You’ve taken the time to negotiate the rates and and other job details. Should you now create a contract or is it enough to have the details confirmed in an email?
A contract adds more weight to your booking confirmation, and it clearly outlines additional matters, such as invoice frequency, payment terms, IP ownership and cancelation. It can also be essential for a third-party to conclude whether your engagement falls within IR35 regulations.
Before beginning work on a new project, most professionals and companies would agree that having a clear contractual agreement in place is essential for reducing the chance of a dispute further into the project; however, contracts are expensive and time-consuming to create, and it may result in an unwelcome delay to the assignment.
The ‘Automated Contracts’ solution
YellowWork’s Automated Contract feature enables companies and freelancers to quickly create contracts that are tailored each specific booking. From the details confirmed in a YellowWork Calendar Booking, a contract can be created with all the necessary job details automatically populated, such as whether the freelancer is required to work on specific dates or by tracking their time with a remote flexible-work model.
YellowWork has designed an Automated Contract tool to be as flexible as your work. With details, such as the dates, time, rates, expenses and work location, often changing, regularly cancelling, creating and re-signing agreements can be time-consuming and costly.
YellowWork’s Automated Contract feature works by reinforcing the details confirmed by the client and freelancer in a YellowWork Calendar booking, making the booking details contractually binding. YellowWork’s Smart Booking Process makes it easy for one party to make changes to the booking and the other party to agree; therefore, reinforcing the confirmed booking with a contract in this way enables changes to be made without having to cancel and create a new contract.
YellowWork’s Automated Contracts tool also considers IR35 compliancy, providing both the client and freelancer with evidence that the engagement does not fall into employer/staff territory should your tax authority investigate or a legal claim be made.
Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Select ‘Contracts’ in the menu
In the menu, select ‘Contracts’. This will display the ‘Contracts’ page, where you can view existing contracts that you’ve created.
Step 2: Select ‘Create Agreement’
To create a new contract, select the yellow ‘Create Agreement’ button in the ‘Contracts’ page. This will take you to a page that displays your existing bookings.
Step 3: Tick the booking and create an agreement
In the page that displays your existing bookings, tick the booking that you want to raise a contract for and then select the yellow ‘Create Agreement’ button at the bottom.
Please note: If you haven’t already added a booking, you can do so by selecting the grey ‘Add Booking’ button. For more ways to add a booking to your Calendar, please see the YellowWork Calendar article.
Step 4: Select the terms
At this step, YellowWork has extracted, from your booking, most of the data that it requires to create a contract.
The final terms and information can be added in an overlay that is displayed upon selecting ‘Create Agreement’ in the previous step. The final information will include your address, which will be saved and populated the next time you create an agreement. You will also be required to add your recipient’s email address.
On the third page of the overlay, you can select the invoice and payment frequency, and the final page enables you to add specific terms, such as Confidentiality, Data Protection and Intellectual Property.
Step 5: View and Edit Contract
Once completed and you select ‘View Contract’, the final agreement will be displayed.
If required, you can edit your address or change the contract terms by selecting the yellow ‘Edit Basic Details’ button.
Important: Reference to the booking
You will see that the contract is displaying information that is specific to your type of booking.
For example: If you have a flexible, ‘Time-track’ booking (the freelancer records their time whenever they work), there will be terms added in the ‘Terms of Engagement’ section that reflects this type of work.
Many other terms will reinforce the details in the associated YellowWork booking, as displayed in the image below.
Step 4: Sign and share contract
When you are ready to sign the agreement, select the yellow ‘Sign Agreement’ button at the bottom. This will display an overlay that will enable you to sign and date it, which can do by typing your name and checking the date checkbox.
After completing this step, you can add your recipient’s details, who will be sent an email with a link to view and sign the agreement.
Once both parties have signed the agreement, signatures and dates will be displayed on the agreement, and the agreement status will update to ‘Signed’.
Disclaimer
YellowMoney Ltd is not a law firm and does not purport to give legal advice to any persons (individual or corporate) using any template contract generated through its website (the Template Contract) and/or its website generally and/or its app. All parties using the Template Contract and/or YellowDiary Ltd’s website and/or its app are encouraged to seek independent legal advice on its or their contents and/or enforceability, particularly before entering into any agreement formed using the Template Contract.