> ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.vumasign.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Cancel a pending standing authorisation request. > Withdraws an `invited` request: the mandate link stops working, the grantor is told in your organisation’s name, and the status becomes `cancelled` with `cancellation.reason` `requested`. Takes no body. Cancelling a `cancelled` request returns it unchanged. Once the grantor has signed it can no longer be cancelled (409 `authorisation_not_pending`): wait for `authorisation.granted`, then revoke. ## OpenAPI ````yaml /openapi.json post /api/v1/standing-authorisations/{authorisationId}/cancel openapi: 3.1.0 info: title: Vumasign API version: 0.2.0 description: >- The Vumasign API. South African e-signature: templates, the addresses an integration writes values to, an idempotent send, and webhooks. **This document describes what exists today and nothing else.** It is not a roadmap, and there is deliberately no entry here for anything that has not shipped — a spec you can generate a client from and then discover was aspirational is worse than no spec at all. ## Authentication Authorization: Bearer vsk_live_… One header, one step. Keys are minted in Settings. `vsk_live_` and `vsk_test_` are different keys; the prefix is stored in clear so a leaked key is greppable and traceable to an organisation, while the secret is stored only as a hash. ## Errors Every refusal the API returns deliberately, at every status, is `{ "error": { "code", "message" } }`, and such a response is a failure **if and only if** it carries an `error` key — that test is correct even for a client that ignores the status line. An unexpected server failure may not have this shape: treat a 5xx without an `error` key as an `internal_error`, which is retryable. `code` is the contract and is stable forever; `message` is prose for a developer reading a log and may be reworded in any release. The root of this document carries **`x-error-codes`**: the closed enum, with `status`, `retryable`, `backoff`, `emitted` and `guidance` for each code. Branch on that rather than on our prose. ## Rate limits **600 requests a minute on any paid plan, 60 on the free plan — and a test key gets the same number as a live one.** Per key, not per organisation, so a batch job and an interactive integration can be given a key each and neither can starve the other. The ceiling follows the PLAN rather than the kind of key, because the plan is what says whether this is production traffic or somebody evaluating us. On the API plan it is sized so that no honest workload meets it: a thousand envelopes with a status read each is two thousand requests, which is three and a half minutes rather than seventeen. The sandbox deliberately gets the *same* number rather than a larger one — an integration that passes in rehearsal is then an integration that passes live, and your `429` handling is exercised where meeting a `429` is free. Every successful authenticated response carries `RateLimit-Limit`, `RateLimit-Remaining` and `RateLimit-Reset` (seconds until the window closes, at most 60). Read them on your successes and you will never need to be refused. A 429 carries them too, and additionally carries `Retry-After`, which you should honour. A 401 carries none of them; a 403 may not, depending on whether it was decided before the request was counted. Each operation's responses say which others do. ⚠️ **A refused request still counts.** Retrying inside the window pushes the counter higher rather than holding it at the ceiling — which is why the backoff in `x-error-codes` is exponential and why `Retry-After` is worth reading rather than guessing at. ⚠️ The limits are **per minute**, and the window is fixed rather than sliding. Spending a whole window at the end of one minute and a whole window at the start of the next is possible; it is bounded at two windows' worth, which is a burst rather than an incident. ## Webhooks Register an endpoint with `POST /api/v1/webhooks`; the response carries the signing secret, **once**. The root of this document carries **`x-webhooks`**: the body we POST, the signature recipe (including the two mistakes that make a verifier look correct and be worthless), the published retry ladder, and the auto-disable rule. Read that before writing a receiver. ## What is not here yet No organisation-level email exists, so an auto-disabled webhook endpoint is discovered by polling rather than by being told. There is no way to change an envelope after it is created and before it is sent — `PATCH /v1/envelopes/{id}` is designed and not built — so a draft is created complete or not at all. Both are stated because a gap named is a gap somebody can plan around. ⚠️ **The rate limit above counts authenticated requests only.