Auto expirations

Availability: Free eSign*, Essentials*, Business, and Enterprise plans

* Only Business and Enterprise customers can change the expiration period. For the Essentials and Free eSign PandaDoc plans, the expiration date is set to 60 days and cannot be changed.

Auto expiration is an option that will expire your documents automatically if the document is not completed after a certain period of time. The status of these documents will become “Expired”. 

You can enable the ability to change document auto-expiration period in the Add-on store. 

What you need to know about auto expirations:

1. Set and change auto expiration by X days before and after the document is sent
2. Turn on/off warning notification 1 day before the document’s expiration date before and after the document is sent
3. The warning notification is only available for signers and recorded under Document info > Latest activity 
4. Expiration countdown appears in “Documents” if it is under 5 days
5. Once the document becomes “Expired”, it's no longer available for recipients
6. Changes in expiration settings are tracked under Document info > Latest activity 
7. Expiration countdown restarts when a document is edited and resent
8. The document will expire X days after it has been sent, i.e. if you send it at 2.30 pm, it will expire X days after at 2.30 pm

Auto expiration setup for all new templates and documents  

Go to Settings on the lower left > Settings >  Expiration settings. Your options are:

1. Set “# of days” and
2. “Warn signers 1 day prior to expiration”.

Click “Save changes” once finished.

Set up expiration in a specific template/document

You can set up auto expiration on a specific template so that all new documents created from that template inherit the expiration settings. 

Open any template, click the context menu in the top right  > Settings > Expiration (or Document/Template details > Expiration.) Your options are:

1. “# of days” and
2. “Warning notification” for a signer 1 day before the document expires.

Auto expiration variable

You can automatically populate the expiration date on the document with the expiration date variable. 

1. Open the variables section on the right panel and scroll down to find the Document.ExpirationDate. In a document, it will be listed under Not used. In a template, it will be listed under System. 
2. Click on the variable to copy and add it on the document.
3. The variable will be automatically populated with the expiration date after you send the document.

Checking expiration settings before sending a document

After you click on “Send” and modify the name of the document, you will see the “Send Document" popup. You will see Expiration settings at the bottom left, click it to check or modify the setting.

Modify the expiration period on a sent document 

To extend your documents' expiration, first, go to the documents list. Hover over a document on the far right, click three vertical ellipses, and select Extend expiration from the dropdown. 

Alternatively, you can extend the expiration period inside a document. Click the Document info icon at the top right  > Settings > Expiration. Edit the expiration date and select Apply.

Notification of auto expiration

See below an example of the notification email that your recipients will receive when the document is about to expire.

Review expired documents 

4 days before the document expiration, document status will have a red circle around it. When the document has expired, it will show up in your documents list under “Expired” status.

Your recipient won't be able to access the document, they will see this message instead:

Under Expiring soon you'll find the documents expiring within one week.

To remove the “Expired” status, you have two options:

1. Change the document back to draft. To do so, open the document, and click on Actions > Edit. Modify expiration settings and document content (if needed) and resend it to your recipients.
2. Change the document status to Completed by using the Manual Status Change feature.