How To Draft A Certificate Of Service

Before you brainstorm working with a client, draw upwards a service understanding to ensure that y'all share the aforementioned expectations virtually the work to be performed, fees, and other details of your working organisation.

A service understanding is a written contract between a service provider and a client. It spells out the piece of work to be performed and the responsibilities of both parties in getting the piece of work done and paid for.

Sometimes called a professional services understanding, service contract, or client services understanding or contract, a service understanding also includes fourth dimension frames for beginning and completing the piece of work, boosted due dates if needed, and other procedures and details involved in the job.

Why Use a Written Service Agreement?

Oral understandings are risky. Your client might meet with several providers and confuse the scope of the piece of work you lot described with someone else's. You might fail to mention important details like situations when boosted charges would use. Written service agreements minimize the chance for disputes and even lawsuits that might ascend due to these types of omissions and misunderstandings.

Who Needs a Service Agreement?

When you purchase a car, a figurer, or an appliance, y'all normally get your purchase on the spot. Fifty-fifty if you social club information technology and wait for delivery, yous know exactly what to look and what you are getting. But you can't wait at a service beforehand the manner yous would an appliance. Many services are performed over a long flow of fourth dimension, and customers often pay the fee, or at least a portion of it, well before they see what their money bought.

For instance, a developer who creates customized software for a visitor will probable go through several steps—from determining the visitor'due south needs to designing, installing, and testing the software—before delivering whatsoever work.

A written service agreement is a way to manage expectations while the work is underway. Information technology also assures both parties that they will get the work and fees they bargained for in the fourth dimension frame they expect.

Not all services require agreements. For instance, when y'all accept your automobile to a quickie oil change shop, chances are that you and the owner agree orally about the price, what will be washed, and when. Merely when work is performed over time, both parties need the protection of written standards, goals and pricing.

Some of the businesses and professionals who rely on service agreements include:

• management consultants
• graphic designers and illustrators
• photographers and videographers
• website developers and Information technology service providers
• existent estate brokers
• general contractors and construction companies
• accountants and lawyers
• advert and marketing professionals, and
• caterers

How to Write a Service Agreement

The title of the agreement should include your company name and "service agreement," "client agreement," "customer agreement," or another title that best describes your situation. Existent estate brokers employ the term "listing agreement," for example, for contracts to stand for properties for sale. An accountant might use a "tax preparation agreement," and and then on.

Many aspects of a service agreement can be standardized, and you lot tin create what's called a template that provides the nuts yous'll need for your business most of the time. You lot might have to adjust your template to suit specific arrangements you make with an individual client. But you'll normally exist able to fill in the blanks without reinventing the bike each time y'all go a new customer.

Some industries and professions might require additional specialized sections, but in full general, a service agreement should include these sections and topics:

A description of the parties involved in the agreement. The first of your agreement should include the names and addresses of the parties involved. If one or both parties is a business organization, you lot should include the blazon of entity, such every bit a corporation or express liability company. Our general contractor mentioned above might start out by saying, for example, "This is an agreement between Joe's Beautiful Homes, a limited liability company located on 100 Master Street, and Mary Smith, an individual, located on 100 Pino Street."

A description of the services to exist performed. Be as specific every bit possible, keeping in mind that you won't be able to modify your fee if you end upwardly doing additional work. A caterer would want to specify the hours they would spend at the event, the number of servers, and the number of people who would be fed, as well every bit the amount and quality of food to be served. Accurately listing the materials and fourth dimension will help ensure that the caterer bids the job fairly to cover these costs (serving but organic produce, for case, will cost more than conventional produce, and describing the food equally organic will prompt the caterer to take its added expense into business relationship).

A clarification of fees and payment schedules. Include terms like whether the charges are hourly, weekly, or monthly; or whether you are charging a flat fee per project. You might also demand to specify whether the pricing includes expenses, such as travel for a consultant who must visit different company locations, or if those expenses are to be billed and reimbursed separately.

