Contracts & signatures

What it is

Contracts & signatures lets you create legal agreements, send them to collaborators or clients, and collect their e-signatures. All without leaving Aden. You can sign documents drawn with a mouse/finger or typed as text; Aden assembles the completed PDF automatically.

Contracts come in several flavours, all flowing through the same signing engine. You send a link, the counterparty signs, and a PDF lands in the linked entity's document library:

• Team contracts: raised from the team's Contracts hub (/app/teams/[teamId]/contracts); agreements with your own team members or anyone by email (band agreements, internal splits, work-for-hire).
• Collaboration contracts: attached to a track; used for producer-for-hire arrangements (ghost production, co-production, mix/master service agreements).
• Album contracts: attached to an album via the Collaborators → Contracts tab (split sheets, feature agreements, label deals on a release). The signed PDF is filed under the album's documents.
• Event & booking contracts: raised from a team event's Contracts & signatures section: an event-level agreement (venue, promoter, crew) plus one contract per booked act. When a booking contract completes, the booking automatically flips to contract signed with the PDF attached.
• Tour contracts: raised from the tour page (riders, crew agreements, tour-wide booking terms).
• Organisation contracts: managed by org admins; cover booking deals, event agreements, tour riders, and similar. Teams see the contracts an org raised with them in their own Contracts hub.

Composing contracts as a label or publisher

Organisations get their own Contracts hub (/org/[orgId]/contracts) listing every contract with their teams and writers. From there, Compose contract builds a contract instead of uploading one: pick the counterparty (a linked team or a writer), set dates, fill key terms (royalty and publishing splits, plus any custom terms like advances or territory), and write or adapt the contract text. Reusable templates with merge fields, write a field name in double curly braces (organisation name, counterparty name, dates, or any key term) and it's filled in automatically, make repeat deals a one-minute job; any draft can be saved as a template. Aden renders a clean PDF on your organisation's letterhead (your logo and legal identity, never Aden branding) and the normal signing flow takes it from there: invite to sign, signature certificate, and a public verification link on the executed copy. Existing contracts can still be imported as files with the upload button.

Reading and sharing a contract

Contracts open in a side sheet. The uploaded file, the signed copy, and the signed copy attached to a signing request all read in place, with an Open in a new tab escape hatch for browsers that won't render a PDF inline. Each contract also has Copy link, which copies a link straight to that contract on its page, so a colleague opening it lands on the right one. The link goes to the page, not the file: whoever opens it still needs access to the organisation.

Recording a contract as signed manually

Not every contract is signed inside Aden, some are signed on paper or in another tool before they're uploaded. On an organisation's team-contracts page (/org/[orgId]/teams/[teamId]/contracts), org managers get a Mark as signed button on each contract that toggles its status directly, without running the in-app signing flow. It confirms first, records the contract as signed / active, and can be undone later with Mark as unsigned (which returns the contract to draft). Any real in-app signatures already collected stay on their signature request untouched, this only sets the contract's own status.

The team contracts hub

Team → Contracts (sidebar, Team group) is the one place for everything signable:

• New contract, pick team members (searchable) and/or external emails, optionally attach a source document (PDF/PNG/JPG, the actual contract signers read and sign), optionally write agreement terms shown on the signing page, optionally name an off-platform counterparty. The same Invite to sign dialog is available on event and tour pages, so a manager can raise an event/tour agreement with an uploaded file, not just typed terms.
• Waiting for your signature: every pending signing link addressed to you, with a direct Review & sign button.
• Signing requests you've sent: all requests the team raised anywhere in the product, labelled with what they're attached to (Track · …, Event · …, Tour · …, Album · …) and with full manager controls.
• Contracts from organisations: the receiving side of the org → team flow: status, dates, version, and download links for the original and signed PDFs.

Using it

Setting up your contracting profile

Before sending contracts, go to Account → Contracting and fill in your legal name, business name, and any other details used to pre-fill merge fields.

Creating a contract from a template

1. Open a track, go to Collaborators → Contracts, and click New contract.
2. Choose a template (ghost production NDA, co-production agreement, mix/master service, or a custom template your team saved).
3. Fill in the merge fields (client name, fee, royalty split, etc.): Aden pre-fills what it knows from your contracting profile and the selected contact.
4. Click Create: the contract is saved and attached to the track.

