This week saw the convergence of a few deadlines in financing and me going out of town. Landing in NYC, I realized I didn’t own a fax machine and I needed to sign some documents and fax them.
So out I go to the nearest Staples Express, plunk down $150 to buy a brand new Brother multifunction wonder, and then proceed to carry the huge box back to my apartment.
A few sweaty minutes later, I get to my place and set it up. I plug it all in and thankfully after a few tests, it all works fine.
I then sit down to print out a whole bunch of docs and prepare them for faxing to various places. What a big time suck. I need to sign two agreements and create fax cover sheets for both of them. I proceed to print out tons of paper and lay them out on my table and double check what they are and where they’re supposed to go. Finally I get that all organized and sign them, and then stuff them into my fax machine multiple times as many people need to have copies of them. I also create another fax for my financial person with wiring instructions, sign that, and then fax it away.
It seems as though the point at which all this is broken is the signature.
I can already email things around. I use Acrobat to generate PDFs all the time so I know that the docs won’t be altered. That’s not the problem.
The problem is when I need to physically sign something. Then I need to print something out, sign it, and then get back into an electronic state. This is typically a fax machine, but it can also mean scanning in of the doc and turning it into a PDF before emailing. Scanning this in can be problem. I have a Fujitsu ScanSnap seems to work most of the time, but if the paper is even slightly bent, it starts screwing up bulk scanning. Somehow, fax machines seem more resilient in feeding less than optimal paper, but I have to fax it somewhere. A buddy of mine told me to sign up for eFax which I finally am paying for now. It is about $170/year, but it definitely works great and now I have a fax number to boot. When faxes come in, I set it to convert to PDF so now I have electronic versions of all my faxes. I can also fax myself so that it essentially becomes a scanning->PDF solution.
But how can I insert my signature electronically? I suppose I could scan my signature into an image and then copy/paste it into documents. Security-wise, that isn’t too great; as soon as somebody gets hold of that image, I’m toast.
Where are all the digital signature solutions? I used to hear talk of companies attempting solutions but I don’t hear much about them now. A business opportunity perhaps, in the world of Web 2.0+?
Going paperless is key; it seems ridiculous that one of my most favorite appliances is my paper shredder. When we talk about legal documents, we’re talking about pages upon pages of formal wording that I have to go through and it sucks to carry it around, only to shred it when I’m done. Finally, I am starting to get used to reading these docs on the PC screen, although sometimes I find it still difficult (thank god for the ability to print 2 pages onto one piece of paper through MS Word). I have (almost) gotten my entire financial life to go paperless. Somehow, the world of signing agreements needs to get there as well.