You lot'll as well want to include a payment schedule with dates and amounts due. Some providers, like caterers, volition typically have two payment dates and amounts, one for the eolith and one for the balance due. Just other providers, such as contractors, might accept a months-long schedule of payments due for projects that take many months to complete.

The pricing section should also include the types of payments you accept, such as checks or credit cards. Some agreements volition include a clause that specifies what will happen if payments are not received according to the schedule. Late fees must approximate, as virtually as possible, the actual damages that the business concern or professional suffers when non paid on fourth dimension. (Courts will not enforce tardily fees that are and then high that they are punitive.)

The effective appointment of the contract, when work will begin, and the terms nether which it tin can be terminated. The effective date of a contract is the date after which both parties are bound to its terms. Often, the constructive date is the date both parties sign the contract, but it doesn't take to exist. Next, include a work schedule—work done on a project basis should, at a minimum, include beginning and cease dates. Yous might list other due dates if your project has several different stages or steps.

Ongoing services, like an IT maintenance contract, typically last for a year or half-dozen months, and they include provisions for renewing the agreement at the end of that flow.

Your agreement should also cover situations where you are unable to consummate a project because of something the customer does or does not practise. A consultant hired to provide Hr seminars to managers in several office locations, for example, might be unable to complete the assignment because 1 of the offices does non provide a schedule for the seminars. Your contract should anticipate the virtually likely performance problems (known every bit defaults) and provide a means for remedying the situation.

If sure defaults would be so significant that they would seriously diminish the value of the service, you might want to include a provision that allows either party to terminate the contract with a specified amount of notice. Conversely, you might want to requite each party the right to terminate the contract for no reason, with adequate written find (oft 30 to 60 days).

Include a identify for signatures. Service agreements should always be signed and dated past both parties involved. It'due south a good idea to also accept the signatures notarized to prevent any political party from challenge afterward that it did non sign the agreement.

Other Provisions Your Contract Might Need

Service agreements for certain types of jobs and businesses might also need to include provisions or clauses that deal with specialized situations. Some of these clauses are:

A concord harmless clause. Agree harmless clauses are typically used when a political party wants to shift responsibility for risks associated with the service it will provide. For example, a full general contractor might include a hold harmless clause that relieves the company of responsibility if it or a subcontractor damages the client's property while doing the piece of work.

An indemnification clause. An indemnification clause is a promise that yous volition reimburse the other party if it has to pay money to encompass specified damages or losses that it has suffered.

Warranty clauses. Warranties are assurances that work or a product will meet certain standards or be stock-still or replaced within a specified timeframe. They are typically used in construction.

Confidentiality clauses. Consultants, web developers, and other service providers typically use a confidentiality clause to keep sensitive information from falling into the easily of the contest. A consultant who has adult a special process for streamlining workflow, for example, might use a confidentiality clause to forestall the client from sharing it with another consultant.

Provisions for intellectual property. Especially in creative fields like graphic blueprint and photography, service agreements specify who will own the finished product. If the provider owns information technology and licenses its use to the client, the license should describe the situations where the client may utilize it (in specified products or for a express fourth dimension, for example).

Provisions requiring client cooperation. The agreement should include a provision that defines the client's responsibility to provide information and assistance and then that the provider can meet its obligations.

Average provisions. Boilerplate provisions are understandings betwixt parties that are and then ordinarily used that they announced unchanged in many contracts. Lawyers literally copy and paste them into their contracts. Examples include a "severability" clause (where the parties agree that if a estimate finds that i part of the understanding is not enforceable, the rest of the agreement will remain in place), a statement that all understandings between the parties are contained in the agreement (this prompts the parties to identify all oral understandings in the agreement), and a clause stating that the understanding cannot exist changed except by the parties' written consent.

Examples of Service Agreements

Click on the form below to see a sample template that includes the points you will want to encompass in your agreement.

Source: https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/how-to-draft-a-service-agreement.html

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