** A request carrying no key, or a key we cannot recognise, is refused before any counter is touched — a per-key ceiling cannot defend against a caller who has not presented a key, and pretending otherwise would be a promise we could not keep. That half belongs to the edge rather than to this API. (This section has twice described as missing something that now exists: the `uri` on every webhook body, which was `null` until `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}` gave it somewhere to point, and the rate limiter, which nothing enforced until the per-key ceiling above. Both were named here as gaps first, which is the point of naming them.) servers: - url: https://app.vumasign.com security: - ApiKey: [] tags: - name: Templates description: >- A template is a document with its signing roles and field placements authored once. Every envelope is made from one, or from a one-off pack. - name: Documents description: >- The pages of a template’s documents, served as PDF so that a client which has to show the paper can do so without rendering it itself. - name: Envelopes description: >- An envelope is one sending of a document to named people. Creating one is not sending it: a draft emails nobody until it is sent. - name: Webhooks description: >- Endpoints we POST signed events to when an envelope changes, with the health of each endpoint and a secret you can rotate without a gap. - name: Standing authorisations description: >- A grantor’s signed, brand-wide authority for your organisation to apply their signature to documents you send under that brand. Requested here; it takes effect only when the grantor signs the mandate and it is sealed. See /concepts/standing-authorisations. - name: Specification description: >- This document, served without a credential so that anybody can read what the API does before they hold a key. paths: /api/v1/standing-authorisations/{authorisationId}/cancel: post: tags: - Standing authorisations summary: Cancel a pending standing authorisation request. description: >- Withdraws an `invited` request: the mandate link stops working, the grantor is told in your organisation’s name, and the status becomes `cancelled` with `cancellation.reason` `requested`. Takes no body. Cancelling a `cancelled` request returns it unchanged. Once the grantor has signed it can no longer be cancelled (409 `authorisation_not_pending`): wait for `authorisation.granted`, then revoke. operationId: cancelStandingAuthorisation parameters: - name: authorisationId in: path required: true description: >- The authorisation’s `id`, from the invitation’s answer or the list. A live authorisation’s id answers `not_found` to a test key. schema: type: string format: uuid examples: - 0b9a5c1e-7d42-4f8a-9e13-5c6d7e8f9a0b description: An authorisation id. - name: Idempotency-Key in: header required: true description: Any string that identifies this request, at most 255 characters. schema: type: string examples: - 01960000-0000-4000-8000-00000000ffff description: The caller’s own request identifier. responses: '200': description: The authorisation, `cancelled`; or, cancelled before, unchanged. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/StandingAuthorisation' description: The authorisation. examples: example: summary: Cancelled before the grantor signed value: id: 0b9a5c1e-7d42-4f8a-9e13-5c6d7e8f9a0b number: SA-0012 status: cancelled sandbox: false brand: id: 9d4f2a6b-1c3e-4d5f-8a7b-6c5d4e3f2a1b name: NTT DATA legal_entity: name: NTT DATA South Africa (Pty) Ltd registration_number: 1990/001234/07 grantor: name: Naledi Mokoena email: naledi@example.test job_title: HR Director intended_use: Salary adjustment letters and employment confirmations valid_from: '2026-10-14T22:00:00.000Z' valid_until: '2027-10-13T22:00:00.000Z' invite_expires_at: '2026-10-28T22:00:00.000Z' granted_at: null cancellation: at: '2026-10-15T08:00:00.000Z' reason: requested revocation: null invalidation: null reference: ntt-signatory-2026 applied_count: 0 created_at: '2026-10-14T06:00:00.000Z' headers: RateLimit-Limit: description: >- How many requests this key may make per minute: 600 on any paid plan and 60 on the free plan, the same in both environments. Per key, not per organisation — a second key has its own allowance. ⚠️ READ IT RATHER THAN ASSUMING IT: it is the number the database applied to this request, so it is right even when this description is out of date. schema: type: integer description: Requests permitted in the current minute. RateLimit-Remaining: description: >- How many of them are left, this one already counted. Zero on the request that is refused, and zero on every further request of that minute — ⚠️ a refused request still counts. schema: type: integer description: Requests remaining in the current minute. RateLimit-Reset: description: >- Seconds until the current minute closes and the allowance returns. At most 60, which is what makes the published exponential backoff converge in about six doublings rather than eleven. schema: type: integer description: Seconds