> ## 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. # Withdraw a sent envelope. > STOPS AN ENVELOPE THAT IS OUT FOR SIGNATURE. Every outstanding signing link is revoked, the envelope moves to `voided`, and the reason is kept on the record and in the audit trail. ⚠️ IT DOES NOT DELETE ANYTHING. Signatures already collected stay exactly where they are and the evidence chain is untouched — voiding is a statement about what happens NEXT, not an erasure of what happened. A signer who follows an old link is told the envelope was withdrawn rather than being shown a document they can no longer act on. **200, not 201.** Nothing was created; the envelope existed before this call. ## Which envelopes can be voided ONLY `sent` AND `partially_signed` — an envelope that is out for signature. Anything else is `envelope_not_sent`: - a **draft** has asked nobody to do anything, so there is nothing to withdraw. Simply never send it. - a **completed** envelope is executed. Voiding it would claim a signed agreement was withdrawn after the fact, which is not true and not this endpoint’s to say. - an envelope that is already `voided`, `declined` or `expired` has stopped once already. ## The idempotency ⚠️ `Idempotency-Key` IS REQUIRED, and the reason is sharper here than for most endpoints. Without one, a timeout is unresolvable in the worst way: you retry, the envelope IS already voided, and you are refused — so a successful void and a failed one look identical from the outside. With a key the retry replays the original 200 and the envelope it names. THE REASON IS NOT PART OF THE KEY’S FINGERPRINT. Two voids of the same envelope under one key with different reasons are the same act; the first reason is the one recorded. A DIFFERENT envelope under a used key is `idempotency_key_reused`. ## OpenAPI ````yaml /openapi.json post /api/v1/envelopes/{envelopeId}/void openapi: 3.1.0 info: title: Vumasign API version: 0.1.0 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: 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/envelopes/{envelopeId}/void: post: tags: - Envelopes summary: Withdraw a sent envelope. description: >- STOPS AN ENVELOPE THAT IS OUT FOR SIGNATURE. Every outstanding signing link is revoked, the envelope moves to `voided`, and the reason is kept on the record and in the audit trail. ⚠️ IT DOES NOT DELETE ANYTHING. Signatures already collected stay exactly where they are and the evidence chain is untouched — voiding is a statement about what happens NEXT, not an erasure of what happened. A signer who follows an old link is told the envelope was withdrawn rather than being shown a document they can no longer act on. **200, not 201.** Nothing was created; the envelope existed before this call. ## Which envelopes can be voided ONLY `sent` AND `partially_signed` — an envelope that is out for signature. Anything else is `envelope_not_sent`: - a **draft** has asked nobody to do anything, so there is nothing to withdraw. Simply never send it. - a **completed** envelope is executed. Voiding it would claim a signed agreement was withdrawn after the fact, which is not true and not this endpoint’s to say. - an envelope that is already `voided`, `declined` or `expired` has stopped once already. ## The idempotency ⚠️ `Idempotency-Key` IS REQUIRED, and the reason is sharper here than for most endpoints. Without one, a timeout is unresolvable in the worst way: you retry, the envelope IS already voided, and you are refused — so a successful void and a failed one look identical from the outside. With a key the retry replays the original 200 and the envelope it names. THE REASON IS NOT PART OF THE KEY’S FINGERPRINT. Two voids of the same envelope under one key with different reasons are the same act; the first reason is the one recorded. A DIFFERENT envelope under a used key is `idempotency_key_reused`. operationId: voidEnvelope parameters: - name: envelopeId in: path required: true description: The envelope to withdraw, as returned when it was created. schema: type: string format: uuid examples: - 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000000e5 description: An envelope id. - name: Idempotency-Key in: header required: true description: >- Any string that identifies this request; a UUID is the usual choice, and at most 255 characters. ⚠️ REQUIRED — see the note above on why a void without one cannot be retried safely. schema: type: string examples: - 01960000-0000-4000-8000-00000000ffff description: The caller’s own request identifier. requestBody: required: true description: Why this envelope is being withdrawn. content: application/json: schema: type: object description: Why this envelope is being withdrawn. properties: reason: type: string maxLength: 500 examples: - Superseded by a corrected offer description: >- WHY, IN WORDS SOMEBODY WILL READ MONTHS LATER. Required, and kept on the envelope record and in the audit event — it is the answer to “why is this contract withdrawn”, asked by somebody who was not there. At most 500 characters. required: - reason examples: example: summary: A reason somebody will read later value: reason: Superseded by a corrected offer responses: '200': description: >- The envelope, now `voided`, with the reason it carries. Its recipients are returned as they stand — a recipient who had already signed still reads `signed`, because they did. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Envelope' description: The envelope, as it now stands. examples: example: summary: The envelope, withdrawn value: id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000000e5 status: voided template_id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-0000000007e1 title: Employment contract reference: hire-2026-0917 created_at: '2026-09-02T09:00:00.000Z' sent_at: '2026-09-02T09:05:00.000Z' expires_at: null recipients: - id: 01960000-0000-4000-8000-00000000005e role: Employee name: Thandi Mokoena email: thandi@example.test routing_type: sign status: sent invitation_delivered: true embedded: false external_ref: null 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. content: application/json: schema: $ref: '#/components/schemas/Error' description: The refusal. '422': description: >- `envelope_not_sent` — This operation needs an envelope that is out for signing, and this one is not: it is still a draft, or it is finished (completed, declined, voided or expired). Two operations answer it. Minting a signing URL: a draft has not been sent to anybody — create it with `"send": true`, or send it first. Voiding: a draft has nothing to withdraw, because nobody has been asked to sign it, and a finished envelope cannot be withdrawn. The `message` says which state it is in. ⚠️ Minting also answers it for an envelope whose deadline has passed while it still shows an open status: the expiry sweep has not marked it `expired` yet, but it is finished all the same. ⚠️ A `vsk_test_` key CAN reach an open envelope: it may send one when everybody it would email is a member of your organisation or a confirmed test recipient, and an `"embedded": true` recipient is never emailed, so is never checked. A test key meets this code for the same reasons a live key does — most often, a draft that was never sent — except that when minting, on an envelope a test key did not create, it is refused first with `test_key_cannot_mint`. 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: Envelope: type: object description: 'An envelope: a template instantiated with real people and real values.' properties: id: type: string format: uuid description: The envelope’s id. A bare uuid. status: type: string description: >- `draft` or `sent` from this endpoint. Later states arrive as people act. template_id: type: - string - 'null' format: uuid description: >- The template this was made from, or `null` when there was none — an envelope created by `POST /api/v1/envelopes/one-off` carries the document itself and never had a template. Branch on `null`, never on the empty string. title: type: string description: >- What the signers see naming the document. Defaults to the template’s name. reference: type: - string - 'null' examples: - hire-2026-0917 description: >- The `reference` you set when you created it, in Unicode NFC, or `null`. Not unique, and never changed after creation. created_at: type: string format: date-time description: ISO 8601, UTC. sent_at: type: - string - 'null' format: date-time description: ISO 8601, UTC. Null while it is a draft. expires_at: type: - string - 'null' format: date-time description: >- ISO 8601, UTC. Null when this envelope has no deadline, which is the default. Read back from the stored value rather than echoed, so an offset you sent comes back as the same instant in UTC. recipients: type: array description: In routing order. items: $ref: '#/components/schemas/EnvelopeRecipient' description: One recipient. required: - id - status - template_id - title - reference - created_at - sent_at - expires_at - recipients 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 - 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 - batch_interrupted - brand_unknown - draft_not_available 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 EnvelopeRecipient: type: object description: One recipient of an envelope, as it stands. properties: id: type: string format: uuid description: >- This recipient. Published where a template ROLE’s id deliberately is not, because a recipient has no natural key — one person may hold two roles and two people may hold one. role: type: string description: The template role they were given. name: type: string description: As stored, after normalisation. email: type: string format: email description: As stored, after normalisation. routing_type: type: string enum: - sign - approve - cc description: >- ⚠️ FROM THE TEMPLATE, NEVER FROM THE REQUEST. Whether a role signs, approves or is copied in is part of the layout (§3), and a caller who could override it could send a document whose signature boxes nobody will ever be asked to fill. status: type: string description: >- `recipients.status` verbatim. ⚠️ `pending` AFTER A SUCCESSFUL SEND IS NORMAL: a sequential template invites only the first position and holds the rest back until it empties. invitation_delivered: type: - boolean - 'null' description: >- Whether the email provider reports the invitation as DELIVERED. `null` when none was attempted — a draft, a `cc`, an embedded recipient, or a position held back. ⚠️ ON A READ, THIS NO LONGER ANSWERS `true` AS SOON AS THE SEND RETURNS, and it used to. Accepting a message and delivering it are different events: we now record delivery only when the provider tells us it happened, on the provider's clock. A just-sent invitation therefore reads `false` on `GET /api/v1/envelopes/{id}` and turns `true` seconds to minutes later. ⚠️ THE ONE EXCEPTION IS THE RESPONSE TO `POST .../send` ITSELF, where `true` means the provider ACCEPTED the message — the only thing anybody knows while the send is still running. That operation’s response description says so at length. The same recipient can therefore read `true` from the send and `false` from a read a second later; the read is the one to decide from. ⚠️ `false` IS NOT A BOUNCE. It covers both "the provider refused the send" and "we have not been told yet", and you cannot tell those apart from this field — do not surface it to a human as a failure. `null` is the only value that has never changed meaning: nothing was attempted. embedded: type: boolean description: >- Whether this recipient is reached by a minted signing URL instead of by email. ⚠️ RETURNED HERE PRECISELY BECAUSE DocuSign DOES NOT RETURN THEIRS: `clientUserId` is absent from their list endpoints, so an integrator who lost their own record of which recipients were embedded has no way to ask. When this is true, `invitation_delivered` is always `null` — nothing was attempted, and nothing was meant to be. external_ref: type: - string - 'null' description: >- Whatever you supplied at creation, normalised to Unicode NFC, or `null`: compare it in NFC, not byte for byte. Opaque to us and joined on by nothing — it is here so a webhook or this response can be matched to your own record of the same human without a side table. required: - id - role - name - email - routing_type - status - invitation_delivered - embedded - external_ref 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. ````