The Squiggle Is Not The Evidence
A hand-drawn mark on a screen proves almost nothing on its own. What makes it evidence is the two boring fields beside it and one rule about when it can no longer be changed.
Every few months somebody asks us for a signature pad, and what they describe wanting is the drawing. They picture a finger on a screen, a squiggle appearing, the driver walking away satisfied. We built the pad. But the drawing is the least valuable thing it captures, and if that is the part you are buying, you are buying a decoration.
Try to use a signature that is only a signature
Imagine the delivery dispute in its usual form. Three weeks after the fact, a supplier invoices for 84 filter kits and the site says 60 arrived. You open the receipt and there is a mark on it — a loop, a slash, something ballpoint-shaped rendered in pixels.
Now answer the question the dispute actually turns on: who is that? Nobody can read a signature. That is close to the definition of one. So the mark, alone, tells you that somebody was present and willing to move a finger, which you already believed, because the stock is on the shelf.
A squiggle identifies nobody. It is the printed name beside it that names a person you can ring.
The triple that makes it evidence
What we store on a signed movement is three things, and none of them works without the others.
One signed goods receipt
The drawing supplies the human moment — somebody physically marked this, in front of somebody else. The name supplies the address. The timestamp supplies the occasion. Take away the name and you have art; take away the drawing and you have a typed claim about a third party; take away the time and you cannot place it against the delivery at all.
And one rule, which is the part people miss
A signature you can add at any time is not evidence, because the most useful moment to add one is after the argument starts. So every mark in AWRA has exactly one window in which it can be taken or replaced, and that window closes when the record is decided.
A goods receipt or a stock issue can be signed while it is still awaiting a decision. Once it has been approved, adjusted or rejected, somebody has relied on what it said, and the mark is fixed. An asset handover behaves the same way. A stock transfer is stricter still: the dispatch mark can only be taken before the goods leave and the receipt mark only while they are in transit, because a dispatch signature added after the lorry has gone is backdating and a receipt signature taken before arrival is a promise.
Why a closed window matters more than a locked file
People reach for tamper-evidence here — hashes, seals, chains. That is a real technique and we are not using it. What we are doing is cheaper and, for this dispute, more useful: constraining when a mark can exist at all. A signature that could only have been taken in a two-hour window before an approval is hard to fabricate usefully, whatever the file format.
Where the mark has to be, or it is not evidence either
Evidence nobody can find is not evidence. So the same three fields render in the three places a dispute is actually settled: on the movement record whoever opens it weeks later, on the printed and emailed document the driver or the site gets, and back in the mobile app that took it, so a field team can confirm the handover was signed without driving to the office to check.
One deliberate detail: an unsigned document prints as a clean receipt, not as a form with an empty signature box in it. If signing is optional — and it is, everywhere — then an unsigned receipt has to look finished rather than look like a failure.
It has to work where the signing happens
A loading bay is usually a metal shed with a concrete roof, which is to say a place with no coverage, which is also the place the handover happens. A signature pad that needs a connection is a signature pad for the office.
So the mark does not travel as a file upload. It travels as text inside the movement record itself, which means it rides the mobile app's offline queue and posts intact when the phone finds signal on the way out of the yard. Nothing is stranded on a device waiting for a retry, and nobody has to be found and asked to sign a second time.
What AWRA OpsHub does today
- Captures a hand-drawn mark with the signer's printed name and a timestamp, on goods receipts (including receipts against a purchase order), stock issues, asset custody handovers, and stock transfers.
- Fixes the mark once the record is decided — approved, adjusted, completed, rejected or cancelled — so it cannot be quietly backfilled.
- Renders the mark, name and time on the printed and emailed document, and on the record itself.
- Works with no connection, because the mark is carried with the transaction rather than uploaded separately.
- Holds signatures on private storage behind a permission check, never on a public link.
What it does not do
- No cryptographic signing. There is no certificate, no key pair and no PKI behind a captured mark.
- No e-signature certification. We make no eIDAS, ESIGN or UETA claim for it, and you should not accept one.
- No identity verification. The system records the name that was typed beside the drawing; it does not check that the person is who they say they are.
- No tamper-evident seal over the stored image. The control is the closed window, not a hash chain.
Not ours, by choice
- Not a remote signing product. A signer at a distance — a vendor acknowledging a purchase order, a contract going out for return — is a document sent, tracked and returned, and that is remote e-signature through a connector rather than a drawing pad.
- Not on approvals. Expense, budget and procurement authorisation stay unsigned on purpose; see the third post in this batch for why we think a pad there makes a real control look ceremonial.
Signing is optional in every module. A handover with nobody available to sign is still recorded, because a system that refuses the movement is a system people work around.
