Concluding contracts is a complicated process. At each stage, company employees spend a lot of time and effort. In practice, it is especially time-consuming to approve contracts.
For instance, supply contracts are usually approved by a manager or head of the procurement department, a lawyer, and the CCO of the company, and then signed by the CEO. Depending on the terms of the contract and the structure of the company, other employees (accountants, managers, heads of departments, etc.) may also approve contracts. After the contract is signed, it is sent to the company-contractor, where it undergoes another cycle of approvals.
When the contract is in paper form, the employees of the company who approve it take turns reading it. If an employee of the company is on a business trip or on sick leave, this delays the approval process. There are frequent cases in practice where the employee in charge makes amendments to the document, and the approval cycle begins all over again.
Besides, the document can get lost between departments. All this significantly increases the time it takes to conclude a contract.
To simplify the approval process, companies are concluding contracts in electronic form more and more often. Let's take a closer look at the benefits this brings to business.
e-Contract approval: benefits for business
The Vchasno.EDO service significantly reduces the time for approving contracts. The program automates the exchange of contracts and supporting documents. This makes approvals within the company and with partners faster.
The automation of contract approval also provides other benefits to the business. For example:
- Employees monitor the approval process. The company employee in charge of concluding the contract can see the status of the document, the terms of approval, and the employees involved in this process in the service. If difficulties arise at a certain stage of the approval process, the employee in charge will monitor and correct the process.
- You can reduce the negative influence of the human factor. In companies with a large document workflow, employees can make mistakes in documents, lose them or approve them untimely. Automatic approval of contracts prevents these problems.
- You can accelerate business processes in the company. By saving time for approval, the contract is brought into force more quickly. This allows the company to speed up business processes and make a profit faster.
Approving contracts in the Vchasno service
Each company uses a different procedure for approving contracts and involves a different number of employees. To automate these processes, the Vchasno service allows you to assign predefined signature flows to documents. This means that the documents (e-form of contract) for which the flow is intended will arrive for approval to all required employees in the correct order.
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Employees do not attach an e-signature to a document during approval.
However, with the Vchasno settings, you can allow contracts to be signed only after it has been approved by all appointed employees.
The employees who have administrator privileges in the Vchasno service or the right to configure document flows can create a flow for approving and signing contracts. In the service settings, you must specify the conditions under which the flow is applied to the document (e.g., for incoming or outgoing documents, contracts with a particular counterparty, etc.).
Then, the employee specifies which of the company's employees approves the contract. It is possible to apply a sequential order of approval (when employees sign the contract in a certain order) or a parallel order (when the order of signing is not important).
Employees can configure approval and signing flows for both outgoing and incoming contracts. In the Vchasno service, you can assign a flow only for documents that are not yet being approved or signed.
You can add labels to the documents processed according to a certain flow, if necessary. This function is required when employees approve a large number of contracts. Labels allow you to quickly find the desired contract and additional accompanying documents in the catalog. Also, with the help of labels you can assign access rights to documents to your employees.
Signing a contract with an e-signature
Once the parties have approved the e-contract, the responsible employees (usually the CEOs of the companies) sign it. According to the law, electronic QES and AES signatures are equivalent to handwritten signatures and make the contract legally binding.
Vchasno.ODE users sign contracts with a QES in a matter of minutes. To do this, select the desired contract in the list of documents and open it. There is a signing menu to the right of the document. The Vchasno service allows you to apply individual signatures (Diia.Signature and Mobile.ID) to documents, but in order to confirm the authority to sign contracts, an employee must use the company employee’s QES. After signing a contract, the employee can send it to the counterparty right in the Vchasno service.
Hence, the automatic approval of contracts provides the company with obvious benefits. e-Document workflow services help avoid mistakes in documents and speed up business processes.
Apply for consultation
Please contact our experts for detailed instructions on how to use Vchasno.ODE to arrange work with contracts in your company.
The material is co-authored by:
Adrian Shlapak — Head of the Vchasno ODE Implementation Sector
Vadym Prohnevskyi — Manager of the Vchasno ODE Implementation
