Leads & Estimates

Sending and Signing the Bill of Lading

Email the Interstate Bill of Lading to your customer, collect their signature, and find the signed copy afterwards.

The Interstate Bill of Lading is the contract for the move itself. It lives on the estimate, like every other document, and you send it to the customer as a secure link they sign in their own browser.

You do not have to book first

You can send the Bill of Lading as soon as the estimate is ready; it doesn't need to be booked. Booking is only needed to dispatch the job — an estimate that isn't booked yet says so on its Dispatch tab (Book this estimate before dispatching it.) and adds that the Bill of Lading can still be sent.

How to send it

  1. Open the estimate.
  2. In the Emails & Invoices panel, find the Open BOL and Send BOL buttons.
  3. Click Send BOL.
  4. A confirmation appears — Send Bill of Lading? — asking whether to email a new Bill of Lading for the customer to sign. Earlier signed BOLs are kept. Confirm it.
  5. You will see Bill of Lading email sent.

The email goes to the customer's email address on the estimate. If there is none you will see No customer email found; add one under Moving From or Moving To and save. It is sent from your company's connected email; if that isn't set up yet, see Email Integrations.

The link is good for 72 hours. Under the signing button the email says Valid until with the date and time, and the office phone to call after that.

Open BOL opens a new, blank BOL with today's figures in a new tab — use it when the customer is signing in person.

Sending it alongside other documents

To send the BOL in the same message as the proposal, a payment link or a storage agreement, click Open Send Center instead and tick Bill of Lading in the links list (it is described there as the BOL signing page), or choose the Bill of Lading email template. A BOL sent from the Send Center also attaches the Bill of Lading as a PDF. See Send Center.

What the customer sees

The customer opens the link and gets the full Interstate Bill of Lading to read first, with a Download PDF button at the top. The page asks them to review the complete document above before signing.

To sign, they:

  • type their Full Legal Name;
  • check the valuation. Normally it shows Standard Valuation: Released Value - $0.60 per pound per article is selected automatically. If your company offers Full Value Protection, they make the Required Valuation Selection instead — Full Value Protection (with a declared value and a deductible) or Released Value, which the page flags as providing substantially less protection;
  • draw their signature in the Customer Signature box (one signature is applied to the required acknowledgements);
  • tick the box confirming they reviewed the whole Bill of Lading, and click Accept, Sign, and Lock BOL.

They then see Bill of Lading signed and locked. The version they signed is captured exactly as it was at that moment, so later edits to the estimate cannot change what they agreed to.

Full Value Protection is offered only when an administrator turns on Offer Full Value Protection in Settings → CRM & Estimates → Estimate Settings. It is off by default.

Finding the signed copy

Back on the estimate, a View Signed BOL button appears under Open BOL and Send BOL once a BOL is signed. Open BOL and Send BOL keep working: each one starts a new blank BOL with today's figures, so you can have a BOL signed again after a change, and every signature is kept.

The signed document is also filed in the estimate's Document Cabinet (choose Documents on the estimate), under Moving Paperwork, as Signed Interstate Bill of Lading with the job number and its revision number.

To confirm the email actually went out, use Email History on the estimate. In a sent email there, the Bill of Lading button opens the office copy of the BOL in a new tab, not the customer's link.

If something is not working

  • The customer's link has expired. A BOL link is good for 72 hours. After that the customer sees This Bill of Lading link has expired. with your office phone, a Call button and their rep's name and email, and the rep gets an alert in the notification bell. Send a new one with Send BOL.
  • "This Bill of Lading link is no longer active." The link was cancelled. Send a new one.
  • "This Bill of Lading has already been signed." That link was used. Open it with View Signed BOL, or send a new link if they need to sign again.
  • Send BOL or Open BOL says Access denied. Your account has the Block Send Bill of Lading restriction, and only an administrator can change it — see User Roles and Access.
  • The customer says they never got it. Check Email History first to see whether it went, then check the email address on the estimate.

If the customer signs twice

That is fine and it is deliberate. Every link you send can be signed on its own, and every signature is kept as evidence. Nothing is overwritten, and a second signature does not cancel the first.