Freelance Contracts to Manage Client Expectations Successfully

This is a guest blog post written by Stefan Dubowski for FreshBooks, the leader in online invoicing and bookkeeping for small businesses and entrepreneurs. Use FreshBooks with RightSignature to send invoices and estimates to clients for signature with just a few clicks.

It’s usually good news when a small business or freelancer lands a new customer. But the situation can quickly turn sour if you’re not careful about managing client expectations. Does the customer understand what they’re buying? Is there any chance that the client might think you’ll deliver one thing, when you planned to deliver something else? The risk exists if you don’t follow these five pieces of advice: use a contract, communicate, build a relationship, keep your word, and over deliver.

Use a Contract
By laying that groundwork at the beginning of the job, it’s much more likely that the customer will be happy with the finished product. In a contract you can lay out exactly the terms of the project – deadlines, who’s responsible for what, and of course the amount of money involved. It’s the first step in ensuring both you and your client understand what to expect. You can use FreshBooks to generate a detailed invoice, and send it to the customer via RightSignature for legally binding electronic signature.

Communicate
Use your words! Keep your client informed as to project progress and issues (including potential solutions for the occasional problem). Many freelancers rely on email to connect with customers, using their email programs as veritable repositories of information, including details about when, exactly, the client agreed to push back the project’s deadline, for instance. In fact, email may be better than other forms of communication (texting and voice particularly) for permissions because it lets you go into detail, and people tend to save emails, so you can check back for verifications later.

Build a Relationship
But email certainly isn’t the only form of communication you should use. It can be somewhat cold and impersonal. Pick up the phone and speak to your customers every once in a while. That can help you build a relationship with your clients, and it helps remind them that you’re not just a distant service provider. You’re a person. That can help you smooth over mistakes (when they happen). After all, it isn’t so easy to write off a work relationship when there’s a personal connection as well.

Keep Your Word
Did you commit to participating in your customer’s conference calls? If so, do so. Did you agree to a deadline? If so, meet it. It’s particularly important that you should keep your word on small details, because if you can’t meet the little expectations, your client may conclude you’re incapable of meeting the larger needs involved in the job.

Over Deliver
Aim to go above and beyond the contract. Throw in extras – services, recommendations, support, follow-up – whatever will make your client take notice. If you do manage to over-achieve once in a while, your client could come to see you as someone she can count on as a valuable business partner, not just a vendor. That puts you in a different class of service provider, and it could translate into more business down the road.

The $100 Million Paper Signature Blunder?

Ezekiel Vermillion, an attorney at Adler Vermillion & Skocilich in New York and a RightSignature user, might have spotted the most expensive signature blunder in history. He tweeted:

Legal malpractice claim in dodger's divorce hangs on closing set manipulation. http://on.wsj.com/uEgQtO  This is why i use @rightsignature 

What's the backstory here? Frank McCourt, owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers, alleges that discrepancies in a set of signed paper documents may have cost him over $100 million. During a prolonged divorce proceeding, questions arose about the integrity of the signed copies of a marital-property agreement Mr. McCourt executed with his now ex-wife, Jamie. The Wall Street Journal says:

Evidence surfaced that there were discrepancies among the original six signed copies, namely that attachments to three named Mr. McCourt as the sole owner of the Dodgers while attachments to the three others didn't. Evidence also revealed that the copies with attachments that didn't name Mr. McCourt as the sole owner had been replaced by attachments that did shortly after all six copies had been signed.

Whether or not your contracts have nine digits riding on them, RightSignature gives you the peace of mind that your documents are tamper-proof and legally defensible. RightSignature's proprietary biometric signatures and authentication data portfolio provide robust identity authentication. Each executed document is time-stamped, locked with a SHA-1 checksum, and stored in a secure archive.

As a trusted third party, RightSignature maintains best practices in e-signature legal compliance and eliminates the possibility of document tampering accusations, discrepancies in signed copies, and lost originals. We know that e-signatures can help you close deals faster, reduce paper costs, and make life easier on your customers. Now the Frank McCourt signature blunder shows that using RightSignature could save you millions.

USPS Delivery Slowdown and the Rise of Electronic Signatures

The U.S. Postal Service has announced that first-class mail will take several more days in transit, as the USPS dramatically shrinks operations in response to precipitous declines in mail volume and billion-dollar annual operating losses. This news is further indication that the paper era is coming to an end as businesses transition to more efficient, cost-effective, and environmentally sustainable web delivery technologies.

Over the last decade, as companies adopted online billing systems and sent most notifications by email, one of the few remaining use cases for traditional postal mail was facilitating signatures. Now that use case, too, is antiquated. Taking multiple days each way in transit, wasting paper and ink, and having little visibility into document progress doesn't make sense in the internet era. Instead, businesses large and small, in every industry, are using RightSignature to enable their customers, employees, vendors, and partners to fill out and sign documents online in minutes.

When a post office near our headquarters faced closure recently, the Noozhawk highlighted RightSignature as a contributor to the paperless revolution:

RightSignature ... has had a direct effect on traditional forms of mail delivery. It enables businesses to prepare and sign documents online so they can close more deals in less time, reduce paper and ink expenses, minimize environmental impact and avoid fax hassles. 

