It’s the story every parent, freelancer, small business person, and anyone else who has ever signed a legal agreement knows well. You need to sign a permission slip, NDA, or contract agreement and get it back to your child’s teacher, your bank, or your client in a timely manner — except your child leaves the permission slip at home and your office is an hour away, or you lack the technology to scan and email the document back to the necessary person. Some documents can be emailed to you as a PDF that you can electronically sign, but even some of the most savvy of business professionals lack the resources to create these types of documents for you to sign and return. So how do you save the day and make sure your child can still go on the field trip of the year, which leaves in 10 minutes?

With DocuSign’s new personal app for consumers, DocuSign Ink, individuals and small businesses can easily receive documents in any form and initial, sign, and date documents either on their iPhone, iPad, within Microsoft Outlook, or via email and then send back immediately. DocuSign is well known for providing secure signatures on everything from simple one-page agreements to the most complex transactions sequencing multiple signers and using electronic forms with data collection. Sales professionals, real estate agents, and even those in the financial industries use DocuSign every day. In fact, DocuSign has been proven to work in more than four million real estate transactions and is the official and exclusive electronic signature provider for the 1.1 million members of the National Association of REALTORS.

Now, DocuSign is making this technology easily accessible to consumers with DocuSign Ink. Android and iPhone users can access the app for free from either the Android Market or the Apple App Store, which upon download enables users to easily sign up and verify identity via email. Users can simply then create their initial and full name signatures. This step is notably easier than I anticipated — I expected to need a pen to draw my name with, but the app is great at recognizing the tip of your finger with which you are drawing your name. The app is loaded with a few sample documents to familiarize yourself with the components of the app, which include the ability to drag and drop your signature, initial, name, date, text field, or a checkbox into the document. Similar features are available with the Microsoft Outlook plugin.

Additionally, users can email documents to Ink@docusign.com. This feature of DocuSign Ink is a forwarding service to which you can send your documents that need to be signed, and it will then email you back with a link at which you can sign and return your document. This feature is ideal for those who don’t use Android or iOS devices, or just want to sign their documents on a computer. This option features the same functionality as the Android and iOS apps, including the ability to sign, initial, and date any type of document — not just those in PDF format.

While there are other programs that offer similar functionality, such as Adobe Reader, they are vastly limited to work only with PDF documents. If you need to sign documents in .DOC format, or perhaps sign a document scanned into your computer that ended up being saved as an image file, you can easily add in the necessary signature components and send the document on its way back to your client or your kid’s teacher. As a freelancer, I can especially appreciate these features, as the burdensome process of receiving documents that need to be signed to move forward with a process can place a major roadblock in the path when lacking a scanner. With DocuSign Ink, simply saving the file and emailing it to DocuSign Ink’s forwarding service resolves this problem and completes my contract in a matter of just minutes.

And for those of you who worry about the security of your signatures — especially in regards to documents that carry crucial and very personal information, you can rest assured that DocuSign is indeed very secure. It utilizes fully redundant SAS70 Type II data centers, network, policies, and procedures and has passed 100% of security audits with the largest financial services institutions, which makes DocuSigning safer and more secure than even traditional pen-and-paper signatures. DocuSign is also PCI DSS compliant as both a merchant and a service provider, and offers a track record of 99.99 percent availability. It also warrants Federal ESIGN Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) compliance, and DocuSign Ink geotags every signature in the event the legitimacy of your signature is ever questioned, documenting who signed what, when, and where.

Could DocuSign Ink help reduce the pain of signing papers in your life or small business — or just reduce the amount of paper cluttering your home or office? Visit DocuSign’s website to find the right option for you, or just head on over to the Android Market or Apple App Store to download the app today. Be sure to let us know what you think about DocuSign Ink, too; would you ever sign a document electronically? Share your thoughts in the comments.