Glossary
Batch Signing
TL;DR
Batch signing is the default for any organisation sending more than 10 documents per week. Common use cases include HR departments distributing offer letters, legal teams sending NDAs to vendor lists, and finance departments running monthly invoice signing cycles.
**How batch signing works with APIs**
Most e-signature APIs don't have a native batch endpoint — you call the send endpoint once per document. The batch pattern is:
1. Prepare a list of documents with recipient details 2. Chunk the list into groups (10-20 per chunk) 3. Send each chunk concurrently using Promise.allSettled 4. Pause between chunks to respect rate limits 5. Retry any failed documents with exponential backoff 6. Track completion via webhooks
**Batch signing performance**
With Signbee's paid tier (1,000 req/min, <2s response time), you can process approximately 500 documents per minute. At DocuSign's rate (1,000/hour), the same batch takes 30 minutes.
**Error handling is critical**
In batch workflows, partial failures are expected. A single invalid email address or a temporary network error shouldn't abort 499 other documents. Use Promise.allSettled instead of Promise.all to ensure every document gets attempted, then retry failures separately.
**Monitoring batch health**
Track three metrics: 429 rate (<1%), retry success rate (>99%), and dead letter queue size (should be 0). Any documents that fail after 3 retries should alert your team for manual intervention.
Related terms
Further reading
Related resources
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