Question

Why does moving a page invalidate the signature?

Workflow

Updated August 28, 2015

asked on August 27, 2015

I am trying to implement a new workflow utilizing electronic signatures for purchasing card statement approvals, but running into an issue with signatures displaying as invalid.

Here's what is going on:

When an employee submits their statements for approval, they include all supporting documents such as the statement, receipts and a reconciliation. The issue we are experiencing is that everyone, myself included, always screws up the order of which should be the first and last page. After signatures are collected and the statements make their way to Accounts Payable, the coordinator then rearranges the pages into the correct order thus causing the document's signatures to be invalid. She could of course disapprove and have signatures recaptured, but that would become a pain very quick having to deal with on a monthly basis (not good for acceptance of the new workflow process).

My question is this... why does reordering pages in a document cause the signatures to be invalid? This makes no sense. The actual content of the document was not changed, just the order of pages. Would be as if there were a multi page document on your desk with the boss' signature on the last page, the order of pages may have been placed incorrectly by the boss (because we all know that will happen), and the subject matter expert (you) rearranges the document to be in the correct order. Signature is still valid on the last page, no pages were added or deleted, just the order changed. Even if he had initialed every page in that document, they are all still there.

Maybe the justification behind invalidating these signatures was retaining the creator's original page order. Well, if the creator would have number the pages before importing into Laserfiche, this wouldn't be an issue. If the pages weren't numbered prior to being imported, that is the fault of the document creator... not the person trying to fix the ordering and should have been caught prior to signatures being captured.

Is there any way possible that this validation process can be changed? Or is there another way this can be accomplished? If these signatures are viewed by our auditors and seen as invalid, this will not be good for our Finance department.

Sorry for the long-winded question. Was trying to explain our vantage point on the issue.

Thanks ahead of time for the help guys!

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replied on August 27, 2015 • Show version history

Reordering the pages could cause the meaning of a document to change. Imagine that a document contains a list of items, and that the order of the items has a particular meaning. By reordering the pages, the ranking could change. Please ensure that the order of the pages is correct before signing the document. As for the pages not being numbered being the fault of the document creator...it's hard to argue against that logic, but sometimes users have no choice but to scan in a document as-is and they want to ensure that the contents aren't modified without detection. This is what digital signatures allows.

If you need to change the content of a document in any way, such as adding an amendment or reordering pages, then I suggest adding creating a new signature noting the change in the signature comment without deleting the original signature. An auditor can confirm that the only change to the document since the original signature was created was the page order change by moving the pages back to their original order and seeing if the original signature validates. If so, that confirms no other changes have been made to the document. You could also create a copy of the document and use a superseded link to note that the old document has been superseded by the new one.

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replied on August 28, 2015

Michael...

Thanks for the reply.

I see your point about a list being reordered, but the contents of that list are still present. That should not have any bearing on making the signatures of the entire document invalid.

Would it be possible to create a feature on the Admin console enabling the organization to decide what causes a signature to be invalid based on business requirements? I can understand if Laserfiche does not want to change this function for all clients, but it would be nice for clients to be able to decide how this function operates.

Thanks!

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replied on August 28, 2015

The order of the items in that hypothetical list might be important, just as the order of the words in a sentence or phrase is important.

We'll investigate to see if we can offer a better experience for users who need to make changes to a document after it's been signed, rather than simply saying the signature is invalidated. Rather than an option when creating the signature, I believe it's more likely a future version of the software will track this kind of non-destructive change, note what changed, and allow you to verify the signature by virtually undoing the change on the current state of the document.

Please let us know if you have any further comments or suggestions, and thank you for taking the time to post the background for your suggestion.

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Why does moving a page invalidate the signature?

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