How to collect signatures from multiple people on one document
Need several people to sign the same contract? Here's how to collect signatures from multiple parties — in order or in parallel — without chasing anyone by hand.
Plenty of documents need more than one signature: a lease with two tenants and a co-signer, a contract that your client signs and your manager countersigns, an agreement between three partners. Collecting all of those signatures the old way — printing, passing it around, scanning at each step — turns a one-day task into a one-week relay. Here's how to get several people to sign the same document online, in the right order or all at once, without becoming the human being who chases each signature by email.
First decide: does the order matter?
The one choice that shapes everything else is whether your signers must sign in sequence or can sign in parallel. Two quick tests:
- Order matters when a later signer depends on an earlier one — a manager countersigns only after the client accepts, or a co-signer signs only once the primary signers have. Use a signing order.
- Order doesn't matter when everyone is signing the same thing independently — two roommates on a lease, three partners on an agreement. Let them all sign at once.
On Signed you pick either mode when you set up the document; the underlying send-and-sign steps are in how to send a document for electronic signature.
Parallel signing: everyone at once
When sequence is irrelevant, parallel signing is the fastest path. Every signer is emailed the document at the same moment, and each can open and sign whenever they get to it — no one waits on anyone else. This is ideal for co-equal parties: partners on a partnership agreement, multiple tenants on a lease, board members approving the same resolution. The document completes as soon as the last person signs, and you watch each signer's status independently.
Sequential signing: a signing order
When one signature has to precede another, a signing order routes the document down a chain: signer one is emailed first, and only after they finish is signer two notified, and so on. A typical order might be client → account manager → company signatory, or tenants → co-signer → landlord. Nobody is bothered with a link they can't act on yet, and you always know exactly whose turn it is. This is the same routing landlords use in how to get a lease signed online and accountants use to send an engagement letter to both spouses on a joint return.
Give each signer only their own fields
The thing that keeps a multi-party document from becoming a mess is per-signer fields. When you place a signature, initials, date, or text field, you assign it to a specific signer — so each person, when they open the document, sees and can only complete the fields that are theirs. The client can't accidentally sign on the countersigner's line; a co-tenant can't fill in the other tenant's fields. Drag each field where it belongs and assign it to the right person; the full reference is in Sending & signing.
Nobody needs an account — not even the fifth signer
The more people a document needs, the more a sign-up wall costs you: each extra signer is another person who might bounce off an account-creation screen. On Signed, every signer — first or fifth — gets an email, taps the link, and signs in any browser with no account and nothing to install. Only the person *sending* needs a seat; receiving and signing is always free, as covered in Billing & plans. That's what makes collecting five signatures no harder than collecting one.
Keep the whole group moving with reminders
The hardest part of multi-party signing is the one person who stalls the whole chain. Automatic reminders solve it: only the signer whose action is pending gets nudged, on a schedule you set, so the people who've already signed are never pestered and the holdout gets a steady, neutral prompt. Add an expiration date if the document shouldn't stay open indefinitely. Working a stalled multi-signer document is covered in how to chase unsigned documents.
One audit trail for every signer
When several people sign one document, you need a record of each of them — not just the last signature. Every completed document on Signed carries a tamper-evident Certificate of Completion that logs, per signer, their email, the timestamps for viewing and signing, and the IP address of each action — then seals it against later edits. That per-signer detail is exactly what makes a multi-party agreement defensible if anyone later claims they didn't sign; what the certificate contains is in the audit trail explainer, and why it holds up legally is in are electronic signatures legally binding?. (General information, not legal advice.)
When you send the same multi-party document often
If a particular multi-signer document is one you send repeatedly — the same lease with a landlord-and-two-tenants structure, the same three-party agreement — build it once as a reusable template with the roles and signing order defined. Every future send is then: pick the template, drop each real person into their role, send. The full approach is in reusable e-signature templates.
What it costs
Collecting one signature or ten costs the same on Signed: $9.99 per seat per month, one plan, unlimited documents and unlimited signers per document, month-to-month, no annual contract. Signers are always free — you only pay for the seat that sends. Against the incumbent's per-seat, envelope-capped, annually-committed plans, the difference is on the DocuSign comparison page and pricing.