Unlock the Power of eSignature Legitimateness for Your Consulting Agreement in Australia

How to eSign a document: eSignature legitimateness for Consulting Agreement in Australia

[Music] do you need a contract as a consultant there are a lot of different ways you can set up your business and a lot of different ways that you can provide services and depending on what is involved in the state that you're in and the type of business you've established you're going to want to think through which of the services i'm providing do i need a contract with my client for which ones do i want to have a legal agreement about to hold myself and my client accountable and to cover my butt in case something happens right so funding for good i use this as an example we have a lot of things that we sell on our website whether it's a webinar or a template on-demand consultation whatever those things are right most of those are services that you can buy we do work and send it to you we don't have to meet we're not waiting for you to provide us with some stuff so we can do the work it's not a collaborative effort right if you book an on-demand consultation it tells you what the consultation is what's involved what you receive as a result of paying for that service we provide the service and then that's it it's not an ongoing engagement it's not a contract we're not providing you with legal advice so we don't need um contracts for those types of things we have webinars people can buy webinars anytime they want whether it's a live webinar or a replay of a webinar i don't need a legal contract for that either because you're seeing what you get you pay for it it tells you what the terms of the service are and if you agree to it you purchase it we have grant research that we provide and you fill out a form that's a research questionnaire you send it to our team we ask you if you have any questions we do the research we return it to you based on what the description says we're going to return and then you you go about using that however you'd like right those things we don't require contracts for the things that we require contracts for are long-term engagements anything that's an ongoing contract for coaching or consulting working with a team so any development coaching executive coaching that type of thing definitely going to have a contract in place for that we're also going to have a contract in place for things that are very high dollar items like strategic planning or template creation or grant writing for a federal grant anything that's a significant amount of dollars that i want them to understand this is what you're getting this is what we're providing and it's in a legal format and it's signed so everybody is being held accountable for what they are or not doing they understand how they can cancel services we understand how we can cancel services we can um we have all of the the clauses in there about if they don't pay if we don't provide services what happens how we stop services how we end contracts all that sort of stuff right so you want to think through what is my commitment what is my time commitment what is the engagement required by the party that i'm serving and do i need a contract for that if you're a speaker for an event you probably want to contract for that because there's a lot of different deliverables from you and from the organization that you're speaking for right so speakers contracts are pretty common pretty regular um if you're providing a webinar for a company that's paying you to present it you may have a contract so they understand what your role is what their role is who's providing the software who has access to the recording all those different things if it's your own webinar that you're hosting you don't really need a contract for the people that are paying to attend that right so a lot of folks don't know what they do and don't need grant or contracts for so you want to think through is it a short-term engagement is a long-term engagement is it a small amount of money is it a large amount of money are there things that i could be held legally liable for that i want to make sure that everyone has checked a box and signed a line and said we understand our role you understand your role we're all good to go we just entered into an online conference that we're planning with some other consultants and we have a contract between us as consultants but we also have a contract with our sponsors to say this is what the conference is going to present for you this is what you're going to provide for us so that way everybody understands because there was an exchange of dollars for that so as you go about creating your services as you go about deciding what you want to offer and how you want to offer it to your clients or potential clients think through do i need a contract for this or not it's easy to create templates for your contracts and then just update specific spots within those contracts so you're not creating new contracts every single time you need one and i do encourage you to use online software for that to make the signing process easy for everyone everyone that signs does get automatic copies of those signed signatures and there is a legal section at the bottom from those companies and you also have a place where you can log in and track that information after the fact in case you lose a document or a client loses a document so hopefully as you start to grow your business and establish new or future funding streams for your consulting company you can think through whether you need contracts or not and start establishing some of those now to make your life easier later [Music]