Sending for signature

After creating the contract, click Request signature. Add one or more signers by:

• Entering an email address (off-platform; they automatically receive an email with their private signing link).
• Selecting a platform user (they get a clickable in-app notification that opens their signing page, plus an email).

Each signer gets a unique link. Set an optional expiry date. The request starts in pending status, and the contract itself moves from draft to pending signature so its badge reflects that signatures are outstanding. When the last signer signs, the requester gets an "Everyone has signed" notification and email.

Signers vs. counterparty. Signers are the people who actually sign, each receives their own private signing link. The optional counterparty is just a reference label for the other party the agreement is with (e.g. a venue, promoter, or label that isn't on Aden). It's printed on the signed document but never receives a signing link, if that party needs to sign, add them as a signer (by email) instead.

On the track collaboration agreement panel (Track → Collaborators → Contracts), each unsigned collaborator with an email on file has a Remind button next to their "Awaiting" status. Clicking it re-sends the signing-request email to just that person (the bulk Request signatures button still emails everyone at once). Because every collaborator who still needs to sign also sees the agreement surfaced on their own personal dashboard (Contracts awaiting your signature card), a reminder lands both in their inbox and in-app.

On top of the manual buttons, Aden automatically reminds collaborators who still haven't signed. A daily job nudges each unsigned collaborator by email when their invite reaches 3, 7, and 14 days old, so you don't have to chase signatures by hand. They stop the moment the person signs.

After sending, the contract panel shows each signer by avatar, name and email along with their status, so you can see who has signed and who is still outstanding. Once someone signs, their captured signature (the drawn image or typed text) and the date are shown inline next to their name. While a request is still unsigned, managers can remove an individual pending signer or remove the whole request; once anything has been signed the request can only be cancelled, preserving the audit trail.

Signing a document (as a signer)

Open the link you received. The page greets you by your name and email (and avatar, if you're on Aden) and pre-fills the name field, so you can confirm the link is meant for you. If the request has an uploaded document (an org/collab contract file or an attached document), the page shows a "Read the document before signing" link so you can review exactly what you're agreeing to. You can:

• Draw your signature with mouse or touch. The draw pad is an animated flow (DrawSignature, apps/web/components/shared/draw-signature.tsx): a "Start signing" button expands into a paper-white pad with a pen cursor, then collapses into a "Signing done" confirmation you can re-open to edit. It wraps signature_pad under the hood, so the exported black-on-transparent SVG/PNG contract is unchanged. This same pad is used everywhere a signature is drawn. The public sign form, the in-app collaborators pad, and the beta letter-of-intent.
• Type your name in a signature font.

After signing, Aden marks your slot signed. Once all signers have signed, Aden assembles the completed PDF on the server, the original uploaded document followed by a signature certificate (each signer's signature image/typed text, timestamp and IP), and attaches that combined file to the linked track, booking, or contract record.

The certificate also prints a public verification link. A PDF is just a file: it can be edited and a recipient cannot tell, so the certificate page inside it proves nothing on its own. Opening the link shows the document's title, its issuer, and who signed it and when, read from Aden rather than from the file. It never shows the document's contents, the signature images, or signers' emails and IPs. Whoever holds the PDF already has those. Managers can copy the link straight from the contracts panel; verification_enabled turns it off for documents whose existence is itself confidential.

Viewing signed documents

Go to Account → Signed documents to see everything you've personally signed. Org admins can see all contracts under Org → Team → Contracts.

Importing an existing contract with AI

Already have a signed contract as a PDF or photo? Aden can read it for you:

• Org & writer contracts: in the upload dialog (Org → Team → Contracts → New contract, or Account → Publishers → Attach contract), pick your file and press Autofill from file. Aden scans the document and fills in the title, start date, and end date; review the values before saving.
• Track collaborators, on a track's Collaborators tab, Scan contract extracts every party with their roles and split percentages (royalty, publishing, mechanical, sync) so you can import them as collaborators in one click, or run Check deal for a fairness analysis with red flags and negotiation advice. Generated collaboration contracts (preview + PDF) list all six per-collaborator split kinds, publishing, royalty, mechanical, sync, composition, master; contracts finalized before this capture render the missing kinds as 0%.

Supported files: PDF, PNG, JPEG, WebP. AI-extracted values are suggestions. Always review them before saving.