The states
- Draft — assembled internally from the accepted estimate, freely editable, not visible to signers.
- In review — checked against scope, price, exclusions and terms by someone who did not write it.
- Sent — issued to the required signers, each with their own access, under one envelope version.
- Partially signed — at least one required signer completed and at least one has not.
- Executed — every required signer completed; one final document and one certificate exist.
- Handed off — the executed agreement is attached to the job and the schedule can proceed.
Why partially signed deserves a state of its own
Most disputes about whether work should have started trace back to treating one signature as a finished agreement. A homeowner signs, the business representative never does, and the crew is dispatched against a document nobody on your side executed.
Naming the state forces the question: who is outstanding, and what is blocked until they complete? It also stops a final document from being produced early, which is the other half of the same failure.
Revisions do not happen inside a live envelope
Once a document is out for signature, editing it in place means different parties may have seen different content. The safe pattern is to supersede: revoke the outstanding access, return the contract to a sender-controlled draft, apply the change, and reissue as a new version with fresh access for everyone.
That is slower by a few minutes and removes an entire class of argument about which version was agreed.
Where the lifecycle starts and stops
It starts at an accepted estimate — the pricing and scope are already settled, and the contract is the instrument that records them. It stops when the executed agreement is attached to the job record so the crew, the schedule and the invoice all reference the same scope.
If the contract lives in an inbox after signing, the lifecycle did not finish; it just stopped being visible.