until the window resets. '400': description: >- `invalid_request` — The request is malformed, or breaks a rule about its own shape: a body that is not JSON or does not match the operation’s schema (a missing or mistyped property, a value out of range), a document that is not a PDF or a Word file we can read, a text tag that cannot be placed, an `Idempotency-Key` that is present but not a valid key, a query parameter outside its range, or a cursor that names nothing. The `message` says which, and for a body names the property path (`recipients[0].email`) — there is no separate `param` field. Fix the request; retrying it unchanged will fail identically. `idempotency_key_required` — Send `Idempotency-Key: ` — this operation takes one and the request carried none. A distinct code from `invalid_request` because the remedy is to ADD a header, and an integrator reading it in a log should not have to work that out. (A key that is present but malformed is `invalid_request`, and its `message` names the header.) content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '401': description: >- `unauthenticated` — The credential was absent, unreadable, unknown, wrong or revoked — this answer is deliberately identical for all of them, so it cannot be used to probe which keys exist. Retrying the same request changes nothing. Check the key in Settings or issue a new one. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '403': description: >- `forbidden` — The key is valid and the organisation’s plan does not grant what this operation does. Nothing about the credential needs to change, and it is deliberately MORE specific than 401 because the caller has already proved they hold the key. TWO SITUATIONS PRODUCE IT. (1) THE PLAN EXCLUDES THE OPERATION: `POST /api/v1/templates` on the Free plan, which does not include authoring templates. A template that already exists stays readable at `GET /api/v1/templates`; authoring one needs a plan that includes templates. (2) WE CANNOT ESTABLISH WHAT THE PLAN INCLUDES, on any operation, so nothing is granted. That one is ours rather than yours, an ordinary account does not meet it, and it means ask us. `insufficient_scope` — This key is scoped and does not hold the scope this operation requires — `x-required-scope` on the operation names it, and the `WWW-Authenticate` header on the refusal repeats it (RFC 6750 §3.1). ⚠️ Retrying cannot help and neither can editing the key: scopes are fixed when a key is minted and no endpoint or screen can widen them. Issue a new key with the access it needs. A key created before scopes existed carries an empty scope list, which means EVERY capability, so this refusal cannot reach an integration that was already working. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '404': description: >- `not_found` — No such resource — or none this key’s organisation can see, or one that has been archived, or an id that is not a uuid. Those four are one answer on purpose: "it exists but is not yours" is itself a disclosure. Do not retry; check the id against the list endpoint. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '409': description: >- `idempotency_key_reused` — This key was already used for a DIFFERENT request. ⚠️ The request itself may be perfectly valid — what conflicts is the key against state we already hold, which is what 409 means and why it is not a 400. Mint a new key. Do not retry with this one; it will conflict forever. `request_in_progress` — A request carrying this key has not finished. We deliberately do not block waiting for it — that would hold a connection across a send that calls an email provider N times. Retry the identical request; when the first one lands you will get its result, replayed. `authorisation_not_pending` — The request is no longer `invited`, or its grantor has already signed. A signed request cannot be cancelled: wait for `authorisation.granted`, then revoke it. Read the authorisation for its current status. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '429': description: >- `rate_limited` — This key has spent its minute. The limit is per KEY and per minute, and it follows your PLAN rather than the kind of key — 600 requests a minute on every paid plan, 60 on the free plan, and the sandbox gets the same number as production so that an integration which passes in rehearsal passes live. Every successful authenticated response, and this one, carries `RateLimit-Limit`, `RateLimit-Remaining` and `RateLimit-Reset` (seconds), so a client can slow down before it is made to. TWO OPERATIONS ALSO ANSWER IT FOR A REASON OF THEIR OWN. `POST /api/v1/envelopes/batches` costs one request per row and is refused WHOLE when its rows do not fit what is left of the key’s minute — `RateLimit-Remaining` says how many would. `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}/documents/{position}/draft` has its own per-envelope and per-organisation ceilings on renders each minute, and the `message` says which one refused; there `Retry-After` is that ceiling’s, while the `RateLimit-*` headers still describe the key. `Retry-After` on this refusal is at most 60 and is read from the stored window rather than computed, so two of our instances refusing the same key quote the same instant. ⚠️ A REFUSED REQUEST STILL COUNTS: hammering a limit you have already exceeded pushes the counter higher rather than holding it. Honour `Retry-After`. If one key genuinely needs more throughput, issue a second one in Settings — the ceiling is a fairness and blast-radius control, not a commercial meter. