AWRA Help Center

Signature capture records a mark drawn on screen against the movement it belongs to, together with the printed name of the signer and the moment they signed. It is designed for a person who is physically present: the driver at the gate, the fitter collecting spares, the member of staff taking a laptop. A signer at a distance — a vendor acknowledging a purchase order, a candidate returning a contract — needs remote document e-signature instead, which is a separate mechanism.

Who Uses This Page

• Storekeepers and warehouse teams receiving deliveries and issuing stock.
• Dispatch and receiving clerks at either end of a stock transfer.
• Admin and IT staff handing assets to a custodian.
• Support agents and field engineers closing a job out in front of the person who reported it.
• Finance and audit reviewers who need to see who signed for what.

Where The Pad Appears

• Stock check-in. Receiving a delivery, including receiving against a purchase order — a PO receipt runs through the same check-in screen, so the pad is already there.
• Stock check-out. Issuing stock to a team, a site, a job or internal use.
• Asset movements. A custody handover between two custodians, alongside the condition recorded at each end.
• Stock transfers. Twice — once at dispatch and once at receipt. See the two-signature section below.
• Inventory count sessions. Twice — the counter signing off the sheet, and the reviewer signing off the variances before stock is rewritten.
• Helpdesk tickets. Once, when the job is finished — the requester signing that the work was actually done. See the resolution sign-off section below.

Taking A Signature

1. Open the movement you are recording — a check-in, check-out, asset movement or transfer.
2. Complete the movement itself first: item, quantity, warehouse or location, and reason.
3. Hand the device to the person receiving or releasing the goods. They draw on the pad with a finger, a stylus or, on a desktop, the mouse.
4. Type the signer's name in the printed-name field. Do this every time — a drawing on its own identifies nobody, and the name is what makes the mark usable later.
5. Use Clear to start the drawing again if it needs another go.
6. Save the movement. The mark is stored with it.

Transfers Take Two Signatures

A stock transfer is the only movement with two parties who can disagree about the quantity: stock that leaves as 100 and arrives as 97 leaves three units to account for. One signature would only ever record one side of that, so a transfer is signed twice and each mark has its own window.

• Dispatch signature — taken while the transfer is still pending, by whoever hands the stock over. Once the transfer moves into transit, this window is shut: a dispatch mark added after the goods have gone would be backdating.
• Receipt signature — taken while the transfer is in transit, by whoever takes delivery. Signing for goods that have not arrived is a promise rather than a receipt, so this window does not open before dispatch.
• The received quantity and any shrinkage are recorded as their own figures, so the difference between the two ends sits between two named people.

Count Sessions Take Two Signatures

A count session is the one place where the signature is not there to say who did the work. Every count line already records the logged-in user who entered it and the moment they entered it, and the session's audit trail records every recount, every reveal of a blind figure and every approval. That record is stronger evidence than a drawing, and it is kept whether anyone signs or not.

What the two marks add is the countersigned count sheet an auditor asks for: a named person certifying the sheet is complete, and a second named person certifying the variances were reviewed before stock was rewritten. Those are two roles that should not be the same person, and that is the one fact a single signature could not record.

• Count signature — taken by whoever walked the aisle. Can be signed from the moment the session opens until it is adjusted or cancelled.
• Approval signature — taken by whoever reviewed the variances. It does not open until something has been counted, because there would be no variance to have reviewed, and it can also be taken on the Apply Approved Variances form, which is the last moment it means anything.
• Editing a session's scope rebuilds the count sheet from scratch and clears the count signature with it. The mark certified a sheet that no longer exists, under the name of somebody who never saw the new one.
• Cancelling a session keeps both marks. Somebody did walk the aisle and did sign, and that is exactly what a reviewer asking why the session was abandoned wants to see.

A Ticket Is Signed At The End, Not The Start

Every other signature in the system is taken while the movement is still in flight and freezes once it lands. A helpdesk sign-off runs the other way round: it cannot be taken until the ticket is Resolved or Closed, because what it attests to is that the work was finished. A signature collected on an open ticket would be a signature for nothing.

It answers a question a resolution timestamp cannot. Resolving a ticket is the agent's own word that the job is done, and on a desk ticket that is enough — the requester is on the other end of the thread and will say if it is not. On field work it is not enough: the engineer leaves, the ticket closes, and a month later nobody can show that the customer ever agreed the work happened.

