Tutorials
How to Create E-Signatures on PDFs Generated in Notion
A comprehensive step-by-step guide to generating e-signed PDFs directly from Notion using PDFOutput — automate your contracts, invoices, and agreements with built-in e-signature support.
By Sanat Biswal · 2026-07-09 · 12 min read
If you run contracts, invoices, agreements, or offer letters out of Notion, you've probably run into the same problem: Notion stores and organizes the data really well but doesn't have an inbuilt system to generate signable PDFs on its own.
This becomes a huge bottleneck especially even with the PDF generation tools that produce clean PDFs for users.
So the next question is how to get the PDFs actually signed in this scenario.
Today, in this comprehensive guide we will walk you through the entire workflow on how to generate professional looking PDFs with PDFOutput (document automation tool for Notion) including getting the documents e-signed using the tool.
Additionally, we will setup the entire automation to run forever so that you can generate the PDFs right inside your Notion Database.
Why Do We Need PDF Export and E-Signature Feature in Notion
Notion has evolved from a simple note taking app to a full fledged CRM for users managing everyday business affairs in the tool, but it still lacks a proper feature to generate PDFs at scale.
For teams who are managing client contracts, invoices, agreements or even offer letters inside the Notion Database this quickly turns into a manual repetitive task as each time the document is generated it has to added to a separate e-signature tool to generate the signed PDF.
When this process is repeated several times in a week, it quickly turns into a nightmare!
This is the exact gap that PDFOutput fills in, it converts your structured data in Notion Database to a professional looking PDF added with e-signatures that gets added to the document.
What Is PDFOutput?
PDFOutput is a document automation platform for Notion users.
Instead of manually copy-pasting information into templates, you connect a Notion database to a Google Doc, Microsoft Word, or PDF template that contains {{placeholders}} (like {{ClientName}}, {{InvoiceDate}}, or {{ContractAmount}}). PDFOutput then pulls the matching data straight from your Notion rows and generates a finished PDF automatically.
Some of the core capabilities include:
- Mail-merge style bulk generation — This creates dozens of PDFs at once on automation fetching data from multiple database rows in one go.
- Multiple template support — It allows attachment of different templates to one database and choose the document to generate PDF per row of data.
- Relation and rollup support — It allows to pull in data from linked databases and dynamically expand tables in a PDF generated.
- Image insertion — It allows to fetch images from Notion properties (added as jpeg, png file) directly onto the template.
- Locale-aware formatting — It preserves the currency, with decimal places, and timezone-correct dates onto the template.
- Automatic storage — Best part is the generated PDFs are saved back onto the Notion database and can also be auto-uploaded to Google Drive as well.
- One-click generation via button — PDFOutput also triggers PDF generation directly from a button property in your Notion database. (available to only Paid Notion Users)
- Typing the signature
- Drawing the signature
- Uploading an image for the signature
- Keep placeholder names always identical to your Notion column headers to avoid mapping errors.
- Leave clear, labeled signature space in your template — a plain underscore line is easiest for e-signature tools to detect automatically.
- Test with dummy data first in the preview output to see how the output is generated before producing actual PDFs for legally binding contracts.
- Always double-check your locale settings (currency, date format) if you are working with international clients — any sort of small formatting mismatches are easy to miss until a client points them out.
The relation/rollup feature is easiest to understand with one of the most common use cases for it, i.e. invoicing.
Example: Relation and Rollup Support (Invoices Generated with Line Items)
In Notion, this would be typically split into 2 connected databases instead of just one database:
1. Invoices (parent database) - This contains the primary properties defined for an Invoice:
| Property | Type |
|---|---|
| Invoice Number | Text |
| Client Name | Text |
| Invoice Date | Date |
| Line Items | Relation → Line Items database |
| Subtotal | Rollup (sum of Amount from related Line Items) |
| Tax | Formula |
| Total | Formula |
| Property | Type |
|---|---|
| Description | Text |
| Quantity | Number |
| Unit Price | Number |
| Amount | Formula (Quantity × Unit Price) |
| Invoice | Relation → Invoices database |
So using relation and rollup the invoices can be generated with 3 line item details or maybe 15 line item details depending upon each invoice's scenario.
