Why Wet Signature Get Expensive for Small Business?: Get Affordable eSignature Online

Electronic Signature for Business

Summary

A handwritten signature doesn't seem expensive. But the backstory is a whole lot different. From taking a paper to the right person to getting it signed and back, businesses struggle so much in this process. For a small business, little tasks can quietly eat up the workday. eSign offer an easier way to deal with that, especially when the number of contracts and approvals starts growing.

The Pen Isn't the Expensive Part

There is nothing particularly expensive about signing a piece of paper. The trouble starts before and after the pen touches it.

A contract needs to be printed. Someone has to sign it. Then it has to go back to the office, either via email after scanning or by physical delivery. If any page is missing, you may need to redo the whole process. Plus, if the contract gets left by mistake, then someone has to remind them to sign it and send it.

In a small company, these jobs usually fall on someone who already has plenty on their plate. That is why the real cost of a wet signature is often measured in working hours rather than sheets of paper. eSignature tools for small businesses thus become important in these scenarios.

Five Minutes Here, Ten Minutes There

One employee might spend five minutes searching for a contract. The other employee sends a reminder. A manager asks whether the agreement came back. The signed copy arrives, but it is saved in the wrong folder. A week later, somebody needs it again.

None of these incidents is a crisis. Put them together over a month, though, and they become a decent chunk of somebody's working time.

This gets noticed in small businesses because the same people often have different tasks. A founder may be approving agreements while handling customers. An office manager may also be dealing with invoices and tracking employee documents.

Paperwork doesn't always stop or slow down the business. Sometimes it simply keeps interrupting it.

The Moment a Small Team Starts Hiring

HR is one area where paper-based signing can become tiresome very quickly.

One new employee may need an offer letter, employment agreement, NDA, policy forms and other onboarding agreements. That is manageable when hiring happens occasionally. During a busy recruitment period, the pile grows fast.

Someone has to send everything out, wait for the contracts to come back and check what is still missing.

EzSignly's HR workflow is designed around this kind of repeated paperwork. Its page also displays tracking so that people can know when the documents have been viewed, signed or declined.

A Missing Signature Becomes Easier to Spot

There is a small but useful difference between asking, “Did they sign it?” and simply checking the agreement's status.

When the information is visible in one place, the HR team does not have to dig through old emails every time someone asks about an onboarding document.

For businesses searching for eSignature Software for HR in Chicago, that can be particularly useful when several candidates are joining around the same time. Nobody wants the first day of a new employee's job to depend on finding a missing attachment.

Real Estate Has Even Less Room for Delays

Real estate is another good example because a single transaction can involve a surprising number of pages.

If one person is late in returning an agreement, someone instantly notices.

EzSignly is thus intended for workflows used by agents, brokers and property managers.

Knowing Where the Paperwork Stands

Suppose that you are waiting for a signature and you don't know if the recipient has even opened it. The usual answer is another email or phone call. With tracking, there is less guesswork.

For anyone considering eSignature Software for Real Estate in US, this is one of the more practical reasons to move away from physical records. The goal is simply to avoid having one piece hold up the next step.

There Is a Cost of Storing Paper

Small businesses mostly don’t have the space or arrangement to keep so much paperwork. They mostly have old-school storage in the form of drawers, cabinets, etc. This works until someone needs an old record.

But digital storage doesn't solve every filing problem, besides removing a lot of the physical handling. EzSignly's dashboard brings documents and activity into the same workspace, while its templates can be reused for documents that follow the same format.

That is a fairly ordinary improvement, but ordinary improvements are often the ones people notice after they stop doing things the old way.

What You Actually Pay for an eSignature Tool

The monthly subscription is easy to see. The cost of manual paperwork is not.

EzSignly comes with a Free plan including three envelopes per month and two  templates being reusable. The Standard plan comes for $7 per user each month, and the Business plan comes for $10.50 per user per month.

Suppose an employee is spending hours printing documents, following up with people, scanning signed pages and searching for completed files each month; precious time for them as well as the company is being wasted. It just does not appear as a separate line on the software budget.

Legal Teams Have Another Problem: Finding the Right Record

Legal paperwork tends to stick around. A contract signed six months ago may suddenly be needed for reference. An NDA from last year may have to be located.

With physical files, finding paperwork can mean delving through folders or asking around the office. With digital documents, the same issue comes to old email attachments and badly named files.

The Activity on The Document Is Crucial

A completed signature tells you that the document was signed. An audit trail can tell you more about what happened along the way.

EzSignly describes its audit trail as a record of activity, including actions such as viewing, signing and completion.

For eSignatures for Law Firms and Legal Teams, having that history attached to the signing process can make later checks much less frustrating.

The Best Saving May Be the Work You Stop Doing

This is probably the easiest way to look at the difference. You are not only paying for paper when you use wet signatures. You are paying for the little jobs surrounding the paper. For a growing company, those interruptions become more frequent as volume rises.

EzSignly has all the time-wasting process managed into the same workflow. Its dashboard is also effective at highlighting Recent Activity, making it easier to track it in real time without relying on emails.

It is not about just completing every paper a business will ever use. Some situations will still call for one. It is about not using paper simply because that is how the process has always been done.

Conclusion

A growing company has enough things competing for its attention. There are customers to respond to, employees to support, bills to pay and new opportunities to chase. Spending part of every week making sure contracts have been printed, signed, scanned and filed is rarely anyone's idea of productive work.

You can save both your time and money with EzSignly, where you get a cost-effective eSignature workflow for your team, as well as your business. 

FAQs

1. Why do wet signatures cost small businesses more than expected?

A: The signature itself costs almost nothing. Printing, scanning, delivery, storage, follow-ups and employee time are what make the overall process expensive.

2. Is eSignature software useful for a very small business?

A: Yes. A small company can begin with a basic plan and then move to paid plans as their work increases or additional workflow features when their needs come.

3. Are electronic signatures suitable for legal documents?

A: eSignatures might be suitable for legal documents, but it depends on the document, transaction and applicable judgement. Businesses should check any specific legal rules before choosing a signing method.