What Should Your Basic Contract Include?
A solid contract is very important to your business. Fortunately, a basic template with spaces that you can fill in the details of a given project is sufficient in most cases.
What should your contract cover?
- Pricing
How much are you going to charge for the project? What happens if changes are requested? Are revisions included, and if so, how many? Are you charging hourly, daily or for the entire project? Is this an estimate or a final price? What about travel charges, charges for supplies, rush jobs, etc? Also when final payment is due.
- Your requirements
What do you need from the client? This should include information they need to provide and so forth.
- Service you are providing
What exactly are you doing for the client? What is the final product the client can expect? Cover intermediate areas as appropriate, such as progress reports. State what will determine that the project has been completed.
- Meeting with the client
Your client may want to be able to call you on a moment's notice and have you come right over, but that is likely to become very incovenient very quickly. Decide how meetings will be scheduled and what happens if someone is late or does not show for a meeting. Also cover how cancellations are handled - how much notice much be given, for example. You should set a fee for meetings as appropriate.
- Confidentiality
What will you be required to do to protect any information you get from the client? What will you be allowed to discuss or how can you get permission (preferably written) to discuss their confidential information with others when necessary?
A well-written contract will protect you and your client in case of disagreement. It will give you legal backing to ensure you get paid and it is an agreement on how much work you need to do in order to earn that pay. You don't need a lawyer to write every single contract, but you may need one sometimes.
