Hello ​@bajd5799,

Thank you for reaching out to the Docusign Community! I appreciate you bringing your question to this Community. 

Regarding the disappearance of the previous envelope IDs from later documents, it’s important to note that these IDs are tied to the specific envelope and don’t usually carry over to new envelopes. Each Docusign envelope, which is essentially a unique transaction within your document set, is assigned its own unique Envelope ID.

It’s possible that the realtor created a new envelope for each stage of the negotiation (offer, counteroffer, accepted offer), or they may have used the “Forward” function to keep the original signature but send it as a new envelope. This would generate a new envelope ID, effectively replacing the previous one on the document.

You may request the Certificate of Completion from the sender, as it provides a detailed audit trail for each envelope. This audit trail serves as proof of the transactions’ authenticity.

I hope this information helps. If you believe this response effectively addresses your question, please click “Select as Best” to help other users with similar questions, locate it more easily.

Should you require any additional assistance, feel free to reach out. Thank you!

Regards,

Jenny | Docusign Community Moderator

If this helped, feel free to click "Best Answer"!

But in the process of offer, counter offer, acceptance, isn’t one of the objectives in using DocuSign, is to create a clear audit trail start to finish? If the realtor is effectively stopping the process at each step and re-starting it ‘fresh’ even though he’s transcribing the latest terms in each new version, he’s somehow erasing the previous ID. It was a suspicious transaction to begin with so I wonder if this scrubbing might have been deliberate 

​@bajd5799 

As mentioned earlier, the Docusign Envelope ID is used to uniquely identify a specific transaction, which may include one or more documents sent together in an envelope for signature. Therefore, it is expected to have different Envelope IDs for different transactions, such as an offer, counteroffer, acceptance and additional documents signed during the sale. Each envelope will have a corresponding Certificate of Completion, which lists all transaction details in a clear audit trail.

Based on my personal experience of selling a house in the US, this process is typically managed through separate transactions by the realtors. Instead of "correcting" an envelope to adjust values, a new envelope is often created. Legally, there is no difference, and this approach may be due to the integration with the real estate solution they are using.

Therefore, the realtor does not modify existing Envelope IDs; instead, they create new envelope transactions. This is similar to updating a file on your computer, printing it out, making further changes, and then printing a new version.

But doesn’t that defeat the chain of custody objective so all stakeholders can clearly see when documents were created, sent, received and signed? This particular transaction looked quite a bit different than prior ones I did with the realtor. The prior versions, multiple IDs were on the document, indicating he likely printed off each instance and restarted. All that aside, my question is, if a DocuSign event results in the creation of an ID#, such as a Buyer making an offer to purchase. I’m given a copy of that offer not through DocuSign but as a regular email attachment. I can clearly see that the attachment is a Docusign document with an ID#. I then go to counteroffer the Buyer’s offer so the agent uploads the offer to DocuSign, everything appears to be uploaded EXCEPT the previous ID# is erased. Either accidentally or deliberately. This happens a second time when the Buyer ultimately accepts the counteroffer. What actions is the realtor taking to remove the prior ID#?