Terms and Conditions Templates for Websites, Invoices, Contracts, and Estimates
The more your service business grows, the more you benefit from legal protection.
Including standard terms and conditions on your website and in your contracts, invoices, and estimates helps to clarify client and contractor responsibilities, outline essential service details, and prevent disputes.
It’s the best way to ensure you cover your bases when it comes to communicating your policies, expectations, and obligations clearly and professionally. Like when and how clients should pay, or what happens if they cancel an appointment last minute.
But to ensure they’re enforceable, they need to be legally sound. Use these small business terms and conditions templates to cover your bases and keep your business safe.
Protect your small business with terms and conditions:
⚠️ Disclaimer: This content is for informational purposes only and should not be considered accounting, tax, or legal advice, or a substitute for obtaining such advice specific to your business. Please refer to an experienced lawyer in your jurisdiction for particular information on how to write legally binding terms and conditions.
What are terms and conditions?
Terms and conditions are the rules that define the relationship between a business and a customer. It’s a legal document that outlines the expectations, responsibilities, and rights of each party to legally bind them until the terms of the service have been met or the relationship ends.
Service providers often use general terms and conditions for:
- Payments: To outline due dates, accepted methods, and late fee policies
- Liability: To clarify who is responsible for any damage as part of the service
- Privacy: To explain how customer data is handled, like in your CRM
- Disputes: To define how any conflicts will be resolved
- Cancellations: To communicate what happens with no-shows or last-minute cancellations
READ MORE:How to create a cancellation policy
Are terms and conditions legally required?
Whether terms and conditions are legally required depends on what you’re using them for.
For example, if you store customer data in your field service management software, terms and conditions may be a legal requirement for you to comply with data protection regulations based on the state you live in. While there’s no federal privacy act, certain states, like California, have their own, such as the CCPA.
A terms and conditions document may also be necessary if you offer subscription-based services, like weekly snow removal, house cleaning, or lawn maintenance.
Check your state’s requirements or work with a lawyer to find out whether you need terms and conditions for your business.
Terms and conditions templates
Terms and conditions work for a variety of situations and depend on the services you offer, the industry you’re in, and how you run your business.
The most common places to include them are on your website, and in your contracts, invoices, and estimates. Use these templates to start protecting your service business:
1. Invoice and payment terms and conditions
Invoice and payment terms and conditions sets clear expectations for things like:
- When payment is due
- Whether a deposit is required
- Which payment methods you accept
- If and when you charge late fees
2. Website terms and conditions template
Website terms and general conditions typically include:
- Pricing details and payment terms, like when and how to pay
- Booking information, like what does and doesn’t count as a booking and how users can make an appointment
- Intellectual property rights, like your logo, business name, and images
- A privacy policy
- Your service agreement
3. Contract terms and conditions template
In a contract agreement, your terms and conditions policy covers a variety of rules and guidelines, such as:
- What services you will provide and when you will complete them
- Who will provide materials and supplies for the job
- Warranties and guarantees
- What the client’s responsibilities are
- Safety requirements
- Insurance details and liability clause
- How cancellations are handled
4. Estimate terms and conditions template
Estimate terms and conditions usually include:
- The estimated price for the requested services
- How long the estimate is valid for
- Acceptance from the client before work can begin
- How changes in project scope will affect the estimate
- How any disputes will be handled
You can also use an AI tool like Jobber Copilot to write custom service agreement terms and conditions unique to your business requirements.
Why should you use terms and conditions?
Even if terms and conditions aren’t legally required, you should still consider including them in your documents and on your website because help to:
1. Outline expectations
Clear terms and conditions ensure you and your customers are on the same page about everything from payments and pricing to services and timelines. Providing this information upfront tells clients exactly what to expect, and helps with dispute resolution.
2. Build trust
Making your terms and conditions agreement available to clients in your contracts, invoices, estimates, and on your website boosts transparency. In turn, this makes customers feel like you’re a legitimate and trustworthy service provider.
It also demonstrates that you care about their legal rights and that you’ve worked hard to develop clear processes to make your business run as smoothly as possible.
3. Enforce policies
If you don’t use legally binding terms and conditions, it will be difficult for you to enforce any policies.
For example, let’s say you have a snow removal business and you agree to clear a client’s driveway but not the city-owned sidewalks in front of their property. After a heavy snowfall, your client refuses to pay because you only did their driveway (and not their sidewalks) as agreed.
Without terms and conditions stating you only clear client-owned properties, you won’t have a way to show the customer understood the scope of the services. This means you’ll probably either have to go back and remove the rest of the snow or move forward without getting paid, cutting down on cash flow and costing you money.
4. Improve cash flow
Terms and conditions directly related to payments are one of the best ways to prevent late payments. When clients understand when and how to pay, as well as what penalties they’ll face if they don’t, they’re more likely to pay on time and in full.
And the more often your clients clear their invoices, the more you can improve cash flow and grow your business.
5. Protect your business
Without legally binding terms and conditions, you leave your service business open to risks, like being held liable for damage or misunderstandings about project scope.
For example, if the client didn’t clear their lawn before a heavy snowfall and you accidentally run over a lawn decoration during a snow removal job, you could be held responsible, even if the damage was unavoidable or accidental.
With clear terms and conditions, you can add stipulations about the scope of work that protect you from forgetful or negligent clients. This lets you decide if and when you want to cover certain types of damage.
6. Streamline your workflow
Considering terms and conditions forces you to think about the standard operating procedures and processes you want to put in place. Like which payment methods you accept, how long you have after a snowfall to clear a property, and what your services do (and don’t) cover.
This will help you to outline terms and conditions that fit your unique requirements and customers.
Then, once you have a solid plan for how you want your business to run, use field service management software like Jobber to offer online booking, customize quotes, automate invoicing, and process payments.