Digital Signature
A digital signature is a validation to the authenticity of the documents sent by you to your customers. It is to let the receiver know that the document has been completely crafted by you and there were no changes during the transit. This feature is supported only on the Zoho Books’ Windows app.
Note: This feature is available only for certain plans in the India edition of Zoho Books. Visit the pricing page, to check if it’s available in your current plan.
Digital Signature in Zoho Books
Let’s see how digital signature helps in maintaining the authenticity of the data in Zoho Books.
Enabling Digital Signature
To enable Digital Signature in your organisation:
- Go to Settings > Preferences > Digital Signature.
- Click the Enable Signature button.
- In the following pop-up, check the User Signature box under Invoices and Credit Notes to enable digital signature in invoices and credit notes respectively.
- Click Enable.
You’ve now enabled digital signature for your organisation.
Digital Signature works differently for transactions with and without Transaction Approval. Let’s see how it works in both the cases.
Without Approval
Once you finish creating an invoice, you need to sign it to send it to your customer.
- You can click the Sign Invoice button on the What’s Next banner to sign or click the three-dotted button on the top right corner and select Sign.
- If you have already connected your USB Token (certificate) in your system, Zoho Books would list it in the Sign with certificate dialog box. If you haven’t connected your USB token and you have a new certificate to be included, you can connect it to your system and then hit the Refresh button for the system to list that certificate as well.
- Choose the preferred certificate and click Sign.
- The system uploads the signed PDF which can be sent to your customer.
With Approval
Once an invoice is created, you will need to get it approved to sign it. You can click the Submit for Approval button on the What’s Next banner to submit the invoice then and there.
Once it is approved, you can then sign and send the invoice to the customer.
Notes:
- You can sign only approved transactions.
- You can send only a signed invoice to your customer.
- If you edit a digitally signed invoice, you need to sign it once you finish editing. Only then the changes would reflect in the PDF.
- If you’re editing a sent invoice, you’ll need to sign it again for the changes to reflect in the PDF. The changes will automatically be updated in the Customer Portal once the invoice is signed but if you haven’t enabled customer portal to your customers, you will need to sign and then send it to them again.
- The signed version of the documents will be available only as PDFs.
- Signed documents will not be listed in any of the bulk actions.
