Contracts are incredibly important in the events industry, as they assure that the policies, items, and payment amount and method for your deal are all agreed upon and legally binding. Imagine if you didn’t have a contract with a cancellation policy. Your clients could cancel on you the morning of an event, which would not only be supremely irritating, but it would also waste a huge amount of time and money for you. Contracts protect both parties from potential bad actors.

Once you have a signed contract, you need to make sure to give your client a copy of the contract. Why? Here are a few reasons:

• Protect yourself against disputes
• Ensure you’re on the same page
• Give the feeling of control to both parties

Let’s dive in:

Protect yourself against disputes

Is a client disputing one of your fees or claiming you didn’t fulfill your contract? Now you have assurance. Most disputes happen because of unclear policies or a misunderstood agreement. Since all of your policies and responsibilities were listed on the contract, you should be in the clear regardless. However, providing an extra copy of the agreement for your client provides an extra level of communication and clarity.

This will help to prevent disputes at the source, and also provides an extra level of protection from disputes when they’re made. If your client has a copy of the contract, it is much more difficult to imagine that they’d be unaware of your policies or details of the agreement. Then, as long as you did fulfill everything in your agreement, you should have nothing to worry about.

Ensure you’re on the same page

While you should strive to be as clear as possible throughout the entire sales process, it is crucial that at a minimum, you communicate your policies and responsibilities in the contract. Then, if your client has their own copy of the contract, they will have immediate access to the document that can answer their questions. They no longer need to call you up to ask about your breakage or delivery policy. Instead, they can check their copy of the contract and find the policy listed in a few seconds.

Time is money, especially if you have employees handling these processes. The benefit here is not only conveniece for your client, but also that you will save time answering questions for customers on the phone. This will become a significant time and money saver in the long run.

Digital contracts and signatures are incredibly useful in this regard, as clients can view their contracts from anywhere, at any time, and on any device without having to dig through folders to find the contract. This will also save you significant time writing up contacts and acquiring signatures.

Give the feeling of control to both parties

This is specifically in regards to digital contracts, which can be easily edited in minutes when needed. This puts your clients in the driver’s seat when it comes to changes they want made to your agreement. Rather than needing to call you and arrange a meeting to make new edits and print out a new contract, they can message you and have you quickly approve changes and send back a new agreement in no time. The key here is that your client has full instant access to a copy of the contract, which empowers them to get exactly what they want from your services.

Plus, see when they open the email with the contract in it with read receipts. You can quickly and easily track the progress of your contract with instant alerts that help you feel in control and in the know.

Make your life easier, as well as your customer’s

Ultimately, providing a copy of the contract for your clients, especially in digital form, ensures a heightened level of communication, convenience, and assurance. Both parties will save time in the process, and you will have a much smoother client experience post-contract signing. Make your life easier and protect yourself against disputes by providing your clients with a copy of the contract.