Title: The Two Freelance Contracts Everybody Needs
1The Two Freelance Contracts Everybody Needs
2We can talk business here, right? Right! So, in
business, theres always an exchange. A good or
service that has some perceived value placed up
on it, which is then paid or agreed-to by the
party picking up said good or service.
Simple. Typically, when purchasing a product,
you dont usually need to sign anything, other
than a charge slip or an terms of service
agreement. For a service, theres an
understanding and agreement between the provider
and the purchaser provided were talking about a
small amount of value in exchange for
goods/services rendered. There comes a point
where the value of a good or service needs to be
respected and people on both ends of the exchange
need to be held accountable. Thats when
agreements start coming into play. Ive been
burned a couple of times and heard several more
stories of business deals gone-wrong, its not a
position anyone wants to be in. So, naturally we
protect ourselves with agreements aka contracts.
3I run a Los Angeles WordPress Development Agency,
called DigiSavvy. For a number of years we used
another service called Contractual.y to help us
manage and digitally sign our agreements. For a
while it didnt work so well and almost cost me
an 12k deal!!! But, as there wasnt another
alternative I wished to move to, I stuck things
out with Contractual.y and sent pdf copies of
agreements for physical signature. Yeah, that
sure sucked With ApproveMes WP E-Signature
Ive been able to replace the other docu-signing
service and have been able to trust it to do not
only my service agreements but also two other
types of common agreements Sub-Contractor
Agreement Inevitably, as a business owner, youre
going to have to contract somebody. Im no
different. I was burned once by a sub-contractor
who hired to take some photographs for a client
project. Verbally, wed agreed to payment terms
and schedule. At some point, I provided the
contractor with my clients info. My contractor
then reached out to my client and then they
worked-out new payment terms and a new schedule
Needless to say I wasnt happy. I was furious
actually. But since there was no agreement
governing the interaction between my contractors
and my clients I had only myself to blame.
4So what did I do? Well I had a lawyer draft up an
agreement for sub-contractor interactions on
client services projects. Ive since copied that
agreement as a template into WP E-signature and
made a stand alone document out of it as well.
Making a template makes it easy to create a new
document easily so that you can edit it as
necessary. Although, the Stand-Alone document is
better if you have set terms you dont need to
change. Ive recently on-boarded a pair of new
contractors and having them read and signup has
been easy. You might be wondering what the
fallout was from that interaction with my rogue
contractor. Well, the contractor received only a
small payment for his overall work and was
otherwise stiffed. Lessons learned on all fronts
there. Get it in writing. Always. Direct Deposit
Authorization Form This next one is unusual.
More times than not, if youre a contractor then
youre probably just sending an invoice and
getting paid via check or Paypal usually. One
other way that Ive been paid is via Direct
Deposit. Thats pretty nice!
5Ive started providing my sub-contractors with
options on how theyd prefer to receive payment.
Most opt for standard invoicing. But Ive had a
few who prefer direct deposits. They dont have
to cash anything and they get paid when they
expect to get paid. However, if you go this
route, you do need an agreement in place that
states your contractor allows you to make
credits/debits into their banking account. WP
E-Signature can easily help with that. Again,
using the Stand-Alone Document feature its
pretty easy to create a form with the appropriate
fields youll need in order to process direct
deposits into your contractors accounts going
forward. With WP E-Signature, it makes a snap out
of getting proper agreements put into place so
you can focus on the things you do best. Article
Resource https//www.approveme.com/freelancing/th
e-two-freelance-contracts-everybody-needs/