employee profile.
Manage document templates by clicking the gear icon.

Signatures Overview page

Use the Signatures Overview page to track all your organization’s electronic signature requests and monitor your current month’s usage. Filter and sort requests by status, type, sender, request date, expiration date, and more.

On this page, you can:

Track your organization's monthly signature usage, including qualified electronic signature charges if your organization enabled the app.
Preview documents by clicking their name.
Download a certificate of completion for signed documents.
See when each request expires (four weeks after you send it).
Send reminders for pending signature requests.

See how to manage signature requests in Personio.

More information

To learn more about electronic signatures, see:

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