For finance teams
Approval before signature, and proof of both
The auditor’s question is never “was it signed?”. It is “who approved it, when, and can you show me?”

What this looks like today
Approval happens in email and lands nowhere
A forwarded “yes, go ahead” is the entire control, and it lives in one person’s mailbox.
Sequence is assumed, not enforced
Nothing stops the contract being signed before finance has looked at it.
Year-end means reconstructing a paper trail
Weeks of it, from threads and memory.
What Baton does about it
- 1
Make the approver a step, not a courtesy
An approver is a real recipient with a real routing number. Nobody after them is emailed until they have acted.
- 2
Record the approval in the chain
It becomes an event alongside the signatures: same trail, same hashing, same certificate.
- 3
Answer the auditor from one screen
Filter to the period, open the trail, read it as sentences. It says who approved, who signed, and when.
What is true right now
Every line below describes something the product does today. Nothing on this page is a roadmap item wearing a feature’s clothes.
- An approver approves without signing; the certificate records both roles distinctly.
- A decline halts the workflow and nobody downstream is emailed.
- Cancelling notifies everyone already involved and nobody who was not.
- The chain is verifiable by anyone holding the document, including your auditor.
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