Availability: Business and Enterprise* plans. Each signature from a unique signer requires one QES credit, which costs $5.
*Enterprise plan users receive:
Monthly plans: 1 QES credit per month
Yearly plans: 10 QES credits per year
Important:
The credit packages you purchase expire when the current billing cycle ends.
Qualified e-signature is available only for active plan users with paid accounts.
Qualified electronic signature (QES) helps identify the signer of a document sent via PandaDoc.
PandaDoc uses third parties (such as Evrotrust) that are listed as European trusted service providers. This makes PandaDoc signatures eIDAS-compliant and admissible in court in case of a dispute. Documents signed with QES come with an additional signature certificate that can be brought to court to certify the signature’s validity.
Watch an overview video:
How to enable QES on a document
Note: You can set up the qualified e-signature only in a document, not in a template or form.
Warning: QES verification cannot be performed on a document created from an API call.
To use QES in PandaDoc:
Open your document in Draft status.
Go to the Manage recipients tab.
Enable the Qualified e-signature toggle.
Note: QES must be enabled before the document is sent. It applies to the entire document and all recipients.
Once turned on, you can review your document, ensure a signature field is assigned to each recipient, and then send it.
Warning: You’ll be unable to send a document with set up QES if you do not have QES credits in your account.
Requirements and limitations
QES follows strict rules to ensure compliance and validity. Once you enable QES, signing order will be enabled by default and can’t be turned off. You can rearrange signing order before sending it to your recipients. Keep in mind that QES order is not the same as signing order, while it is based on the signing order, the last recipient in the signing order becomes the first in the QES identity verification process. Please also note the following requirements:
Each signer must be assigned at least one field.
All signers must complete their fields before verification begins.
Not supported with QES:
CC’d recipients
Recipient groups
Signature forwarding
Sharing via public link
Note: The document is locked after all fields are completed and before identity verification begins.
Warning: You’ll be unable to remove a recipient's delivery info (phone and email address) after the document is sent.
Purchasing QES credits
Go to Settings > Billing
Select Increase limit under Qualified e-signature (QES) add-on tile
Choose a volume package and select Buy now
Note: Enterprise plans include auto-provisioning: 10 credits per year or 1 per month.
Certificate of signatures
Once all signers verify their identities, PandaDoc generates a Certificate of Signatures with QES metadata. You can validate the certificate using the official European Commission validation tool.
Supported identity providers (IDPs)
PandaDoc uses trusted third-party identity providers (IDPs). The signer selects their provider based on location.
Method | Coverage |
Smart-ID | EE, LV, LT, FI, BE |
Estonian Mobile-ID | EE |
Lithuanian Mobile-ID | LT |
Estonian ID card | EE |
Latvian ID card | LV |
Lithuanian ID card | LT |
Finnish ID card | FI, AX |
CertEurope USB token | FR, PL |
certSIGN USB token | RO, PL |
Evrotrust | AL, AD, AM, AU, AT, AZ, BY, BE, BA, BG, CA, HR, CY, CZ, DK, EE, FI, FR, GE, DE, GR, HU, IS, IE, IT, IL, KZ, KE, XK, LV, LI, LT, LU, MT, MD, MC, ME, NL, NZ, NO, MK, PL, PT, RU, SM, RS, SK, SI, ES, SE, CH, TW, TR, UA, GB, US, VA, AX |
Chave Movel | PT |
D-Trust | DE, CA, ZA, GR, NL, BE, FR, ES, PT, LU, IE, IS, MT, CY, AX, FI, US, BG, HU, LT, LV, EE, HR, SI, IT, CH, CZ, SK, LI, AT, GG, DK, SE, NO, PL, MX, AR, BR, CL, AU, ID, PH, SG, RU, JP, KR, CN, TR, IN, SA, AE, QA |
Itsme | BE, DK, EE, FI, FR, DE, IS, IE, IT, LU, NO, PT, SE, ES, NL, GB |
InfoCert | Worldwide |
Swisscom | CH |
MitID | DK |
SwissID | CH |
Swedish BankID | SE |
Local Certificate | Worldwide |