A New Year’s Give Away to everyone: For the first time ever, I am giving away a sample contract document that you can use whenever you have projects requiring your services. I’ve intentionally made it look like a template, so feel free to modify it — well, I guess you should — to suit your special situations. Download it now.
I’ve already pointed out in a prior article that writing a contract is very, very, very important in any business dealings. Here is a quote from that article: “When it comes to business, verbal agreement is out. People suffer from amnesia all the time especially when the issue of money is raised.”
Unfortunately, a lot of newbie freelancers are still clueless when in comes to writing a simple contract. Well, one can always learn from trial-and-error, but it can be painful when the flow of money is not in your favor. But why suffer when you can protect yourself while appearing more professional having a written contract at hand?
My friendly suggestion to any freelancer out there is to learn how to craft a contract and don’t ever, ever do a project without having one.
What To Put In A Contract
1. The Parties Involved. Basically, that’s you or your company and your client’s company or the representative.
2. Scope Of Work. This must be stipulated in the documents without any ambiguity. From the sample, I refer to this as “Terms of Reference,” and have put it in a separate document to be attached to the contract in order to save space. In other words, the Terms of Reference document also contains the Scope of Work.
3. Duration Of The Project. Clearly identify when the project should start and when it will end.
4. Contract Price and Terms of Payment. It’s money matters this time. Be sure that you put in the Contract Price, who pays how much to whom and when.
That’s all and I hope this helps. In case you missed it, here is a download link to the sample contract. The document file is in MS Word format.
Writing a contract is very important when starting out a project. Thank you for this article
Hello Carlos,
So many things to learn from you. Thanks for sharing and inspiring the community. I’m an independent contractor myself but mostly my engagements are through the internet bidding sites. You were also right about our dependence almost entirely on personal networks.
I have these doubts though I hope you can clarify given your experiences on such matters.
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A contract has been signed (locally). Is notary seal necessary? Whose party should be doing the notary activity?
On the other hand, while you are a legit/registered business entity (single prop, DTI, BizPermits, etc.) and your client is overseas, what is the proper way of proceeding with the engagement? Given, you need to declare it a legitimate business deal? 😀
Hi James,
I’m not a lawyer, but from what I already know, a contract is already binding especially if both parties have signed it. Of course it helps if some third party also witnessed the signing. Having it notarized means that the parties have presented their identifications to the impartial notary lawyer.
For the second question, you can always issue your overseas client an Official Receipt. In the US, they already have a system in place where the money sent to you is already deducted with tax.