What is not built today can still be built for you
Anything described above as not built is a statement about what ships in the standard product today — not a limit on what AWRA OpsHub can do for your organisation. Kenya's eTIMS integration and its maintained payroll engine are both in the product because clients needed them and commissioned them; neither appeared by itself, and the same door is open for the gap you just read about. Two honest qualifications so this is worth what it claims: a handful of gaps on this blog are deliberate refusals rather than missing work — a statutory ledger we will not sign our name to, a rule that would decide a tax question for you, a clinical or member-funds record that belongs in a regulated system — and where that is true the post says so in those words rather than calling it a gap. Everything else is a scope, a timeline and a price.
The operational work, which is what most commissions actually are
An extra approval stage in a chain that does not match the standard one, a custom field set on employees or assets that only your sector needs, an expiry that has to block an order rather than send an email, a report your board asks for in a shape nothing produces, or a scanner or weighbridge feeding the goods-in door. These are the commissions we are asked for most often and the smallest ones we quote — and unlike a revenue-authority pipeline, none of them waits on a regulator.
The module-shaped gaps, which are the ones this blog admits most often
A price list with real discount authority, a customer-facing quotation that expires, a bill of materials or recipe costing, a staff advance that is issued, acquitted and chased, a member or unit ledger, a matching rule that holds a payment. Each of these is a build rather than a setting, and each has been quoted before — a bigger piece of work than a custom field, with a written spec and a date instead of a roadmap slide.
The report, document or pack nothing currently produces
The board pack in the shape your board actually asks for, a donor or funder layout, an invoice or receipt template carrying what your regulator or your customer expects, a dataset the report builder cannot reach yet. Usually the fastest thing on this list to deliver, because the data is already in the system.
Systems, rails and hardware you already run
The accounting package, CRM, online store, core banking or custom database you intend to keep — connected through our API so a fact is entered once and appears everywhere it is needed. Plus the physical edge: a scanner, a scale, a weighbridge or a till peripheral feeding the door it belongs to.
How it works: you describe the requirement, we return a written scope, timeline and cost, and once agreed it is built into your environment and maintained as part of the product. Nothing here waits on a regulator or a published specification, which is why operational builds are the ones we quote fastest. Tell us the requirement that would otherwise rule us out — that is a better first conversation than a demo.
Tell us what your operation needsWhat to ask, including of us
Four questions that separate a signature feature from a signature checkbox
What is stored besides the image?
What you will usually hear
"The signature is saved against the record."
How to read it
Press for the fields. If the printed name and the moment are not stored beside the drawing, the mark names nobody and dates nothing.
When can a signature be added or replaced?
What you will usually hear
"Any time, from the record page."
How to read it
That is the answer that makes it decoration. Ask what happens after approval, and whether anything prevents a mark being added the week the dispute starts.
Does it work with no signal?
What you will usually hear
"Yes, the app works offline."
How to read it
Working offline and signing offline are different claims. Ask specifically whether a signature taken in a dead zone survives, and how.
Is it legally binding?
What you will usually hear
"Yes, it's a legally binding e-signature."
How to read it
A vendor who says yes without asking which jurisdiction, which regime, or what the document is has told you they have not thought about it. The useful answer is a narrow one.
Our take
A captured signature is a strong operational control and a weak legal instrument, and most of the value is in the two fields nobody asks about. If you only remember one thing: make your team fill in the printed name. A drawing with a name is worth a phone call. A drawing without one is worth nothing at all.
Frequently asked questions
Is a signature captured in AWRA legally binding?
We make no legal claim for it, and we would treat a vendor who does with suspicion. It is not a cryptographic digital signature — there is no certificate or key pair — and we make no eIDAS, ESIGN or UETA claim. It is operational evidence about a handover: a named counterparty, a timestamp, and a window that closes. That settles most delivery and custody disputes, because those are settled by showing a person their own mark rather than in court.
Can a signature be added after a movement is approved?
No. The signing window closes when the record is decided. A goods receipt or stock issue can be signed while it is still pending; once approved, adjusted or rejected the mark is fixed. Asset handovers behave the same way, and a stock transfer is stricter — dispatch can only be signed while pending, receipt only while in transit.
Is signing required?
Never. Every signature field is optional in every module. If nobody is available to sign, the stock movement or handover is still recorded. Refusing to record real movement because a signature is missing would push people back to not recording it at all, which is worse than an unsigned receipt.
Does signing work without an internet connection?
Yes. The mark is captured as the person draws and travels inside the movement record rather than as a separate file upload, so it rides the mobile app's offline queue and posts intact once the device has signal.
Can I send a document out to be signed remotely?
Yes, but that is a different mechanism. Signature capture is for a person physically present. A signer at a distance — vendor purchase-order acknowledgement, employment contracts, supplier prequalification — needs a document sent, tracked and returned, which AWRA handles through its document e-signature connector.
