Legal, Digital Documentation: All You Need to Know

We've covered how to digitalize KYC, mandates, and signatures. Today, we're looking at the most fundamental way a business can go paperless - by digitalizing its documentation.

Maintaining paper-based records can be riddled with challenges. The space required for their storage, the time spent in finding and sharing documents, the vulnerability of these documents (both in terms of physical damage and access to unauthorized individuals), and difficulties in collaboration all lead to inefficiencies in business flows.

Here’s a quick look at how digitalizing documents can drastically improve the way a business runs:

• Enhanced Productivity: With a comprehensive digital Document Management System, individuals no longer have to waste time looking for or organizing physical documents.

• Improved Information Preservation: Physical documents are prone to damage, and could result in the loss of key information. Digitally storing documents protects information from being physically damaged or degraded.

• Reduced Cost of Logistics: Digitally sharing documents eliminates the need for contracts, agreements, forms, etc. to be couriered from one place to another, thereby saving significant costs.

• Audit trail: Digital document systems also make tracking changes made to important files simple.

Digitalizing paperwork can seem daunting, especially for businesses that deal with large volumes of agreements and contracts daily. Account opening forms for Trading & Demat accounts, loan agreements, etc. are apt examples. In addition to storage being a hassle, the creation and management of these physical documents require significant resources and manpower.

The best way to avoid all these operational overheads is to digitalize the entire process. Account opening forms and loan agreements are standard contracts, with only a few variables that differ from customer to customer. By digitally templating these documents and auto-filling the variable fields, businesses can save tons of time in the customer onboarding process.

DigiDocs makes this possible and more. DigiDocs allows businesses to customize, define, and maintain document templates, generate documents in real-time from these templates, affix e-Stamp papers, and get them eSigned for full legal validity and enforceability.

Digital document templates can be created in editors like Google Docs, MS Word, etc. in the docx format. DigiDocs then auto-detects variables once the file is uploaded for easy template generation.

As with most important documents, ensuring the legal enforceability of digital contracts and agreements is important for all parties involved.

So, how can digital documents (agreements, contracts, etc.) be made legally enforceable?

In the physical, paper world, a Stamp Paper would have to be purchased and affixed on to the document. Stamp Duty is a tax that is paid as per the nature/schedule of the document and is payable to the State Revenue Department. The Stamp Duty process can be completed via Franking, Stamp Paper, or e-Stamp Duty.

If you go through the Franking route, then the document has to be franked before signing. For digital contracts and agreements, it is recommended that the Stamp Paper or e-Stamp receipt should first be merged with the digital contract as a single document, and then digitally signed to ensure it’s legal validity. 

→ Challenge: For digital contracts and agreements, a Stamp Paper has to be purchased, scanned, merged with the document, and then digitally signed by the parties involved to make it legally valid. This involves coordinating with vendors, and operational processes, that can be tedious.

→ Fix: DigiDocs provides for e-Stamps that can be used in conjunction with digital contracting through web-based interfaces and APIs.

In addition to being more convenient, e-Stamping also offers the following benefits:

a. e-Stamps can be generated in minutes and are tamper-proof.

b. e-Stamps offer multi-level security

c. Through the use of optical watermarking, e-Stamps prevent the possibility of duplication.

DigiDocs makes digitally templating contracts and agreements, making them legally enforceable with eStamps, and getting them eSigned a piece of cake, so your business can truly #gopaperless.

For more information or to request a demo, feel free to reach out to us at support@digio.in.