This topic will walk you through how to sign up for Ironclad and add, share, and review documents.
Welcome to Ironclad! We want to introduce our product and guide you through what to expect when working on digital contracts with your counterparty.
Ironclad is a digital contracting solution that companies like Mastercard, L’Oreal, and more (including the company who invited you) trust to complete contracts securely and efficiently. We appreciate you taking the time and trusting us to help keep your contract negotiations moving forward.
If you need to invite users to Ironclad Connect, you can review how to do so in the Invite Counterparties to Ironclad.
Sign Up for Ironclad
When you create your complimentary Ironclad account, we provide all of the necessary tools to help consolidate your contract discussions and activity in one place. In Ironclad, you can:
- Stay informed with real-time status updates.
- View the latest versions of your documents.
- Keep up-to-date on questions, tasks, and required contract information.
There are two ways you can be invited to sign up for your free Ironclad account:
- After completing a counterparty form, you are presented with the option to sign up for a free account.
- You receive a direct, email invitation from Ironclad informing you that you had been invited to collaborate in Ironclad.
Ironclad also offers one-time links to secure new user accounts and help existing users sign into Ironclad. These one-time links, also known as magic links, expire after 15 minutes. Once the magic link expires, you must request a new one from the Ironclad user who invited you.
What does signing up for Ironclad mean?
There are a few important things to note:
- Your account is free. You will not receive a bill for using Ironclad to collaborate.
- Your account is a secure space for both you and your team. Your counterparty (the Ironclad user who invited you) can only see messages, documents, and comments that you explicitly share with them. You can easily tell where something is shared by checking if it is shared with an “Internal” or “External” audience.
- Your account is equipped with features to streamline the review and negotiation process. Both teams can work in a shared space to streamline communication, centralize documents, and easily upload completed agreements. No more messy email threads and draft tracking!
Ironclad keeps your information private and secure. We never share or provide access to your information without explicit permission from you and your team.
Contract Activity
Now that you’ve signed up for your free Ironclad account, let’s walk through how Ironclad organizes contract information and data.
Ironclad manages contracts through workflows. These workflows keep a detailed log of all the contracts’ activity and conversations in the same place where documents are reviewed, edited, and shared. This eliminates the need for email threads where tasks or key questions may be missed.
When you first log in to Ironclad, you are taken directly to the workflow you were invited to participate in.
This is the “workflow command center” of the contract you have been invited to collaborate on. At the top of the page, you can see if a contract is ready for you to review, or if you are still waiting for an agreement to be shared.
In the top right corner, you can click Invite to invite team members to create their own accounts. If you have additional stakeholders such as reviewers, approvers, signers, etc. you can easily add them to the workflow to collaborate as a team in Ironclad.
What features do I have access to in my free account?
With your free Ironclad account, you can:
- Make quick document edits or leave comments. With Ironclad’s browser-based editor, you can make quick edits and leave comments without having to download documents.
- Securely share documents. You can easily add supporting documents to your workflows.
- Send a message. You can ask workflow participants questions about your contract.
- Invite your team members. You can invite other stakeholders from your team to join the workflow.
Add, Share, and Review Documents
Without leaving your web browser, you can access Ironclad Editor, where you can make changes to the document, leave comments for internal or external audiences, or download a copy to edit offline if you prefer to use Microsoft Word. You can compare document versions to see how it’s changed over time. You can also access your documents on your mobile devices to review.
You can securely share your documents from this view, or use the Activity Feed to attach a document to a message, again controlling if the audience is your internal team or your counterparty.
The Activity Feed can also be used for general messaging, where you can @ mention teammates or the counterparty that originally invited you to collaborate to draw attention to specific tasks, comments, etc.
You can easily accept terms as they are, or suggest changes with just one click.
When you are ready to sign, you can request reassignment of your designated signer, download a signature packet, and upload an executed agreement.