Contracts

A contract belongs to an engagement. It states the terms in a document both sides sign and both sides keep.

Drafting

Start from a template and switch clauses on or off, or write your own. A template clause is switched off rather than deleted: that is what the switch is for, and a clause you wrote yourself can be removed outright.

A draft that has never been sent can be deleted. Once it has been sent, it cannot: it is a document somebody else has seen.

Sending and signing

Sending it is your signing ceremony: you type your own name, and that is your signature. The freelancer countersigns to activate it, and typing their own name is theirs.

A freelancer must have a verified ID before they can sign. A signature is a claim about who somebody is, and this is the one place that has to be checked.

What happens after signing

A signed contract cannot be changed. Not by either of you, not by us, not through the interface and not through the database: it is held that way by four separate mechanisms rather than by a promise. What renders on screen and in the PDF is the frozen version, always.

If terms change, that is a new version to send and sign, not an edit.

The PDF

Downloadable by both sides, and identical to the screen: both are rendered from one model, so a clause switched off is absent from both and there is no version of the document that says something the other does not.