Write the scope as if it were the only line anyone reads
The tool gives you one project line and a category. That is enough to produce the document, and it is rarely enough to settle a disagreement eight weeks later, so it is worth writing that line slowly.
A scope that holds up answers three questions:
- What is being delivered. Files, formats, how many pages or screens, which platforms. "A website" is not a deliverable. Five responsive pages plus the built front end is.
- How many rounds of revisions are included. Two is a common number. Without one, every round after the first turns into a conversation about what was implied.
- What is not included. Hosting, copy, stock licences, maintenance after launch. Naming what you are not doing costs one line and saves the argument that starts with "I assumed that was part of it".
Pricing, deposits, and what happens when payment is late
The pricing type decides what you are actually selling. Fixed sells an outcome, so working faster pays you. Hourly, daily and weekly sell time, which is safer when the scope genuinely cannot be pinned down and harder to grow out of. Monthly suits work that continues rather than finishes. If you are not sure what any of them should cost, the hourly rate calculator gives you a number to start from.
The rest of this section exists because payment sometimes slips, and every part of it is easier to agree before the work starts than after.
- A deposit. Asking for part of the fee up front is ordinary practice rather than an insult, and it tells you early whether the budget is real. The agreement records the amount so neither side has to remember it.
- How many days late counts as late. The tool asks for a number and for what you may do once it passes: stop delivering until the payment arrives, or end the agreement, with what you have already earned reserved either way. Stopping is the reversible one.
- Who covers unexpected costs. Stock images, fonts, a plugin licence, a staging server. Small amounts on their own, and the ones nobody thinks to agree in advance.
Who owns the work, and whether you can show it
In all three ownership options the client ends up owning the intellectual property, which is the usual arrangement for commissioned work. What changes is whether you keep the right to use it afterwards.
- Owned by the client. They get it outright and the document gives you no stated right to reuse any part of it. The simplest choice, and the right one when nothing in the work is yours to carry forward.
- Rights to the client, licence held by you. They own the result and the document says you hold a licence to use it. This is the one you want when the work contains components, templates or code you reuse across clients.
- Rights to the client, licence granted to you. The same permission, written as something the client gives you rather than something you already hold.
The portfolio field is worth more than it looks
It sits on its own and is easy to click past. "With approval" means you ask before publishing, every time. "Without approval" means the permission is given once, here, in the agreement.
If showing the work is how you win the next client, that single field earns its place in the document. It is also the one clients in regulated or pre-launch work are most likely to want to change, which is a useful thing to find out before you start rather than after you publish.
How it ends, and how it gets extended
Three fields set the shape of the engagement, and they lean on each other more than they look like they do.
- When the agreement ends. On a date, after a set amount of time, or when the service is delivered. Delivery fits project work; a date suits anything ongoing.
- Whether either side can leave early. Allowing termination on notice is the common choice, and the notice period is the part to think about. Long enough that you are not dropped on a Friday, short enough that a client will sign it. Two to four weeks covers most project work.
- Whether it can be extended. Agreeing to this up front means a second phase needs a conversation rather than a new document.
What this agreement does not do
It is a starting point in plain language, not legal advice, and it helps to know where its edges are before you send it.
It does not ask which country's law applies, so if you and the client are in different places, that is a line to agree between you and add. It carries a short confidentiality clause, but when the client is handing over credentials, financials or an unreleased product, a dedicated non-disclosure agreement is the instrument built for that job. And it does not decide whether your working relationship counts as freelance or employment where either of you lives, which turns on how the work is actually done rather than on what the paperwork calls it.
For a high-value engagement or an unusual arrangement, it is worth having a lawyer read it before anyone signs.
After both sides sign
Signing is the point where invoicing stops being hypothetical. For a single project price, the invoice generator turns the terms you just set into something you can send. If you chose a monthly payment frequency you have described a retainer, and recurring invoices save you rebuilding the same document twelve times.
If the client is in another country, that is where Ruul fits. Ruul is the legal counterparty on the invoice, so you can invoice clients without registering a company in 190 countries, track what has been paid without chasing it by hand, and get paid in 140+ currencies, usually within one business day of the client's payment clearing.
Keep the signed agreement next to the invoices it produced. That pairing answers a client who asks what was agreed, and it is most of what staying tax ready turns out to mean.
