Simple Contracts & T&Cs
The must-have clauses in your quotes, terms and service agreements.
Notes from Randall Harper. Thirty years working alongside owner-operators, executives and boards — companies of all types and sizes — across entertainment & media, hospitality, service based business, lifestyle businesses, financial services, retail and not-for-profit, in Australia, Asia, the United Kingdom and the United States. What follows is the thinking I keep returning to.
Contracts are not for the good times
Most small business contracts are written assuming the customer will be reasonable, the work will go well, and payment will arrive on time. The whole point of a contract is the small percentage of the time when none of those things happen. Owners who treat contracts as a formality discover, eventually, the specific clauses they wish they had.
The non-negotiable clauses
- Scope — exactly what you will deliver, and exactly what you will not.
- Price — total, breakdown if helpful, any allowances or exclusions.
- Payment terms — deposit, milestones, final balance, due dates.
- Variations — how scope changes are agreed and priced.
- Cancellation — what happens if either party walks away.
- Liability — limits on what you are responsible for if things go wrong.
- Dispute resolution — what process applies before either party reaches for a lawyer.
Keep it readable
The most useful contracts are not the longest or the most technical. They are the clearest. A contract a customer can actually read, in plain language, with no nasty surprises in size-six print, is one they will sign faster, comply with better, and respect more. Lawyers can produce dense documents, but a clear contract serves both parties better than an intimidating one.
Use the contract every time
A contract you sometimes send is a contract that does not really exist. Make it part of the standard process — included in every quote, signed before any work starts, no exceptions. The customers who push back hardest on signing terms are often the ones who would have been hardest to deal with later anyway.
Get them written properly once
Pay an employment or commercial lawyer to draft your core templates once — quote terms, service agreement, supply contract. The cost is modest, the lifespan is years, and the documents are usually meaningfully better than anything you would download from a template site. Then have the lawyer review them every two or three years as the business changes.
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The contents of this paper are the opinion of Clear Point Advisory only. Readers should rely on their own judgement and obtain professional advice appropriate to their circumstances.