Electronic Signature

Hollysan

Morning everyone,

I have a client who lives at a distance. I suggested that she send electronic PDFs of the signature pages to the accounts and co. tax return summary ready for submission to CH and HMRC. I was expecting a PDF with copy of her handwritten signature and date. She has sent me a PDF via Echo Sign. This is new to me and instead of the handwritten sig this is a printed 'signature' with date. Is this acceptable as approval for submission?

I know some of you use similar software for signed accounts, returns and letters of engagement and it seems like a good idea if it works well so I would be interested to have any feedback, as well as the above.

Many thanks,

Hollysan

Kjmcculloch

I use a similar system for getting clients to sign forms. Electronic or digital signatures like these were introduced to the UK through an EU Electronic Signatures Directive, and are outlined in Electronic Communication Act 2000 and Electronic Signatures Regulations 2002.

They are as admissible in court as a handwritten signature.

Kris

Dcollins

I've been using Echosign for a while now, someone else mentioned it on this forum a while ago. It's easy to use, and if you don't do many it's free. Have had a couple of people unable to access the PDF, but overall it's worked well for me.

Hollysan

Thank you both for your replies. Kris, not having seen one before, it was the fact that it did not look like a proper signature that surprised me.

I have seen some posts about this before as well, there was one on Accounting Web which highlighted this problem of not being able to access the PDFs, they got over it by using Mozilla Firefox, but I am reluctant to do that because I did once before and it kept fighting with Explorer :001_smile:
My client sent me a .pdf as an attachment and I was able to open that.
I might look into it some more because I can think of a few clients where it would be useful.....

Thanks again,

Hollysan

Kjmcculloch

If you buy a full version of Adobe Acrobat you can add signature fields to pdf documents which can then be signed using the free Adobe Reader.

It could work out cheaper in the long run.

Kris