• Take it in one action. Set the status to Resolved or Closed with the pad already signed and both are recorded together — this is what the mobile app is built around, so a job can be closed out on the doorstep.
• Or take it afterwards, from the ticket's sign-off card, for the customer who signs a minute later at the door.
• Type the printed name. It need not be the person who raised the ticket — whoever was on site and accepted the work is who should sign.
• Cancelled tickets take no signature. There is no finished job to sign off.
• The sign-off is noted in the ticket thread as an internal note, so the history reads in one place.

A recorded sign-off cannot be edited or replaced. If the work turns out not to have been finished, reopen the ticket: reopening withdraws the agreement it recorded, clears the mark, and lets the next resolution be signed for on its own terms. Leaving a "customer signed off" mark on a ticket that went back into the queue would not be stale evidence, it would be wrong evidence. The reopen itself stays on the record.

The requester sees their own sign-off back on their ticket, read-only. It is separate from the CSAT star rating, which the requester gives on their own device afterwards and may revise — a rating is an opinion about the service, a sign-off is a statement that the work was done.

When The Signing Window Closes

A mark can be added or replaced only while the record is still undecided. Once a movement has been approved, adjusted, completed, rejected or cancelled, someone has relied on what it said, and the signature is fixed from that point on.

• Goods receipts and issues — signable while pending; fixed once approved, adjusted or rejected.
• Asset custody handovers — signable while pending; fixed once approved, completed, rejected or cancelled.
• Transfer dispatch — pending only.
• Transfer receipt — in transit only.
• Count sheet — signable from the moment the session opens; fixed once it is adjusted or cancelled.
• Count variance approval — signable once a line has been counted; fixed once the variances are applied or the session cancelled.
• Ticket resolution sign-off — the exception. Not signable until the ticket is Resolved or Closed, then fixed as soon as it is signed. Reopening the ticket clears it.

If the pad is not shown on a record you expected to sign, check the record's status first. A closed window is the usual reason, and it is deliberate rather than a fault.

Signing Without A Connection

Handovers happen in loading bays, yards and stores where there is often no signal. The mark travels inside the movement record rather than as a separate file upload, so a signature taken offline on the mobile app is queued with the movement and posts intact once the device finds a connection. Nothing needs to be re-signed, and nothing sits waiting for an upload to retry.

The drawing is captured at the resolution of the screen it was made on, so a signature taken on a high-resolution phone still reads as handwriting on the printed copy.

Where The Signature Shows Up

• On the movement record — beside the quantity, the reason, the person who recorded it and the approval decision.
• On printed and emailed documents — the mark, printed name and timestamp render on the check-in and check-out documents, on screen and in the PDF. An unsigned document prints as a clean receipt, not as a form with a gap in it.
• In the mobile app — the app can read a stored signature back, so a field team can confirm a handover was signed without returning to the office.

Permissions Note

Signing is part of recording a handover, not approving one: if your role lets you record the movement, it lets you take the signature on it. Viewing a stored signature is gated separately on permission to view that kind of movement. Signatures are held on private storage and are never available on a public link, so opening one always goes through a permission check first.

Common Mistakes

• Taking the drawing but leaving the printed name blank. A squiggle with no name names nobody and settles nothing.
• Waiting until after approval to collect the signature, by which time the window has closed.
• Trying to sign off a helpdesk ticket before resolving it. That window opens at the end, not the start.
• Signing a transfer receipt at dispatch time — the two marks belong to two different moments and two different people.
• Treating the mark as a legal e-signature. It is operational evidence about a handover, not a certified signing instrument.
• Expecting a pad on expense, budget or procurement approvals. Those are approved by a named, logged-in user against a permission and written to the audit trail, which is stronger evidence than a drawing.

What It Proves, And What It Does Not

A captured signature gives you a named counterparty, a moment, and a window that closes — enough to settle the great majority of delivery and custody disputes, because those are settled by showing a person their own mark. It is not a cryptographic digital signature: there is no certificate or key pair behind it, and AWRA makes no eIDAS, ESIGN or UETA claim for a captured mark. It also does not verify identity; it records the name that was entered beside the drawing.