Box Electronic Signature Integration

Box is an increasingly popular application for businesses to share files online. It’s like a file server, but simpler and without the hardware, software, and maintenance requirements. You and your authorized contacts can share and collaborate on PDFs, Word documents, media files, and more. Additional features include file access from mobile devices, online workspaces, and desktop syncing.

Box is now integrated with RightSignature, giving you even more power to build, manage, store, and send your documents for e-signature … all in the cloud. Less time getting a signature means more time to focus on your business.

In RightSignature:

You can access your Box files directly from your RightSignature Send screen. Once a Box file has been executed, RightSignature automatically places a signed copy in your Box account, eliminating the need for repetitive downloading and uploading.

To setup, login to your RightSignature account and visit your Account > Integrations page.

In Box:

You can send Box files for e-signature via RightSignature. Right click on a file in Box, and you will be redirected to the RightSignature send screen with the document preloaded.

To setup, visit the RightSignature app on Box and click the Add button to add the RightSignature action to your Box account.

This video provides a demonstration of the integration:

Capsule CRM E-Signature Integration

Capsule offers the ideal online CRM for small businesses, with more power and flexibility than simple contact managers and less complexity than Salesforce. Capsule provides visibility into your sales pipeline. Customizable tracking milestones, such as lead, demo, proposal, won, etc., help you follow each prospect through the sales process.

You can generate pipeline reports and extracts using configurable filters, set contacts to follow custom sales paths, and brand your account using your colors and logo. In addition to the RightSignature integration, Capsule offers integrations with Xero, Google Apps, MailChimp, Drupal, WordPress, and more.

The RightSignature-Capsule integration enables you to access your entire Capsule contact list directly from your RightSignature account. When you start typing a signer or CC’s name on a document or reusable template, RightSignature automatically displays possible name and email matches from your Capsule account.

In addition, each Capsule contact record will include a “RightSignature Documents” link that gives you quick access to your RightSignature dashboard with documents filtered by the specific Capsule contact.

Duncan Stockdill, co-founder of Capsule, said,

At Capsule, we’re all about simple, intuitive software that helps you keep track of people you do business with and manage your sales pipeline. RightSignature provides an easy, elegant way to get contracts, NDA’s, and forms filled out and signed online quickly. We use RightSignature ourselves to get contracts signed with business partners around the world. This new integration means Capsule users will be able to access documents signed with RightSignature from inside a contact's record in Capsule and easily send documents for signature to Capsule contacts from inside RightSignature. I'm pleased to have our popular web applications working together to help our users do more business in less time.

We’re excited to collaborate on this two-way integration with our friends at Capsule, and we extend a warm welcome to Capsule users new to RightSignature.

To access your Capsule contacts inside RightSignature: 
• Login to your RightSignature account, visit your Account > Integrations page, and enter your Capsule account name and API token (found in your Capsule account under Your Name > My Preferences > API Authentication Token).

To enable the “RightSignature Documents” link inside Capsule:
• Login to your Capsule account, click the gear icon in the upper right to access your Settings, click through to Custom Fields for People & Organizations, choose Add New > Generated Link,  enter a label such as “RightSignature Documents”, and set the Link Definition to:
https://rightsignature.com/dashboard#/dashboard/?object_type=documents&query{email}&
state=completed%2Cpending&time=alltime&document_view=document&page=1
• For more details, visit Capsule's RightSignature integration instruction page.
 

Graphic Design Contract Samples

Graphic designers use RightSignature to get contracts signed online with clients around the world. Whether working as freelancers or for a firm, designers are all about image and professionalism. Using RightSignature to present a proposal and estimate for signature shows clients that a designer is established and has an efficient process for handling new projects.

Wes McDowell of The Deep End, a design studio based in Seattle, has created a series of instructional videos to help graphic designers craft proposals and contracts. His newest post is Use RightSignature to Get Your Graphic Design Contract Signed Online. Wes says,

Contracts are so important to us as designers because they protect our business and ensure that we get paid. Any way we can eliminate obstacles between our clients and a contract is a major benefit, and RightSignature has been a big part of our process.

To build your own graphic design contract template, try borrowing relevant clauses from a variety of publicly available templates. By assembling pieces from various documents, you’ll create your own contract that fits your business, your projects, your location, and your appetite for legalese. As a start, check out the contract templates proposed by AIGA, Shawn Adrian, Jason Vaughn, Lori Leach, or Andy Clarke.

Once you’ve finalized your design contract, create a Reusable Template in RightSignature. Then, you’ll be able to send a contract to a new client with just a few clicks. You can even place merge fields on your Reusable Template so you can merge information like Client Name, Project Description, or Project Fee onto the contract before sending it for e-signature.

Automatic Address Book

Once is enough! Starting today, you’ll never have to type a contact’s name and email address into RightSignature more than one time.

Our new Automatic Address Book keeps track of all the people to whom you’ve sent documents. When you start typing the name or email of a signer or CC, RightSignature auto-suggests potential matches. Sending a document to a previously used contact is faster than ever!

No misspellings. No forgotten email addresses. No switching tabs to your email account. The Automatic Address Book is one more elegantly-designed feature that makes RightSignature the most intuitive, easy-to-use e-signature software.