A standard service contract is meant to be iterative in nature. They are as long lasting as your business, and they should change when appropriate to do so.
The goal, when writing a service contract, is to cover as any scenarios and pitfalls as possible up front. However, you can’t always catch everything. Often times, you encounter unexpected situations that you couldn’t see coming.
Yes, this is the article telling you to consider whether it is time to revisit your contracts.
The [First Name] Clause
This happens to every business owner at some point. A client will act incredibly unreasonable to the point you have to write an entirely new clause in your contract. In my own contracts, I know the name of every client who caused one of these. To my employees and some of my clients, I refer to them by the client’s first non-identifying name. For example, I have a “Tony Clause” about having prompt communication with me. That client would disappear for months and suddenly pop back up when the matter becomes urgent again.
Change in Business
Businesses change all the time. That’s a good thing. Whether you’re changing what you offer or how you offer it, a change in your business might mean you need to make alterations to your contracts.
For example, if you’re a service business who decides to start selling goods, your service contract probably won’t cover both.
Change in the Law
As if running a business weren’t hard enough, laws change all the time too. In the past 10 years, North Carolina had major overhauls to sales tax, noncompetes, and the underlying laws for how corporations and LLCs operate. Those are huge changes!
Iterative Service Contracts
Service contracts are iterative. As you can see above, there are a few reasons you would want to revisit them regularly just to make sure you’re covered.