Someone Asked You to Seal a Document — Now What?

The email usually arrives mid-afternoon, buried inside a longer message about something else. "Please stamp the invoice with your company seal and return the signed copy." Or a bank form comes back with a red arrow pointing at an empty box and the instruction: "affix company chop here." Or a logistics partner in East Asia writes, politely: "we need the sealed version before we can release the shipment."

If you have never used a company seal before — or if you have one somewhere but have never been asked to put it on this kind of document — the request can feel strangely disorienting. It is not complicated, but it sits in a gap between things people explain to you. Nobody covered it in onboarding. It is not in the employee handbook. And the person asking assumes you already know what to do.

This article is for that moment. Not a legal treatise on seals, but a practical walkthrough: what the request means, what you actually need to provide, how to make it happen quickly, and where the real risks are.

Why you are getting this request

Seal requests come from a small number of situations, and recognizing which one you are in saves time.

A foreign counterparty expects it. This is the most common trigger for people who have never thought about seals before. A supplier in China, a distributor in Japan, a freight forwarder in Korea, a client in Taiwan — someone on the other end of a cross-border transaction is used to seeing sealed documents and will not process yours without one. In much of East Asia, a company seal is not decorative. It is how a company says "this document is ours and we stand behind it." When they ask you to seal your invoice, contract, or packing list, they are asking for what a signature block does in your world.

The country guides go deeper: electronic seals in China, hanko in Japan, dojang in Korea, company seals in Taiwan.

A bank or financial institution needs it. Banks in many jurisdictions ask for sealed copies of board resolutions, account-opening forms, or authorization letters. Sometimes the requirement is formal — a notarized, sealed original. More often, especially for routine documentation, the bank wants to see that the document came from the company and not from a random person with a PDF editor. The seal is a visual signal of institutional origin, and the bank officer checking it may not read the rest of the page closely.

A government form has a seal box. Customs declarations, tax filings, permit applications, registration forms — many government documents in Asia, the Middle East, and parts of Europe include a designated area for a company seal. The form was designed with the expectation that every company has one. If you do not, you are staring at a blank box wondering whether a signature will suffice.

An internal process requires it. Some companies, especially those operating in jurisdictions where seals are standard, require sealed versions of purchase orders, contracts above a certain value, or HR documents. If you have just joined one of these companies, the request is organizational rather than legal — someone before you decided that certain papers need the stamp.

What they actually want

Here is the part that trips people up: when someone asks for "a sealed document," they almost never mean a cryptographic digital seal with certificate-chain validation. They mean a document with a visible seal image on it. A red (or blue) circle, printed or overlaid on the page, that looks like a company stamp was pressed onto the paper.

That is it. In most commercial contexts, the seal image is a visual convention rather than a security mechanism. It says "this document passed through official channels" in the same way that letterhead does, except with stronger cultural weight in the regions that use seals.

This is not the same as saying it does not matter. The distinction between a seal image and a verified digital seal is important, and the article on whether image seals are legally valid covers it carefully. But for the practical question — "what do I send back to the person waiting on my email?" — the answer is almost always: a PDF with a seal image placed on it.

There are exceptions. If the request specifies an electronic seal with a digital certificate (common in regulated Chinese government procurement, for example), that is a different process entirely, handled by certified e-seal platforms. But that kind of request names the platform or standard explicitly. The casual "please seal and return" email is asking for the visual kind.

Step one: figure out what seal you need

If your company already has a seal — a physical rubber stamp, a stored seal image, or a template in an internal system — use that. Ask your office manager, legal department, or the person who handles corporate documents. Many companies have a seal file sitting in a shared drive that only three people know about.

If your company does not have a seal, you need to make a design decision, and it does not have to be agonizing. A basic company seal includes:

• The company's registered legal name, curved along the top arc of a circle
• Optionally, a location, registration number, or the word marking purpose (like "FOR INVOICES ONLY") along the bottom arc
• A clean center — left empty, or containing a star, logo mark, or short text

The company seal design guide walks through the full set of layout decisions. The template gallery has starting points for corporate seals, Chinese company seals, and other common formats.

One thing worth noting: you do not need to match the seal conventions of the country that is asking. A Japanese company asking a German supplier for a sealed invoice does not expect a hanko — they expect whatever mark the German company uses to authenticate documents. If your company is in a jurisdiction where seals are uncommon (the US, UK, Australia, most of Western Europe), a clean round seal with your company name is perfectly fine. It is the presence of an intentional mark that matters, not the specific tradition it follows.

Step two: create the seal image

If you are starting from scratch, the fastest path is the online seal generator. Pick a shape, enter your company name, adjust the font and size, and export a transparent PNG. The whole process takes a few minutes.

A few things to get right at this stage:

Transparent background. You want a PNG with transparency, not a white rectangle. When you place it on a document, the document text should show through the empty areas of the seal. The guide on creating transparent PNG seals covers this in detail.

Sufficient resolution. A seal that looks fine on screen at 72 DPI will look blurry when printed. For documents that might be printed, export at 300 DPI or at least 800 pixels wide. The size and resolution guide has the specifics.

