Documents & E-Signatures

Overview

How the BookYourPTO document hub works — the personal filing cabinet, built-in and custom folders, the Company Library, and how files are encrypted and protected at rest.

Documents & E-Signatures Overview

The Documents area is BookYourPTO's secure filing cabinet for HR paperwork. It holds contracts, offer letters, policy acknowledgments, ID and visa documents, certificates, tax forms, and anything else tied to an employee — and it doubles as a full e-signature engine so those documents can be signed, tracked, and certified without leaving the app.

The filing cabinet model

When you open Documents, you land on My Folder — your own personal HR drawer. Every document is owned by an employee, and each person's drawer is private to them, their managers, and HR/admins.

Built-in folders (categories)

Every drawer is organized by 13 built-in categories. These exist for everyone and can't be deleted:

Category	Typical contents
Contracts	Employment contracts, amendments
Offer Letters	Signed offers, counter-signs
Salary Increments	Raise letters, comp changes
Performance Reviews	Review forms, ratings
Policy Documents	Handbooks, acknowledgments
ID Documents	Passport, driver's licence, national ID
Certificates	Professional certifications
Training Materials	Course completions, manuals
Medical Certificates	Sick notes, fitness-for-work
Visa Documents	Work permits, visas
Tax Documents	W-2/T4, tax declarations
Insurance	Benefit and insurance paperwork
Other	Anything that doesn't fit above

Custom folders

Beyond the built-ins, you can create custom folders per employee with their own name, icon, and color — handy for grouping things like "Relocation 2026" or "Security clearance" that don't map cleanly to a category.

The Company Library

Some documents aren't about one person — they belong to the whole organization. A document can be flagged for the Company Library to make it an org-wide or role-scoped shared resource (employee handbook, expense policy, code of conduct). Library documents surface to the audiences you choose rather than living in a single person's drawer.

Sidebar views

View	Who sees it	What it shows
My Folder	Everyone	Your own drawer, organized by category and custom folders
Action Required	Everyone	A tray of things waiting on you — documents to sign, acknowledgments, expiring files
By Employee	Administrators / Executives (and HR)	Browse any employee's drawer to find or file their documents

Why "By Employee" is admin-only. Each drawer holds sensitive personal records — IDs, medical notes, salary letters. Only HR and admins can browse other people's drawers, keeping personal documents private from peers.

Roles & permissions

Role	Can do
EMPLOYEE	View and manage their own drawer, sign documents assigned to them
DEPARTMENT_HEAD	Their own drawer plus department-scoped templates and their reports
ADMINISTRATOR	Browse any drawer, upload/send for anyone, view audit trails
EXECUTIVE	Everything an administrator can do

Storage & encryption

Documents hold some of the most sensitive data in the system, so the storage layer is built defensively:

Encrypted at rest. Every file is encrypted with AES-256-GCM. The raw bytes on disk are unreadable without the key.
Integrity checksum. Each document stores a SHA-256 checksum so tampering or corruption is detectable.
No direct URLs. Files are never served by a direct, guessable URL. Access always goes through an authenticated, permission-checked request, so a leaked link can't expose a document.

Why it matters. Encryption at rest plus checksums plus no-direct-URL access means a document can't be read off disk, silently altered, or pulled by URL guessing — the three most common ways file stores leak.

Where to go next

Uploading documents — the difference between Store and Sign modes, file types, and size limits.
E-signatures — the full signing flow, field placement, and signing order.
Audit trail & certificate — what's captured for every signature.
Templates & bulk send — reusable documents and CSV-driven sends.
Onboarding and Offboarding — document task lists for joiners and leavers.

Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause	Fix
Can't see another person's folder	"By Employee" is admin/exec/HR only	Ask an administrator to file or retrieve the document
A shared policy isn't in my drawer	It's a Company Library document, not a personal one	Look under the Company Library view; check it's scoped to your role
Document seems missing after upload	Filed under a different category/folder	Check the category and any custom folders; use search

Statuses & Submission

Understand the expense report lifecycle, the rules that govern submitting a report, and who can edit it at each stage.

Uploading Documents

The two upload intents — Store a file in a folder, or Send it for signature — plus accepted file types, size limits, and how plan document limits are counted.