# Two signatures

Source: https://docs.tightly.io/help/commitments/two-signatures
Reviewed: 2026-09-07

## What it is

A commitment is declared by someone who holds the Commitments door and armed by a signature. Until it is signed it is a submission: it owns no money, claims no pool, anchors nothing and is scored by nothing. Whether the signer must be a different person is your organisation's own approval policy, with two states and nothing between: a second admin must sign, or a single admin may declare and approve. In either state the signer needs the same door the declarer does, an admin or a member an admin has given the Commitments door; the policy moves only whether they may be the same person. A declaration without its second name is a proposal.

## How Tightly decides it

The policy is chosen on Approvals, or settled by measurement at the first approval an organisation ever attempts: one admin on the account means a single approver, more than one means a second admin is required. Nobody has chosen yet is a real state and is never read as the permissive one. Where the admin count cannot be taken, the answer is a second admin, and nothing is stored: a failure must never be the thing that opens a control. The count is your own admins, never Tightly's staff, so a staff seat on your account cannot decide your policy for you.

Every approval records which regime signed it, on the commitment's own record. Changing the policy is a change to a control and is recorded with who, when and from what, in the same write as the change, so a change cannot happen without its record. There is no cash gate on the signature: suppliers carry no payment terms at the point of sign off, so a cash figure there would reconcile to nothing. The same-dollar rule is settled at the signature, not at submit, because a pending declaration claims no pool. Where your organisation has money thresholds set, a declaration whose envelope reaches one is signed off by whoever holds the role it names, admins included, and the refusal names that role.

## The words on the face

The two policies, as Approvals prints them:

> A second admin must sign off a commitment before it goes live. The admin who submits it cannot be the one who approves it.

> A single admin can declare a commitment and approve it. Every commitment signed off this way says so on its own record.

What a signed commitment's record says about how it was signed:

> A second admin signed this off.

> The same admin declared and approved this, under this organization's single-approver policy.

Under the stricter policy the book's row door refuses the submitter before the press:

> You submitted this declaration, so you cannot sign it off. A second org-admin signs it.

On the Sign off page the press goes, and the server's refusal lands beside the button:

> You declared this; a second admin has to sign it off, or change the policy in settings.

The standing words are Awaiting a second signature before, and Signed off after; a pending declaration that is waiting on a person says an admin or a second admin, never a person the policy does not require. The one amber on Approvals sits beside the single approver policy when it is in force on an account with more than one admin, and counts the admins who can each sign alone.

## What you can do about it

Sign off on its own page, opened from the room's acts or the book's row door: the declaration reads itself back, a note is the only field and it is optional, and the receipt renders in place as the standing word turns. Retire to withdraw a submission you made. Choose the policy on Approvals under Settings, as an admin; loosening it hides nothing, because every commitment signed under the looser policy names it. The Team page's doors let a named member declare and sign off where the organisation wants that.

## Glossary line

Two signatures means a commitment is declared by one holder of the Commitments door and armed by another's signature, unless the organisation's own approval policy says one person may do both, in which case the record says so.