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.
• 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.

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.

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.

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.
• 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.