How-to · Contracts & Files

Send a contract for signature

Send a contract a client can read and e-sign online, and get notified when it's done.

Updated September 15, 2026

To send a contract: start from a template, fill in the details, and send. Your client reads it and signs online, and you both get a copy when it's complete.

Send it

Open the client or project and choose New contract.
Pick a template, or start blank, and fill in the specifics.
Choose Send. The contract ends in a signature line for each person — your client's, then yours.

The contract is edited right where it sits in the file: click into the text and type. Select it and a formatting toolbar pins above the text; the side panel holds the template, the title, and the details you can drop in.

Signing on the line

Your client signs right on their line at the end of the contract — type their name or draw it — and it turns into their signature, with the date and time. Your countersignature line sits below theirs and is signed after them: automatically, or by you, depending on the contract. You see the same lines, filled in as people sign, at the end of the contract in your file. The small ✎ Client signature markers in the text are where the signed PDF notes each signature — move or delete them like any text. The contract's status card sits above the contract's own page.

After it's signed

You're notified the moment the client signs.
The signed PDF is saved to the project for both of you.
Pair it with an invoice so signing and paying happen together.

See where it's got to

Open the contract — click its name in the project's Files tab — and the top of the page tells you what has happened to it.

Who has signed, and who hasn't. Everyone on the contract is listed with where they've got to: not opened yet, opened, signed, or declined. When every client has signed and it's waiting on you, your own row says so.
Why it came back. If a client declined, you see who and the reason they gave. If you recalled or voided it, you see when and the reason you wrote down.
Its history. Every step, oldest first — sent, each signature, fully signed — with the date and time.

If you revised a contract, each version links to the other, so the one you replaced is never lost.

Tip

Save your most-used agreement as a template once. Every future contract starts from it, so you only fill in what changes.

Details that fill themselves in

Instead of retyping the client's name, the event date or the price into every contract, drop a field into the template and Gliss fills it from the project.

Click into the contract on the page where the detail belongs. Pick it from Contract content in the side panel, or choose Insert field in the toolbar above the text.
Choose what you want: Client Full Name, Event Date, Total Cost, Governing Law State, and so on.
It fills itself in straight away: the chip shows the real value (hover to see which field it is), and that's what your client reads.

Anything still blank is highlighted. A note above the contract counts what's left ("Complete 4 highlighted fields, then send the contract"), and a flag in the margin marks each line with a blank. Click a flag to jump to it.

Two of them are whole clauses rather than single values: Services and Payment Schedule build themselves from the project's invoice, so the figures in the signed agreement are the ones the client is actually being charged.

Warning

Gliss won't let you send a contract that still has a money or date field with nothing behind it — it tells you which ones and stops there, whether you send the contract from the project or from the file itself. Amounts and payment dates come from the project's invoice, so adding the invoice usually fills them all. A blank where a price should be is worse than a delay. Softer fields, like a mailing address, only warn.

Fix a field

Click any field in the contract to open it in the side panel:

Field — change which detail it is, right where it sits.
Fill manually — if the record has no value (a phone number you never filled in), or you want something different on this one contract, type it here. It doesn't change the template or the client's record; leave it blank to go back to the record's value.
Required before sending — make any field one the contract can't go out without. Money and dates always are.
A link takes you to the record the value comes from, if you'd rather fix it there.

Let your client fill it in

Some details are the client's to give — their mailing address, a second contact, where to park. Click the field and switch it from Smart field to Input field. It shows in your text as a dashed "client fills" chip.

When your client signs, a Before you sign box asks for each one. What they type appears in the agreement as they type it. Tick Required to sign and they can't sign until it's filled in. Answers are kept as plain text, up to 500 characters each.

Their signature, and yours after it, is on the agreement with their answers in it. That completed text is what the signed PDF holds, and it's what you see in your file afterwards. If more than one client signs, the first to sign fills it in and the rest sign that.

Money and dates can't be input fields: they come from the project's invoice and event, so the agreement and the invoice can't disagree.