There’s a reason we here at Knowify decided early on that one of our most important features was going to be our contract/estimate builder. As a matter of best practices, every service you perform for a client should be covered by a signed contract or estimate. “But hey!” you might protest, “not everything I do rises to the level of a contract, and contracts are a pain to keep track of besides.” The reality is that all of your business relationships are defined by understandings—an understanding of what you will do and an understanding of what your client will pay. The only difference between an understanding and a contract is a piece of paper and a signature. You can decide whether you would rather have all of your business relationships in your head, legally unenforceable (or difficult to enforce), or have those relationships in an always available, organized online platform, signature attached, ready to go. Critically—because we realize that drawing up new contracts is a pain—the Knowify contract tool is easy, and, for simple agreements, can be used to put something together and send it out for signature QUICKLY.
Contract types in Knowify
Knowify contracts and estimates, like all contracts and estimates, are defined by the services you are going to render and the price your client is going to pay. We call these “deliverables”, and they can take a few different forms. Here’s a quick walkthrough of Knowify’s deliverables:
Fixed: Fixed deliverables are for one-time fixed-price goods or services. The number on the deliverable is the price the client will ultimately pay for the service. This deliverable type might cover things like “Plant a tree, $500” or “Build a website, $2500” or “Make a 3-tier wedding cake, $12002″—these are very simple examples, but you no doubt get the idea.
Recurring: These are fixed price items that recur with a regular frequency. Think of things like “Piano lesson, $50/biweekly”, “Weekly lawn care, $400/wk”, “Software license, $1000/month”, etc. Knowify can really help you keep track of which of these regularly occurring services have been billed for already—the weekly ones especially can be easy to skip or not collect on, which can create problems with the client when you try to go back months later to collect!
Time and Materials: Time and Materials deliverables establish rates and markups for time and purchases, then connect those rates to time entries and the markups to the actual purchases made when it comes time for billing. Rates for time entries can either by role (e.g., Partner rate), by resource (e.g., Fred Noell’s rate), or by a universal rate for all employees for that client’s project. Knowify will save you a lot of time in billing for time and materials jobs, because once the rates/markups are established, all you need to do is focus on collecting timesheets and purchase orders, because Knowify will automatically connect the dots behind the scenes.
Variable: Variable deliverables allow you to define a unit—for example, “Pizzas”—and a rate for the unit—”$12 per pizza”. When it comes time for billing, all you’ll need to do is tell the system how many “Pizzas” you sold to the client, and the contractual price will automatically be applied. Note that Knowify also allows for multi-tier pricing, so the first 10 might have one price, the next ten another, etc.
Online approval
Lastly, Knowify has a powerful e-signing tool that allows you to quickly and easily submit a contract or estimate for signature. You can use either Knowify’s professional-looking PDFs or your own uploaded PDF, and your client will receive an email taking them to an embedded view of the document. Once they’ve signed it, both parties will receive copies for their records—and you will sleep much better at night!
Come try out Knowify’s contracts and estimates tools today, and bring modern best-practices to your business, and finally without the hassle.