Operations · Contracts & payments
No-chasing contracts. Same-day payments.
This isn't about picking an e-signature tool — it's about where signature and payment sit inside your onboarding flow. Two friction points kill more onboardings than anything else: contracts and money. Both can be compressed into a single step that takes about 6 minutes—if you stop treating them as two separate emails sent days apart.
Sign, counter-sign, and collect payment in one flow—no redirects.
Get startedThe contract flow that gets signed in 6 minutes
Pre-fill everything you know
Company name, project scope, deliverables, deadline—auto-populated from the brief the client already submitted. They never type the same information twice.
Show only what changed
Highlight the editable fields and lock everything else. Clients sign faster when they aren't re-reading eleven pages of boilerplate to find the two lines that matter.
Sign on-screen, no redirect
Type-to-sign or draw-to-sign, in the same window. No "verify your email" detour, no separate account to create.
The payment trigger
The single highest-leverage move in the whole onboarding sequence is this: payment lives inside the same flow as the signature, not in a follow-up email sent later. The moment the contract signs, the payment block should expand right there, in the same window.
The psychology, in one line
A signed contract creates commitment. Payment immediately after signature locks it in. Wait 24 hours to send the payment link, and you'll often wait closer to 12 days for it to land.
A few details make the payment step itself frictionless:
- Card details pre-populated automatically for a returning client.
- Default to "pay now"—a scheduled or split payment should be opt-in, not the default path.
- Show what happens next: the kickoff date and the first deliverable, right after payment clears.
- Send a receipt and a welcome email automatically on success, without a manual step on your side.
Why splitting contract and payment into two emails backfires
Every additional email between "signed" and "paid" is another chance for the client's attention to move somewhere else—another deal, another priority, another day where the urgency that got them to sign has quietly faded. Keeping both steps in one continuous flow removes that gap entirely, rather than trying to write a more persuasive payment-reminder email later.
This is one piece of the full onboarding sequence—see how to onboard a new client in 30 minutes for how the brief and files fit before this step, or calculate what delayed payments and slow contracts are actually costing your agency. Or browse the guide directory for your specific profession.
Frequently asked questions
- How long should it take a client to sign a contract?
- Around 6 minutes, if the contract pre-fills everything already captured in the brief and only surfaces the fields that actually need a decision. Contracts that ask clients to re-read and re-enter information they've already provided take much longer and get signed much later.
- Should I send the payment link in the same message as the contract?
- Send it in the same flow, not a separate message—ideally the payment step appears automatically once the contract is signed, in the same window. Separating them into two follow-ups is the single biggest reason payment gets delayed.
- Why does waiting to send a payment link matter so much?
- A signed contract creates commitment, and payment immediately after signature locks that commitment in while it's fresh. Wait 24 hours to send the payment link, and you'll often wait far longer—commonly closer to two weeks—for it to actually land, because the moment of highest intent has passed.
- Should 'pay now' or 'pay later' be the default option?
- Default to 'pay now,' with a scheduled or split payment as an opt-in alternative rather than the default. Clients who have to actively choose to delay payment pay faster than clients who have to actively choose to pay immediately.
- What should happen automatically after a client pays?
- A receipt and a welcome email should send automatically, and the client should immediately see what happens next—their kickoff date and their first deliverable—so payment feels like the start of something, not just a transaction that disappears into an inbox.
Sign and get paid in the same 6 minutes
Contract and Stripe payment live in the same branded flow—no redirects, no separate follow-up.
Get started