Documents & admin
Signatures, records, QR codes and the everyday paperwork of running a small business — explained with the actual rules, and links to the primary sources.
The administrative side of a small business is full of questions that sound simple and turn out to have real law behind them. Is an electronic signature enforceable? On which documents is it not? What does a QR code on your packaging depend on continuing to work?
These guides go to the source. For signatures, that means the text of the ESIGN Act and the state-level position under UETA, including the specific categories the statute carves out. For QR codes, it means the practical constraints — scanning distance, quiet zones, error correction — alongside the strategic question of whether a code that depends on someone else's redirect service should be printed on ten thousand items.
None of it is legal advice, and where something turns on your jurisdiction we say so explicitly rather than guessing on your behalf.
QR codes are useful in exactly one situation — where typing would be awkward and a tap is not available. Here are the uses that earn their place, the ones that waste your printing budget, and how to make a code that actually scans.
Electronic signatures have the same legal effect as ink in almost every US transaction — but 'almost' is carrying real weight. Here is what ESIGN and UETA actually say, the categories they explicitly exclude, and how to sign in a way that survives a challenge.