Red ink, unless you have a reason to use another color. Red is the default seal color across East Asia and much of the world. Blue is common for certain uses (especially in Russia and some European countries). Black reads as a photocopy. If you are responding to a request from an East Asian counterparty, red is almost always the right choice. The color and contrast guide explains the conventions.

Save the master file. You will use this seal again. Store it in a place where the people who need it can find it, with a clear filename and version. The seal file management guide has a sensible system for this.

Step three: place the seal on the document

Now you have a seal image and a document that needs it. The mechanical part is straightforward but has a few traps.

On a PDF: Open the PDF in any tool that supports image overlay — Preview on Mac, a free online tool, or a dedicated PDF editor. Place the seal image where it belongs, usually near the signature line, company name, or the designated seal area if the form has one. The walkthrough in how to add a seal to a PDF or Word document covers the main tools. If you want a free option that does not require Adobe Acrobat, see stamp a PDF without Acrobat.

On a Word document: Insert the seal image, set text wrapping to "In Front of Text" or "Behind Text" depending on whether you want it to overlay content, and position it manually. Then export to PDF before sending — do not send the Word file with the seal, because the recipient can move or delete it.

Where on the page: Near the signature, company name, or issuer information. Not floating in a margin, not centered over body text, not buried in a header. The seal placement guide covers positioning for contracts, invoices, certificates, and multi-page documents.

On multi-page documents: If the counterparty expects every page to be sealed (common in East Asian practice for contracts), you will need to stamp each page. Some counterparties expect a "perforated seal" (骑缝章 / 割印) that spans the edges of adjacent pages to prove no pages were swapped. This is a specific technique, and the requesting party will usually tell you if they need it.

Step four: send it back

Export the finished document as a PDF. Do not send the editable source file. A sealed Word document is an invitation for the seal to get accidentally moved, resized, or deleted. A sealed PDF is a finished product.

If the counterparty asked for a physical copy, print the PDF and mail it. Some bank and government processes still require a wet signature plus a physical stamp impression — and in that case, you need an actual rubber stamp or embosser, not a digital image. But this is increasingly rare for routine commercial documents, and the person asking will usually specify "original" or "wet stamp" if they mean it.

Before sending, take thirty seconds to check the obvious things. Is the seal legible at the size it will be viewed? Is it covering any important text — amounts, dates, names, account numbers? Does it look like it was placed intentionally, or does it look like it slid off the edge of something? A quick visual check avoids a round-trip.

What about the "legal validity" question?

This is the question everyone worries about and almost nobody needs to worry about in the moment they are filling a seal request.

A seal image on a PDF is not a security mechanism. It does not prove who placed it, when they placed it, or whether the document was modified afterward. In jurisdictions where seals carry legal weight — China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Thailand — the legally significant seal is usually a physical one registered with a government office, not a PNG exported from a generator.

But that does not mean the image seal is useless. It means it serves a different purpose: it satisfies a documentary convention. The bank officer processing your form, the procurement clerk filing your invoice, the logistics coordinator releasing your cargo — they need to see a seal because their process says the document should have one. They are checking a box, not running a forensic analysis.

The article on whether image seals are legally valid goes into this distinction properly. The short version for practical purposes: an image seal satisfies most routine commercial and administrative requests. It does not replace a registered physical seal where one is legally required, and it does not provide the security of a certificate-based electronic seal. Know which situation you are in before you decide that what you have is enough.

Common scenarios, handled quickly

A Chinese supplier asks you to seal your purchase order. They want a red round seal on the PO, near your company name. If you do not have one, create a corporate seal with your company name, place it on the PDF, and send it back. This is routine.

A Japanese bank asks for a sealed board resolution. This is more formal. The bank may expect the company's registered seal (実印) if you are a Japanese entity, or your corporate seal if you are foreign. Ask the bank exactly what they need — "any company stamp" is a different answer than "your registered seal."

A government customs form has an empty seal box. Put your company seal in the box. If the form is a PDF, overlay the image. If it is a paper form, print and stamp it. If you do not have a physical stamp and the form absolutely requires one, you can order an inexpensive rubber stamp from any office supply vendor — or ask whether a digital version is accepted. Many customs offices have modernized, but not all.

A European client asks you to "stamp" an invoice. In parts of continental Europe, company stamps (Firmenstempel) are a business convention, usually a rectangle with the company name, address, and registration details. This is different from an East Asian round seal but serves the same purpose. Create a rectangular stamp or use your existing one.

Your own company's internal process requires a seal on contracts above a certain value. Find out who controls the seal, whether a digital version is acceptable, and what the approval workflow is. If no one knows, you have just discovered an undocumented process — a good thing to clarify before the next request.

You do not need to overthink this

The most common mistake with seal requests is not getting the seal wrong — it is spending three days worrying about whether you are allowed to make one, whether it needs to be registered somewhere, whether the font matters, whether you need a lawyer.

For most routine commercial requests, you need a clean, legible seal with your company name on it, placed on the document in the right spot, exported as a PDF. You can do that in fifteen minutes. The seal generator will handle the design, the transparent PNG export will handle the format, and the PDF stamping guide will handle the placement.

If the request is clearly higher-stakes — a government registration, a notarized document, a regulated financial transaction — slow down and ask exactly what is required. But do not treat every "please seal and return" email as a legal crisis. Most of them are a two-minute task dressed up in unfamiliar language.