Signing on paper: what makes it count

Signing the paper is not the same as recording the approval.

A signed letter sitting in somebody's drawer has approved nothing. Until
the original reaches the custodian, is scanned into the document store,
and is tied to the reference on the cover sheet, the request is still
waiting and will expire on time like any other.

Who does what

Three people, and no two of them may be the same person.

• The signer. Reads the document and signs it by hand.
• The custodian. Prints the cover sheet, hands over the controlled copy, takes the original back, and records what happened. Never the signer.
• The witness. Watches the signing and confirms who signed. Never the signer.

Some actions need a fourth: a second verifier who checks the original
after the custodian has recorded it. The approval policy decides which
ones, not the person doing the work.

The order it happens in

1. The custodian opens the ceremony and prints a cover sheet. The cover sheet carries a reference and a code. It carries no amount and no bank detail, because it will be carried through offices and left on desks.
2. The signer reads the document and signs it, with the witness present.
3. The custodian takes the original into custody and records where it is.
4. The scan goes into the document store.
5. The custodian records the attestation against the reference from step one.

What we can and cannot say about it

We can say who was recorded as signing, who witnessed it, how they were
identified, when, where, on how many pages, and where the original is
now. We can say the scan has not changed since it was recorded.

We cannot say the signature is genuine. There is no cryptography in a wet
signature. We do not match the signature image, we do not read the page
with OCR, and we do not match faces. Anybody who tells you the system
verified the handwriting is wrong.

Five things that stop it counting

Each of these leaves the approval unrecorded and opens a case for
somebody to look at. None of them means the signature was bad. They mean
nobody can tell.

• The original arrives too late. The window is seven days after the ceremony expires. After that the document may have moved on twice.
• The scan does not match. What the document store holds is not what was recorded as scanned.
• The original is not held. A scan on its own is not what this rests on.
• The page count is wrong. The pages that came back are not the pages that went out.
• The witness is not somebody we can identify. An attestation nobody can attribute attests to nothing.

What to do if you are told your signature did not count

Ask the custodian which of the five it was. Four of them are fixed by
finding the original or rescanning it. One of them, a late capture, means
signing again over the current version.