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Signers & Recipients

Manage who is able to sign or receive documents

Jonathan Scott avatar
Written by Jonathan Scott
Updated over 6 months ago

Until at least one Signer is added, no Offers can be sent

There are two distinct flows in Engine

It's easy to confuse the two, so to explain:


1. Offer approval flow

The bit in Engine. Raising, reviewing, sending Offers to Crew.
We refer to the people in the above Offer approval flow as APPROVERS.

  1. Production Secretary raises Offer, sends to PM

  2. *PM checks/edits/sends Offer to Accountant
    (can be removed or swapped with next step)

  3. Accountant checks/edits/adds budget code/does IR35 designation/sends to Crew

  4. Crew receive an email notification
    (after they create their account, if not already)

    • Review the Offer

    • Complete their Startpack relevant to that Offer

    • Accept the Offer
      (it's here that they agree to share the information in their Startpack at the point. Contract documents are written and they're supporting documents are shared, e.g. their passport)

What were looking at in this Help article though, is the 'Signers'

2. Signing flow

The bit in Docusign. Signing contracts.

  1. Crew sign the contract documents

    1. If Crew have an Agent, the Agent initials the documents first, so the crew member knows the Agent approves

    2. If Crew member has a Loan Out company

  2. Production signatory signs where relevant

    1. Contract, Deal Memo, Start Form, Riders, NDA

  3. Accounts signatory signs where relevant

    1. Start Form (sometimes Contracts and Riders)

  4. Studio / Production Company signatory signs when relevant

    1. e.g. US Studio shows counter-sign Contracts for some depts (Accounts, Editors, Music, Post-Production, VFX)

    2. Team Engine can do conditional-signing based on combinations of:

      1. Unit

      2. Department

      3. Gross Daily Rate threshold

      4. Daily or Weekly engagement

      5. 'Out of scale' deal checkbox
        So conditional signing can be used to spread the workload of Production signatories, e.g. different PM's signing contracts only for their Unit



Specify signers & recipients

Let Team Engine know (via email [email protected])


Signers:

  • Person signing for Production:

    • name, job title and email address

  • If applicable: person signing in place of Production when certain conditions are met (e.g. a different Unit or Department):

    • name, job title, email address and conditions

  • Person signing for Accounts:

    • name, job title and email address

  • If applicable: person signing for Studio or Production Co. as well as the above

Recipients:

  • Generic email address for Production to which all fully executed documents will be emailed

  • Generic email address for Accounts to which all fully executed documents will be emailed

  • If you're using BOX cloud storage, on a Business or Enterprise plan, to use their 'Email to folder' functionality to automatically save executed documents to a folder of your choosing. You can set more than one 'Email to folder' email address, e.g. have one folder for Production and one folder for Payroll.
    Follow these BOX instructions and then tell Team Engine the new email address(es).

We advise against using personal addresses as Recipients because people move on/up during a project, so then the envelopes already live in Docusign get stuck with that previous address. Generic addresses avoid that.

Team Engine will add the Signers & Recipients

And assign them to each document template, as relevant. e.g. Production signatory signs Contracts, but (in this example) doesn't sign every NDA.

Team Engine will then let you know that you can start sending Offers!


At the point that an Offer is accepted (in Engine):

  • The documents (contract etc) are created

  • The information in the Crew member's Startpack at that point in time is used to write the documents

  • The Signers and Recipients (as set above) in place at that point in time are assigned to the documents

No subsequent change to Offer, Startpack or Signer/Recipients will change a 'live' envelope already out for signing in Docusign (think of it like being unable to amend a sent email), regardless how long the previous signer takes to sign

  • The documents are sent around that list of pre-determined signers

  • Once ALL signers have signed, ALL parties (Signers (inc Crew, Agent, Lender as applicable) & Recipients) receive an email with access to the fully executed documents

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