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. headers: RateLimit-Limit: description: >- How many requests this key may make per minute: 600 on any paid plan and 60 on the free plan, the same in both environments. Per key, not per organisation — a second key has its own allowance. ⚠️ READ IT RATHER THAN ASSUMING IT: it is the number the database applied to this request, so it is right even when this description is out of date. schema: type: integer description: Requests permitted in the current minute. RateLimit-Remaining: description: >- How many of them are left, this one already counted. Zero on the request that is refused, and zero on every further request of that minute — ⚠️ a refused request still counts. schema: type: integer description: Requests remaining in the current minute. RateLimit-Reset: description: >- Seconds until the current minute closes and the allowance returns. At most 60, which is what makes the published exponential backoff converge in about six doublings rather than eleven. schema: type: integer description: Seconds until the window resets. Retry-After: description: >- Seconds to wait before retrying, from the stored end of the window. Always present on a 429, and never more than 60. On the per-key limit it equals `RateLimit-Reset`; a narrower limit, such as the draft render allowance, has a window of its own and may ask for a different wait. `x-error-codes` tells you to honour it; this is it. schema: type: integer description: Seconds to wait before retrying. '500': description: >- `internal_error` — Ours, not yours. ⚠️ RETRY WITH THE SAME `Idempotency-Key` YOU SENT THE FIRST TIME, on any operation that takes one — that is what makes a retry safe here, and sending a NEW key would create a second envelope or send the same one twice. The safe GETs in this document can be retried freely. (This entry used to say every operation here was a GET; the write endpoints have since shipped, and the reasoning moved with them.) content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. security: - ApiKey: [] components: schemas: StandingAuthorisation: type: object description: >- A standing authorisation: who granted what authority, under which brand, for how long, and how it ended. ⚠️ Never the signature, the mandate document or the grant evidence. properties: id: type: string format: uuid description: The authorisation’s id. number: type: string examples: - SA-0012 description: Its number in your organisation, as printed on the mandate. status: type: string enum: - invited - active - declined - expired_unsigned - cancelled - revoked - expired - invalidated description: >- `invited` until the signed mandate is sealed, then `active`. An invite ends `declined`, `expired_unsigned` or `cancelled`; an active one ends `revoked`, `expired` or `invalidated`. sandbox: type: boolean description: >- Requested with a test key: it binds nobody, and applies only to sandbox envelopes. brand: type: object description: The brand it covers, as granted. properties: id: type: string format: uuid description: The brand’s id. name: type: string description: The brand’s name when the mandate was generated. required: - id - name legal_entity: type: object description: The legal entity the grantor signs for. properties: name: type: string description: Its name. registration_number: type: - string - 'null' description: Its registration number, if given. required: - name - registration_number grantor: type: object description: The person who signs the mandate. properties: name: type: string description: Their name. email: type: string description: Their address; the mandate and its code go here. job_title: type: - string - 'null' description: >- The capacity requested until the grant; once `active`, the capacity they signed with. required: - name - email - job_title intended_use: type: - string - 'null' description: Your description, printed on the mandate as yours. Not enforced. valid_from: type: - string - 'null' format: date-time description: The start, or null for "from the grant". valid_until: type: string format: date-time description: The end. invite_expires_at: type: string format: date-time description: When the mandate lapses unsigned. granted_at: type: - string - 'null' format: date-time description: >- When the signed mandate was sealed and the authorisation took effect. cancellation: type: - object - 'null' description: Set when the request ended without a grant. properties: at: type: string format: date-time description: When. reason: type: string enum: - requested - not_sent - mandate_unsealed - mandate_invalid - capacity_rejected - activation_failed - expired_before_grant description: >- `requested`: cancelled by you or a member. `not_sent`: its mandate could not be sent. `mandate_unsealed`: the signed mandate could not be sealed. `mandate_invalid`: not signed by the person named, on the document generated. `capacity_rejected`: the capacity they signed with cannot be printed. `expired_before_grant`: it sealed only after `valid_until`. `activation_failed`: an internal error; contact us. required: - at - reason revocation: type: - object - 'null' description: Set when an active authorisation was revoked. properties: at: type: string format: date-time description: When. by: type: string enum: - grantor - member - api_key description: Who revoked it. reason: type: - string - 'null' description: The reason given. required: - at - by - reason invalidation: type: - object - 'null' description: Set when the brand changed under it. properties: at: type: string format: date-time description: When. reason: type: string enum: - brand_changed - brand_archived description: >- `brand_changed`: its name, email display name or logo changed. `brand_archived`: it was archived. required: - at - reason reference: type: - string - 'null' description: Your own reference, as you set it. applied_count: type: integer description: How many documents it pre-signed. created_at: type: string format: date-time description: When it was requested. required: - id - number - status - sandbox - brand - legal_entity - grantor - intended_use - valid_from - valid_until - invite_expires_at - granted_at - cancellation - revocation - invalidation - reference - applied_count - created_at Error: type: object description: >- The body of every refusal the API returns deliberately, at every status, from every endpoint. Such a response is a failure if and only if it carries an `error` key — that test is correct even for a client that ignores the status line, which is a thing real clients do. An unexpected server failure may not have this shape: treat a 5xx without an `error` key as an `internal_error`, which is retryable. properties: error: type: object description: The refusal. Anything added in future is added INSIDE this object. properties: code: type: string description: >- A stable snake_case identifier that will never change meaning or spelling. This is the contract; branch on it. See `x-error-codes` at the root of this document for retry semantics per code. enum: - unauthenticated - forbidden - insufficient_scope - not_found - invalid_request - rate_limited - internal_error - service_unavailable - idempotency_key_required - idempotency_key_reused - request_in_progress - template_archived - template_unusable - template_has_no_fields - recipient_role_unknown - recipient_role_missing - recipient_role_duplicated - value_subject_unknown - value_address_unknown - value_not_writable - value_not_lockable - locked_answer_missing - locked_answer_unusable - cannot_be_drawn - send_allowance_exhausted - test_key_cannot_send - test_key_cannot_read_documents - test_key_cannot_mint - webhook_url_invalid - webhook_events_invalid - webhook_brand_unknown - webhook_limit_reached - api_key_owner_removed - envelope_sender_removed - recipient_not_embedded - recipient_not_yet_turn - recipient_cannot_sign - envelope_not_sent - envelope_not_draft - brand_has_no_embed_origins - recipient_cannot_be_embedded - recipient_verification_unavailable - recipient_mobile_unused - recipient_verification_not_allowed - batch_interrupted - brand_unknown - draft_not_available - standing_authorisations_not_enabled - authorisation_text_rejected - authorisation_validity_invalid - authorisation_not_revocable - authorisation_not_pending - authorisation_resend_limited message: type: string description: >- ⚠️ PROSE FOR A DEVELOPER READING A LOG, and NOT part of the contract. It may be reworded in any release; anything that parses it is broken by design. required: - code - message required: - error securitySchemes: ApiKey: type: http scheme: bearer description: >- `Authorization: Bearer vsk_live_…`. Chosen over a bespoke `X-API-KEY` header because every client, proxy and log-redaction rule already knows this one. What a key may DO is its scopes — see `x-scopes` at the root of this document and `x-required-scope` on each operation. The scope list is not written here because OpenAPI reserves a requirement’s scope array for `oauth2` and `openIdConnect` and requires it to be empty for an `http` scheme. ```` This documentation is built and hosted on [Mintlify](https://mintlify.com), a developer documentation platform.