Signing your contract
How the agreement reaches you, who signs first, and how to tell where it has got to.
Last updated
Barkr agreements are signed electronically through BoldSign. Signing happens on BoldSign rather than inside the portal, but the portal is where you start it and where you see how far it has got.
If you have seen older Barkr documentation referring to DocuSign, it is out of date. Agreements go out through BoldSign.
How the agreement reaches you
Once you have accepted pricing, Barkr prepares the agreement and sends it for signature. Two things happen at once:
- An email arrives with a secure signing link.
- The contract appears in your portal under Contracts Awaiting Your Signature on the dashboard, with an Open in BoldSign button.
Either route gets you to the same document. The portal generates a fresh signing link each time you click, so a link that has gone stale in your inbox is never a problem — come in through the portal instead.
Who signs, and in what order
You sign first, then Barkr countersigns. The order is enforced rather than conventional, so the document is not available to Barkr’s signatory until yours is on it.
That is why the Open in BoldSign button disappears from your view once you have signed: it is genuinely not your turn. The contract sits with Barkr until it is countersigned, at which point it becomes Active.
Tracking it
Open the contract from the sidebar’s Contracts table to see where it stands:
| Status | Where it is |
|---|---|
| Pending signature | Sent, waiting on you. |
| Client signed | You have signed. Waiting on Barkr to countersign. |
| Fully signed | Both signatures on. The contract becomes Active. |
| Declined | A signature request was declined. |
| Expired | The signature request lapsed before it was signed. |
If something goes wrong
- The email never arrived. Check spam, then sign from the portal instead — the dashboard card works whether or not the email did.
- The link says it has expired. Use the portal button; it issues a new one.
- The document is wrong. Do not sign it. Contact Barkr with the VSA number — see Contacting support. A signed agreement is considerably harder to correct than an unsigned one.
- Someone else at your organisation should be signing. Tell Barkr before the agreement goes out. The signatory is set when the document is prepared.
After signing
The contract becomes Active once both signatures are on it, and the signed PDF is available from the contract record for as long as you have access to it. Download a copy for your own credit file — see Managing an active contract.