A finger on a screen, a printed name, a timestamp — taken at the loading bay, the store counter or the desk where a laptop is handed over. AWRA keeps the mark on the movement record and prints it on the delivery note, so “we never received that” stops being a matter of who remembers harder.
The argument this ends
Three weeks after a delivery, the supplier invoices for 84 filter kits and the site insists 60 arrived. Both sides are certain. Neither has anything to show. What follows is a fortnight of messages, a credit note nobody can justify, and a relationship slightly worse than it was.
The system has a quantity. It does not have a person, so there is nothing to check the quantity against. This is settled by whoever gives up first.
The conversation changes shape. It is no longer “how many arrived” but “Grace signed for 84 at 14:32 — take it up with her”. That is a question with an answer, and it usually takes one phone call.
Where the mark is taken
AWRA puts the pad exactly where a person is physically present and something is changing hands. Not on approvals, not on forms — on handovers. Each of these is a place where the argument, when it comes, is about who took delivery.
A check-in takes the signature of whoever accepted the delivery, beside the quantity they accepted. Receiving against a purchase order runs through the same check-in, so a PO receipt carries a signature with no extra step and no separate screen to learn.
Adjustments, check-in & check-out
02 / ISSUECement to a site, drugs to a ward, spares to a fitter. A check-out records what left the store and takes the mark of the person who walked away with it — so “the store never gave us that” has a counterparty rather than a shrug.
Issued with a named receiver
03 / CUSTODYA laptop, a drill, a vehicle. The movement already records the custodian it left and the custodian it reached, and the condition at both ends. The signature is what makes that a handover the new custodian agreed to, rather than an entry somebody typed about them.
Asset tracking & custody
04 / TRANSFERThe only movement in the system with two parties who can disagree about the quantity. It takes two signatures — one from whoever loaded the lorry, one from whoever unloaded it — and the difference sits between two named people.
How the two-signature transfer works
The two-signature transfer
It is a disagreement between two of your own sites, and one signature can only ever record one side of it. So a transfer is signed for twice. The three units that went missing sit between two named people and a pair of timestamps, instead of beside a blank space that finance will eventually write off.
The dispatch mark can only be taken before the stock leaves. A signature added after the lorry has gone would be backdating, so that window is shut the moment the transfer moves into transit.
The receipt mark can only be taken on arrival. Signing for goods before they turn up is a promise, not a receipt — so the receiving window does not open until the stock is actually on its way.
The received quantity and the shrinkage are recorded as their own figures. With a name at each end, the missing three units are a question for two people rather than a line in a variance report.
When the window closes
Every mark in AWRA has one window in which it can be taken or replaced, and that window closes when the record is decided. Once somebody has approved, adjusted, rejected or completed a movement, another party has relied on what it said — and a mark added after that point would attest to a decision it was never present for.
Signable while the movement is still awaiting a decision.
Signable while the handover is still open for review.
One window only: before the stock leaves.
One window only: while the goods are on the road.
Built for the loading bay
A loading bay is a metal shed, usually with a concrete roof and no coverage. That is precisely where the handover happens. So the mark is not uploaded as a file — it travels as text inside the movement record itself, which means it survives the offline queue on the mobile app and posts when the phone finds a connection on the way out of the yard.
The mark is captured as the person draws it and carried with the movement, so a receipt signed in a dead zone posts intact once there is signal. Nothing is stranded on a device waiting for an upload to retry.
The same pad works on a phone at the gate, a tablet in the warehouse and a POS touchscreen at the counter — and with a mouse on a desktop, for the receipt somebody signs in the office.
The stroke is captured at the density of the device it was drawn on, so a signature taken on a high-resolution phone still looks like handwriting when it reaches the warehouse copy, not like a marker pen.
Signing is always optional. If nobody is available to sign, or the screen misbehaves, the stock movement is still recorded — because a system that refuses the movement is a system people stop using.
Where the mark ends up
A signature is worth having in the three places a dispute actually gets settled: on the paper the driver takes away, on the record finance opens three weeks later, and in the file an auditor asks for.
The mark, the printed name and the timestamp are rendered onto the check-in and check-out documents — on screen and in the PDF that gets emailed or filed. An unsigned document prints as a clean receipt rather than a form with a hole in it.
Whoever opens the receipt weeks later sees the signature beside the quantity, the reason and the person who recorded it — in the same place as the rest of the movement, not in a separate document system.
Signatures are held on private storage, never on a public link. Fetching one goes through a permission check first, so a mark is visible to the people in your organization who are allowed to see that movement — and to nobody else.
The app that took the signature can read it back, so a field team can confirm on the spot that the handover was signed rather than driving back to find out.
The mark sits alongside the reason code, the attachments, the actor history and the approval decision — the material an audit asks for, in one record instead of four systems.
Each mark is verified as a genuine image and held to a sensible size ceiling before it is stored, so the signature field cannot be used as a back door for arbitrary uploads.
What it is, and what it isn't
Signature capture is a strong operational control and a weak legal instrument. Those are different things, and vendors who blur them cost their customers money. Here is the line, drawn where we would want it drawn if we were the ones buying.
Signing here, e-signing there. A pad is for a person standing in front of you. A signer at a distance — a vendor acknowledging a purchase order, a candidate returning a contract, a supplier completing prequalification — needs a document sent out, tracked and returned, which is remote e-signature and a different mechanism entirely. AWRA does both, and keeps them apart on purpose: see the document e-signature connector.
And where we deliberately did not put a pad. Expense approvals, budget sign-off and procurement authorisation stay unsigned by design. An approval made by a logged-in person, gated on a permission and written to the audit trail is stronger evidence than a drawn mark — and adding a pad on top would make a real control look ceremonial. A signature belongs where somebody is physically handing something over, and nowhere else.
Connected operations
Signature capture is one layer of a movement record that already carries a reason, an actor, an approval decision and an evidence trail. These are the parts it leans on.
The receiving and issuing flows the pad sits inside, with reason codes, evidence and approval routing.
Open featureCross-location movement, transit state, received quantity and shrinkage — the record the two marks bracket.
Open featureThe custodian register, condition at both ends of a handover, and the movement history a signature attaches to.
Open featureReceiving against an order runs through the same signed check-in, with over-delivery blocked at the gate.
Open featureThe queue that carries a signature out of a dead zone, and the scanning workflows beside it.
Open featurePulling the movement record, its evidence and its approval decisions together when somebody asks to see them.
Open featureWhat changes
None of this makes stock stop going missing. What it changes is how long it takes to find out where, and whether the answer holds up when somebody pushes back on it.
A named signer and a timestamp turn a three-week argument into one phone call to the person who signed.
“I never received that laptop” is answered by the handover the custodian marked themselves.
The gap between dispatched and received sits between two signatures rather than in a variance report.
The mark, the reason, the actor and the approval are in one record, so producing evidence is opening a page.
Signing works with no signal and never blocks a movement, so nobody is choosing between the process and the job.
The pad appears inside the receiving, issuing, custody and transfer screens teams already use.
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