What is a signing rule?

Banks call it dual control, dual authorisation or the four-eyes rule, and the idea is the same everywhere: one person can make a mistake or be fooled, two are much harder to fool at once. The rule is written in amounts and roles: anything over $2,000 needs two signatures, anything over $10,000 needs both founders, a payment to a new payee needs one more than usual.

Two details decide whether a rule protects anything. The person who proposed a payment must not be one of its signers, or the second signature is the same person twice. And a large payment split into small ones must be checked on its total, or the rule is a speed bump rather than a gate.

A signing rule is not a budget. A budget says how much a part of the company may spend in a month; the rule says who must look at one payment before it leaves. A company needs both, and the rule should win when they disagree.

How this shows up in Orla

In Orla the first rule, above this amount this many signatures and only to a payee in the address book, is on every plan, the free one included; several rules and named approvers come with Scale. Signing rules stand above every payment mandate: where a rule asks for two people, two sign, whatever the budget says.

The proposer never signs their own payment, and a batch is checked on its total, so a payroll split into small rows needs the same signatures as one large one.