Client paperwork
Client paperwork for freelancers
Scope creep, an unpaid final invoice and an argument about who owns the files all trace back to the same missing page. BuildWright drafts the service agreement, the NDA and the payment terms, and sets up an invoice your client's finance team will accept.
Drafting
Written for the way you actually work
Review
The client's template, marked up before you sign
Invoicing
A format a finance team accepts first time
- Freelancers still working off email threads and a scope agreed on a call.
- Anyone who has been sent a client's own master services agreement and has no idea which clauses to push back on.
- Independent professionals who keep getting paid late and have nothing in writing to point at.
Service agreement
Scope, deliverables, revisions, who owns the output, what happens when the brief changes mid-project, and how either side ends it. The arguments freelancers actually have, settled before they start.
Non-disclosure agreement
A mutual NDA you can send first, so you stop signing whatever one-sided version lands in your inbox. Drafted so it protects your own methods and materials as well as the client's information.
Payment terms that hold
When payment falls due, what happens when it does not arrive, and how late payment is charged. Written so the terms sit consistently across the agreement, the purchase order and the invoice.
Invoice discipline
An invoice format carrying the registration details, references and descriptions a buyer's accounts department checks for. Most late payments start as an invoice that quietly failed a validation step.
Reviewing their template
When the client insists on their own paper, we read it and tell you which clauses to negotiate, which to accept, and which ones the law overrides regardless of what the document says.
How you work
Project shape, revision habits, how you price, and what has gone wrong with clients before.
Drafting
Agreement, NDA and payment terms drafted together so the three documents agree with each other.
Your read
You read it in plain language and tell us what does not match how you work.
Final set
Signature-ready documents, an invoice template, and a note on which clauses to hold firm on when a client pushes.
Is an email confirmation enough of a contract?
It is something, and it is a lot better than nothing. What it usually lacks is the part you need when things go wrong: scope boundaries, ownership of the output, and what payment is due when. Those absences only ever surface during a dispute.
The client sent their own agreement. Can you still help?
Yes, and this is the more common situation. We read their document, mark up what to negotiate, and flag the clauses that carry a cost you might not have priced in. Some terms in a client template have no effect anyway because a statute overrides them.
Who owns the work I deliver?
Whoever the agreement says, subject to what copyright law provides for commissioned work. This is the clause freelancers most often sign away without noticing, and it is worth deciding deliberately rather than inheriting a client's default.
Can a contract clause override my right to be paid on time?
Not always. Where a supplier holds the right registration, the payment deadline comes from statute and a longer clause in the client's agreement cannot extend it. We cover how that works, with the section named, in our insight piece on the payment rule.
Are you a law firm?
No. We prepare documentation and handle filings, and this is not legal advice. Where something needs a lawyer's opinion or a court, we tell you that instead of drafting around it.
Send us the last contract you signed.
We will tell you what it leaves open and what a set drafted around your work would cover instead.
Background reading: the payment deadline a client clause cannot extend and what holding client data commits you to.