Completion & the certificate

When the final signer submits, the envelope becomes completed and Fusial automatically seals the document. Sealing is a background job, so it runs reliably even if a step briefly fails — and it's safe to retry without double-filing or double-emailing.

What sealing produces

Fusial builds a single, self-describing PDF in this order:

1. Stamps the signatures onto the PDF. Each field's value is drawn onto the unsigned PDF at the exact position it was placed. Signatures, initials, names, dates, and text are rendered as text.
2. Appends a Certificate of Completion (see below) as extra page(s) at the end.
3. Hashes the result. A SHA-256 of the final PDF is recorded so the document's integrity can be verified later.

The Certificate of Completion

The certificate is the envelope's audit record — a self-contained ESIGN/UETA completion certificate appended to the signed document. It lists:

• The contract title and envelope ID.
• The completion timestamp.
• A SHA-256 hash of the signed document, computed over the stamped pages before the certificate itself is appended.
• For each signer: name and email, their party — Sender for you or a teammate (anyone in your organization), or Counterparty for an external signer — when they signed, when they consented, and the IP address and device/browser captured at signing.
• The full electronic record and signature disclosure they consented to.

Because the certificate is appended to the same PDF, the final artifact is one file that describes who signed it, when, from where, and under what terms.

The signed version on the contract

The sealed PDF is filed back onto the contract as a new version:

• Its source is marked Signed, and its type is PDF (not .docx).
• The filename mirrors the original — MyContract.docx becomes MyContract (signed).pdf.
• It's linked to the version it was rendered from, so the history stays connected, and the version number auto-increments like any other version.

The contract status moves to Signed, and the completion is written to the audit log along with the signed version's ID.

The signed-copy email

Every party — your own organization's signers and the counterparty alike — is emailed the completed document (subject: "Signed: {contract title}"). The fully-signed PDF, certificate included, is attached. For documents too large to attach (around 38 MB+), the email instead includes a secure download link valid for 7 days.

Interested members (the envelope's creator) are also notified in-app that the contract is fully signed.

Downloading later

The signed PDF lives in the contract's version history like any other version, so you can re-download it anytime. The certificate of completion is part of that same file.

If something goes wrong mid-seal

Sealing is designed to recover cleanly:

• The document is sealed and filed only once. A retry after a hiccup won't create a second signed version.
• The signed-copy email is sent only once. A retry won't re-spam the parties — but if an earlier send genuinely failed, the retry delivers it.

You don't need to do anything to trigger this; it happens automatically.

Related