Small Business Service Agreement Template
Every clause names the dispute it came from, because a clause you have never needed reads exactly like one that has saved you money.
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Dispute Register
[Company] — every argument with a client, priced
Fill this in before you read a single clause. Basis and Total are required: a dispute with no number cannot be ranked, and an unranked register produces an agreement ordered by legal convention instead of by exposure.
| ID | Year | What happened | Basis of the price | Cash | Hours | Total | Clause earned |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| D-01 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| D-02 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| D-03 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
| D-04 | — | — | — | — | — | — | — |
Price each one on its own basis. The unit is part of the finding
| Unbilled work | Hours at your own rate. Fixed-fee work delivered and never invoiced is revenue that was available and went unclaimed |
| A late invoice that was paid | Carry plus chasing time. Not the invoice, which arrived. Getting this one wrong is what puts payment terms first |
| A term cancelled early | The unearned remainder a notice period would have recovered, not the whole remaining term |
| Counsel, settlements, rebuilds | Cash, at what they cost |
| Bad debt written off | The invoice. This is the one case where the full amount is the right number |
Then map each dispute to the one clause that would have prevented it, and rank the clauses by money. That ranking is the order the agreement gets written in, and it is rarely the order you expect.
A clause you have never needed reads exactly like a clause that has saved you money. Both are grammatical, both sound careful, and nothing in the document tells you which is which. That is what is wrong with a template: not that it is incorrect, but that it is unaimed, and being unaimed is invisible. So this pack drafts in the other direction. Every argument the business has actually had gets priced, then mapped to the one clause that would have prevented it.
Halversen Studio is an invented fourteen-person design firm: three years, $1,450,000 of revenue, eleven disputes costing $82,904. That is 5.7 percent of revenue, which sounds survivable, and 47.6 percent of profit, which does not. Ranked by dispute count, the change procedure came first. Ranked by money, a single cancellation put termination first, and late payment came fifth of six at 3.5 percent, because both late invoices were eventually paid. It is the clause almost every founder asks about first.
Then the join runs backwards, which is the half nobody asks for. Their template had 28 clauses. Five addressed a dispute they had actually had, three of those needed rewriting because the wording did not reach the failure mode, one was missing outright, and 23 covered nothing in three years. The expensive one gave away a component library written two years before the engagement, because a copyright transfer is valid the moment it is in a signed writing.
What's in the pack
Dispute Register
One row per argument you have actually had, priced on its own basis, with the clause it earned and where that clause ranks.
Service Agreement
Six operative clauses in money order, each carrying the dispute that put it there, with the 23 standard terms annexed at the back.
How the Clauses Were Chosen
The audit trail: both rankings, the audit of the template you had been sending, and the two disputes that map to no clause.
Statement of Work Format
Nine required sections, every one of them there so the change procedure has a boundary it can actually measure against.
Change Procedure
The four steps, the three-sentence message that papers a verbal change, and the rule for tweaks too small to raise.
Payment Terms Note
Why the clause everybody asks about first came fifth of six, and the three things that would move it back up. What happens once a client stops honoring it is a different pack's job.
Agreement Register
One row per live agreement with the terms extracted and every deviation from your own paper, the list an investor's data room asks for.
Renewal and Notice Tracker
Two dates per agreement rather than one, because the anniversary is not the date you have to act on.
Notice Sweep
A weekly agent that reports what is inside 30 days of its decide-by date and what has already silently renewed.
How to use it
- 1
Open in River, or download it
Take the blank Word and CSV files away with no account, or install the pack in River and have the agent build the register from your own history.
- 2
List the arguments, not the clauses
Two or three years of them. The ones where the client was entirely reasonable count double, because those are the ones a drafting change can prevent.
- 3
Price each one on its own basis
Unbilled hours at your rate, a late invoice at carry plus chasing, a cancelled term at the unearned remainder. Flattening them into one unit destroys the ranking.
- 4
Draft in money order, and register what you sign
Six clauses at the front, standard terms annexed, then the notice date computed the day the agreement is signed rather than the month it renews.
Frequently asked questions
Is this template free?
Yes. Three sheets and five documents download as Word and CSV files with no signup and no credit card. "Edit with AI" is the optional path, where the agent builds the register from your own disputes and audits the paper you have been sending. The rest are in the template library.
What format are the downloaded files?
Word documents (.docx) for the agreement, the statement of work format, the payment note, the change procedure and the clause reasoning, and CSV (.csv) for the Dispute Register, Agreement Register and Renewal and Notice Tracker, zipped together. They open natively in Word, Pages, Google Docs, Excel, Numbers and Sheets.
How is this different from a free service agreement template?
A template gives you clauses somebody else needed, in an order set by legal convention, and you cannot tell which of them is load-bearing. This starts from your own priced disputes, so every clause at the front cites the argument that earned it. Reviewing their paper is the other direction.
Do I still need a lawyer?
Yes, and this is not legal advice. What changes is what you hand them: a draft where every clause names the dispute it came from, an audit of the paper you have been sending, and a priced register behind the ordering. A lawyer reviewing that spends the hour on your six clauses, not on a blank page.
What if I have not had many disputes yet?
Four is enough to rank. Count the ones where the client was entirely reasonable, because those are the ones a clause can prevent, while the ones where somebody behaved badly tend to end the relationship instead. The register is built to be re-run after each new dispute, and most re-runs correctly change nothing.
Why does an agreement pack track renewal dates?
Because a signed agreement renews on its anniversary, and the date you must act is the anniversary minus the notice period, which the document never states. New York voids silent auto-renewal in some service contracts unless the supplier sends a reminder. This tracker only covers agreements built from this template; for every signed agreement across the business, see the contract register and renewal tracker.
What does it not do?
It does not opine on whether a clause is enforceable, and it is not legal, tax or accounting advice. It records what your disputes cost, which clause each one earned, and what your current paper does and does not reach. Answering a supplier's price increase is a different job, so is publishing the same terms to every customer rather than negotiating one client's own paper.
Find out which of your clauses were never doing anything
Download the blank pack as Word and CSV files, or open it in River and get your disputes priced, your clauses ranked by money, and an audit of the paper you are sending today.
Edit with AI