Document lifecycle

A document has exactly one status at any moment. Knowing which one explains what you can do with it and what the platform is waiting for.

The states

The underlying status set is Draft, InPreparation, Waiting, Finalizing, Completed, Canceled, Expired, Rejected, Error.

Shown as	What it means
Draft	You are still building it. Nobody has been notified.
Processing	The platform is sealing the document before sending it. Brief and automatic. In the list, these documents are in the In preparation view.
Waiting	Sent. One or more signers have not signed yet.
Finalizing	The last signature has landed and the platform is closing the document.
Completed	Every signer has signed. The final PDF is available.
Rejected	A signer declined. The document stops here.
Canceled	You cancelled it before it completed.
Expired	The expiry date passed before everyone signed.
Error	Something failed during processing.

How a document moves

Draft ──► Processing ──► Waiting ──► Finalizing ──► Completed
              │             │
              │             ├──► Rejected   (a signer declines)
              ▼             ├──► Canceled   (you cancel it)
            Error           ├──► Expired    (expiry date passes)
                            └──► Error

Only Draft is fully under your control. Once you send a document it enters Processing briefly, then Waiting, and from there the outcome depends on the signers and the clock.

How many signers are active at once during Waiting depends on the order you chose: exactly one under sequential, all of them under all-at-once — see Send a document for signature.

Finalizing is the close, and it does not stop

When the last signature lands, the document passes through Finalizing while the platform builds the final version. It is short, but it is the point of no return: the Cancel action disappears from the menu in Finalizing and in Completed. Try to cancel anyway and the answer is “The document is already being finalized.”

Note

Processing exists because the platform applies its own certifying seal to the document before any signer sees it. That seal is what lets it detect later tampering. It normally passes in seconds.

What you can do in each state

Each document’s menu in the list changes with its state and with your role in it — the full table, and who may cancel, is in What you can do with a document.

Filters you will see in the list

The document list filters by some labels that are not statuses but views onto them — All, Needs to sign, In progress, Signed, Copy, Deleted.

Needs to sign is the useful one day to day: it shows documents waiting on you specifically, rather than every document that is merely unfinished.

Deleted is not a state

Deleted shows up alongside the statuses, but it is not one of them: it is absent from the set above. It is a mark laid over the display — underneath, the document keeps whatever state it had.

A document that has already finished — Completed, Rejected, Cancelled, Expired — keeps the state it had. It merely starts showing as Deleted, in the list and in the detail’s Status field, and restoring it brings it back exactly as it was. Deleting a signed document does not rewrite its history.

The exception is a document still in Waiting: that one really is cancelled when you delete it, because there are live invitations to revoke, and its signers are told. A draft, for its part, is deleted for good. See Deleting.

Related

• Signature levels
• Send a document for signature