# Documents, Clients & Studio

Documents are how you package proposals, statements of work (SOWs), and contracts for the external organizations you work with. This guide covers clients, building and sending documents, the recipient signing flow, and Studio's AI-assisted generation.

## Clients

Clients are the external organizations that receive your documents and proposals. Every document is associated with a client so you can keep your work organized around who it's for.

- An **Internal** client is created automatically as a fallback, so you can start drafting documents before you've set up any external clients.
- Create additional clients for each external organization you send work to, and associate documents with the right client.

## Documents

A document is a proposal, SOW, or contract that you build from **pages** and **sections**. Documents are **versioned**, so you can revise the content over time while keeping a record of what was sent previously.

### Building a document

1. Create a document and associate it with the relevant [client](#clients).
2. Add pages and sections to structure the content — think of pages as the top-level structure and sections as the building blocks within them.
3. Revise as needed. Each meaningful revision produces a new version, so the content a recipient sees is tied to a specific version.

### Terms of service and custom clauses

- Your **terms of service are snapshotted per version**. This means the exact terms in effect when a version is created stay attached to that version, even if you later change your standard terms.
- You can show **custom clauses at signing**, so recipients see any additional terms relevant to that specific document before they accept.

## Sending a document

You send a document by sharing an **opaque short link** of the form `/d/{id}` with your recipients. The link doesn't reveal any details about the document until the recipient is granted access.

### Recipient access levels

Choose how much verification a recipient needs before they can open the document:

| Access level | Who can view |
|--------------|--------------|
| Public | Anyone with the link |
| Authenticated | Any signed-in Votare user |
| Tenant-member | Members of your organization |

### Optional protections

- **Password gate** — require recipients to enter a password in addition to the link.
- **Expiry** — set an optional expiry so the link stops working after a chosen point in time.

## The recipient signing flow

When a recipient opens the short link, they move through a guided flow:

1. **Verify** — the recipient confirms their identity with a one-time code sent to their email.
2. **View** — the recipient reads the document, including any [custom clauses and snapshotted terms](#terms-of-service-and-custom-clauses).
3. **Respond** — the recipient can **accept**, **decline**, or **request changes**.

### What acceptance captures

When a recipient accepts, the signature step captures:

- A **signature**, drawn or typed by the recipient.
- A **device fingerprint**, **IP address**, and **user-agent** for the signing session.

Acceptance can produce a **certificate PDF** documenting the signed agreement.

### Automated reminders

An automated reminder sequence nudges recipients who haven't responded yet, sending follow-ups around **day 3, day 7, and day 14**. This helps keep proposals moving without you having to chase manually.

## Tracking and audit trail

Every recipient interaction is logged, giving you a complete trail of what happened with each document:

- Link opens
- Document views
- Verification attempts
- Sign actions (accept, decline, request changes)

For the full picture of these logs and related security tooling, see [Audit logs, email logs & security](/docs/admin/audit-and-security).

## Studio

Studio generates documents with AI to help you start faster.

- **Templates** — generate from built-in templates such as SOW and proposal.
- **Branding** — Studio applies your per-organization branding, including your logo and accent colour, so generated documents match your identity.
- **Generation history** — Studio keeps a history of what it has generated, so you can revisit and reuse prior work.

Once Studio produces a draft, you can refine it into a full [document](#documents), associate it with the right [client](#clients), and send it through the standard signing flow.

## Related

- [Audit logs, email logs & security](/docs/admin/audit-and-security)
- [Projects & roadmaps](/docs/admin/projects-and-roadmaps)