Overview
Every contract has an Obligations tab. DottSign's AI reads the contract and automatically extracts the concrete duties each side has agreed to — a monthly payment, a delivery date, a report that's due, a form that needs to be countersigned — and sorts them into two columns:
- Owner obligations — things the contract owner is responsible for.
- Signator obligations — things a signatory or counterparty is responsible for.
You can also add, edit, or delete obligations by hand, whether or not the AI found them.
Before you start
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Plan | Starter, Pro, or Enterprise |
| Viewing | Anyone with access to the contract (owner, an invited viewer, or an assigned signatory) can see obligations, as long as they're on a paid plan |
| Adding, editing, deleting, rescanning | Contract owner only |
| AI extraction | Only runs on contracts where at least one party — the owner or a signatory — is on a paid plan |
How AI extraction works
DottSign automatically scans a contract for obligations shortly after it's created, and re-scans it whenever the signed text changes (for example, after an in-app PDF edit or a renewal). Each AI-found obligation shows an AI-generated badge with a sparkle icon.
If you edit an AI-generated obligation yourself, it's marked Edited and is frozen — future rescans will never overwrite it. This keeps your corrections safe even if you ask DottSign to scan again.
To trigger a fresh scan manually, click Rescan with AI at the top of the Obligations tab. This is useful after a contract has been amended outside of the normal renewal flow.
If you want a completely clean slate before rescanning, click Delete AI suggestions. This removes every AI-generated obligation that hasn't been edited yet — manual entries and edited AI rows are untouched — so the next scan starts fresh instead of leaving duplicates.
Adding an obligation manually
- Open the contract and go to the Obligations tab.
- Click Add obligation.
- Choose the type: Owner or Signator.
- Enter a title and, optionally, a description.
- Choose how it's scheduled:
- Due date — a fixed calendar date, with optional recurrence (see below).
- Trigger event — a free-text condition instead of a date (e.g. "Upon contract termination"). Trigger-based obligations show up as ongoing items with no fixed date until you set one.
- If the type is Signator, optionally choose Assigned to — any user who already has access to the contract (the owner, a viewer, or an assigned signatory). Obligations can't be assigned to someone with no stake in the contract.
- Click Save.
Setting up recurrence
When scheduling by due date, set Repeats to have the obligation recur:
| Field | What it does |
|---|---|
| Repeats | Does not repeat / Daily / Weekly / Monthly / Yearly |
| Every | The interval — e.g. "every 3 months" |
| Ends | A date the recurrence stops, or "Never" for an open-ended schedule |
Recurring obligations are expanded into individual occurrences wherever they're displayed (the contract's Obligations tab shows the next date; the Obligations Calendar shows every occurrence in a given month). If the contract has an expiry date, occurrences stop being generated past that date even if "Ends" is set to "Never."
Note: AI-extracted recurrence rules can carry finer detail than the form exposes (for example, a specific day of the month). Editing the title or description without touching the Repeats setting preserves that detail; changing the frequency replaces it with a simple interval-based rule.
Editing or deleting an obligation
Click any obligation card to open it for editing, change what you need, and click Save. To remove one entirely, open it and click Delete — this can't be undone.