Client Portal

Documents & Digital Signing

Consent forms, terms, waivers — the paperwork every salon needs but nobody enjoys chasing. Woofle lets you write a document once, send it to a client, and have them read and approve it from their own portal, with a dated record kept neatly on both sides.

How "signing" works in Woofle. There's no scribbled signature pad. Instead, your client reads the document on their portal and taps Approve. Woofle records that they approved it, and on which date — a clear, timestamped acknowledgement you can both rely on.

The two halves: templates and documents

It helps to keep two ideas apart from the start.

A template is the master copy of a document — your standard consent form, say. You write it once and reuse it for any client.
A client document is one client's own copy, made from a template (or from scratch). It's what they actually read and approve, and it carries its own status and approval date.

So you set up templates rarely, and create client documents as you go.

Writing a template

Head to the Document Templates page. Click Add Template, give it a name — "Grooming Consent Form", "Salon Terms" — and you'll land in the editor. Write the wording in your own voice using the rich-text editor, just as you'd type a letter.

Like messages, templates support tokens: little placeholders in square brackets that Woofle swaps for the real details the moment a document is created for a client. The editor lists the ones you can use, each with a one-tap copy button:

[ClientName] and [ClientFirstName] — the client's name
[BusinessName] — your salon's name
[CurrentDate] — the date the document is created

So a line like "I, [ClientName], give consent for [BusinessName] to groom my dog. Created [CurrentDate]." arrives already filled in with the real names and date. Save, and the template is ready to use.

Assign to new clients automatically

Every template has an Assign to new clients switch. Turn it on for a document you need everyone to approve — your standard consent form is the obvious one. From then on, each new client you add gets their own copy created automatically and waiting on their portal for them to approve — there's no draft to write or submit, it goes straight to Pending Approval. Existing clients aren't touched; this only applies to clients added from that point forward.

Sending a document to a client

To give one particular client a document, open their record and find their Documents. Click Add Document and you'll be offered any of your templates, or a Blank Document if you'd rather start fresh. Pick one, and Woofle creates that client's own copy — tokens already filled in with their details.

The new document starts as a Draft. This is your private working copy: you can open it, tweak the name and wording, and it isn't visible to the client yet. When the document reads exactly as you want, click Submit for Approval. That's the moment it becomes available to the client and changes to Pending Approval.

Drafts stay private. Nothing appears on the client's portal until you submit it for approval. Take all the time you like getting the wording right — a draft is yours alone.

Letting the client know

Documents live on the client's portal — their personal, private web page. Any document that's pending shows up there in a Things to do list the moment they visit, with an "Approve…" prompt that links straight to it. To point them to their portal, send them the link in a text using the [PortalLink] token (an onboarding message or a quick one-off message both carry it). As ever, Woofle never texts anyone on its own — sending that link is your deliberate choice, and the client can also reach their portal any time from a link they already have.

What the client sees and does

When the client opens their portal, their Things to do list flags anything waiting to be approved, and every document — pending or already approved — sits under Documents. Here's their side of it:

Open the document

They tap the document and read it in full, right there in the browser — no app to install, no PDF to download.
Read it through

A note at the top asks them to review it carefully and use the Approve button once they're happy. The whole document is shown exactly as you wrote it.
Tap Approve Document

One tap confirms their approval. Woofle stamps the date and switches the document to Approved, then shows them a confirmation: "You approved this document on…" so they know it's done.

That approval is the digital signing. It's a deliberate action by the client — nothing is approved on their behalf — and the date is captured automatically.

Seeing the result

Back in the client's Documents, the status updates to Approved with the approval date shown. At a glance you can see exactly where every document stands:

Draft — your private working copy, not yet sent.
Pending Approval — visible on the client's portal, waiting for them to approve.
Approved — the client has read and approved it, with the date recorded.

Open any approved document and you'll see the wording the client agreed to, locked as a read-only record. If you ever need to change an approved or pending document — a typo, an updated clause — use Unlock for Editing. That returns it to draft so you can amend it, after which you submit it again for the client to re-approve. Unlocking clears the previous approval, which is exactly what you want: the client should approve the version they're actually agreeing to.

Putting it together

Write your standard forms as templates once, switch on Assign to new clients for the ones everyone needs, and the paperwork largely looks after itself. For anything bespoke, add a document to a client, get the wording right as a draft, and submit it for approval. Your client reads it and taps approve on their own portal, and you're left with a tidy, dated record of who agreed to what — no printing, no scanning, no chasing.

Want to see how the portal fits into the bigger picture? There's more on client onboarding and messaging over on the guides index.