5 Things Every Contract Needs

If your contract doesn’t tick all of these boxes, you’re selling yourself short.  General tips: always include language that is clear and well-defined and once a year, revisit your contracts and make adjustments to language and terms.

Scope

A clear list of project timelines and deliverables to bridge the gap between the client and pro expectations:

• The larger the scale, the more important it is to get into the nuts and bolts of the details.
• This section should include clear definitions of all tasks, deliverables, due dates, budgets, modifications, and approvals.

Payment

Clear rules for fees and costs:

• Always make sure there are clear rules in the contract for how the renovation professional is being paid, what costs can be recovered, and how the fee and payment structure is going to work.
• This section should include clear definitions of all potential services provided, service fees, expenses, invoicing terms and timeline, payment due dates and late fees, and collection costs.

Purchasing

As a renovation professional, it’s helpful for you to explain how purchasing works, especially for those clients who have never worked with a renovation professional:

• This section should include explanations and terms regarding the process of ordering from vendors, showrooms, and workrooms, advance payment/deposit, freight, warehousing, delivery, installation, insurance, custom products, and alternative sourcing.

Termination

Protect your right to walk away from a project. Include cause, notice, right to suspend performance, and right to drop a project:

• Cause — This can be anything from a failure to pay, a failure to perform, a failure to communicate, or a change in circumstances. These are the types of things that we think might be a reason to terminate the relationship.
• Notice — Just because a cause issue arose doesn’t necessarily mean you need to terminate the contract. There’s also what’s known as ‘notice and cure.’ Notice and cure is a contractual provision that allows somebody who is in breach to make an effort to repair that breach, or to fix things.

Proprietary Rights

Sell your services, not your rights. 

• This section should include how you define your display and attribution rights, language on how to retain ownership of your creative works, and definitions of your confidential and proprietary information. 
• Include language that defines that you, as the author, own your creative works. You, as the author of your design, own the rights to photograph, blog, market, and use in social media channels. Include a clause in your contract that states that you have the right to use these photos as you please.