To summarize, PDFOutput makes a Notion Database into a document factory which is self-served for any form of document such as Contracts, Invoices, Certificates, Quotes and even reports.
Now, before we create e-signed PDFs, let's setup PDFOutput correctly to generate the PDFs.
> Note: I have a detailed guide explaining how to setup PDFOutput for first time. Please go through the complete PDFOutput setup guide and once the automation is setup correctly, we will continue in here to create E-Signed PDFs from the automation.
Step-by-Step: Generating a Signable PDF From Notion
Assuming that the PDFOutput automation is setup following the above steps for your required usecase (eg: let's say Lease Agreements).
Let's proceed now to generate E-signed PDFs for the Lease Agreements.
Step 1: Click on the Automation Shown in the Dashboard
!Click on the automation shown in the PDFOutput dashboard
For this demonstration, I am considering a Lease Agreements automation which will be e-signed.
Once you select the automation, it will open the Step - 2 Preview Data.
Step 2: Enable the E-Signature
!Enable the E-Signature toggle in the Preview Data step
In this step, we will enable the E-Signature and this will allow us to add e-signature onto the document generated.
Once this is toggled on, click on Preview Output.
This will generate a preview document which can be later on edited to add e-signature onto the document.
Step 3: Setup Automation to Activate the E-Signature
!Click on Setup Automation to activate the automation with E-Signature enabled
When the E-Signature is turned on and the preview is generated, click on Setup Automation to activate the automation with E-Signature enabled.
Step 4: Generate the PDF
!Mark a row as Ready to Generate to produce a finished PDF
Mark a row as Ready to Generate (or trigger generation with button), and PDFOutput will produce a finished PDF with all fields populated, storing it back in your Notion database or a connected Google Drive folder.
Click on the PDF generated and now it will open a new link which will allow adding E-Signature.
!The generated PDF opens a new link for E-Signature
Step 5: Adding the Signature
Click on Add Signature and it will allow adding the E-Signature onto the document shown on the left.
!Click on Add Signature to start the e-signing process
An E-Signature can be added in one of the following forms:
For this demonstration I am going to add the E-Signature by the name of James Thompson (as shown below).
!Adding the E-Signature by the name of James Thompson
Drag and drop the E-Signature widget that appears on the document at the desired position.
!Drag and drop the E-Signature widget onto the desired position on the document
Once completed, click on Save Signature to save the e-signed PDF. It also downloads the e-signed PDF onto the Downloads folder as well.
This promptly saves the original PDF with the e-signature implemented back onto the Notion Database. After this, the e-signed PDF can be shared with the counter party who would sign the PDF.
!The e-signed PDF is saved back onto the Notion Database
Once all the parties have signed the PDF as required, clicking on the Complete E-Sign button on the top right side will finish signing the PDF and it will save the final signed PDF back onto the Notion Database.
!Click on Complete E-Sign to finalize the signing process
This is how the final e-signed PDF looks like:
!The final e-signed PDF with all signatures applied
Now when you add more records onto the Notion Database, simply mark your records as "Ready to Generate" or use a button to create PDFs and then add e-signatures to the document as defined above.
Best Practices to Follow for This Automation Workflow
Final Thoughts
Honestly, the thing that gets me about this workflow isn't the PDF part or the signing part on their own — it's that it doesn't feel like two separate steps anymore in the process. You fill in a Notion row, and by the time you'd normally be opening Canva or hunting for last month's template, the document's been already sitting there, signed and done for you.
I've watched so many teams lose real time to this exact time gap — not because the work is hard, its just tedious. Exporting, formatting, emailing, waiting, following up, reminding again. None of it is difficult to do, but it's just annoying enough to do that everyone ultimately puts it off.
If this sounds familiar, this is the first thing worth automating and you will start to feel the difference by this Friday!
Ready to automate your document signing workflow? Get started for free and create your first e-signature enabled automation in minutes.