Creating a Freelance Contract

If you’re a freelancer, offering your finely tuned skills for hire, you’ll need to deal with contracts.  Some people say they aren’t that important, but contracts help to establish trust with the client, as well as give your business a professional touch.  Not only that, but people are less likely to back out of a contract than they are for a verbal agreement.

When creating a contract, you want to set the general wording in place, with areas that can be changed per client.  In addition, you want to make sure the contract has:

•  Your business logo
•  Your business address
•  Date you send out the contract
•  Client name and address
•  Project scope – The project scope covers everything you’ll be doing for the client, including the project start date and the date of completion.  If you give your clients the chance for revisions, you add the specifications here, as well (i.e. client has three days for revisions, etc)
•  Deliverables – This is an outline of how the completed work will be delivered to the client.  More simply, you are telling the client, “each piece of work will be delivered on its respective due date.  You’ll tell me if you accept/reject the delivered piece”, and then go about informing them how you would deal with an acceptance or rejection.
•  Payment terms – Do you expect payment upfront or upon delivery?  Maybe 50% deposit, then the remainder upon delivery?  However you expect the payment(s) to be made, this is where you put it, along with what the cost is.
•  Ownership of Final Product – Most freelance work is considered “work for hire”, which means the clients owns full copyrights upon payment.  Here is where you legally pass on the copyrights, or set which copyrights the clients will own upon payment.
•  Term and termination – What if you or the client want to cancel the project before it’s finished?  Here’s where you set the terms on what happens.
• Change order amendment – If the client wants to change the scope of the project halfway through, they’ll need to know how to do it and what’s involved.  Here’s where you tell them.

Remember to be detailed and precise.  Dot all your “i”s, cross all your “t”s; timeframes, payment, terms – every detail is important.  Once you get started, you may find yourself referring to the contracts to make sure that you’re sticking to it.  A contract is the freelancer’s MasterCard – don’t start work without it!