Most jobs are still agreed on a quote and a handshake. That works right up until a customer remembers a different colour, a rotten lintel turns up on removal, or a deposit is disputed six weeks later. Here is what a contract should cover — and how to raise one in a click from a quote your customer has already accepted.
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Work found necessary but not quoted. Rotten timber, a failed lintel, plasterwork that disintegrates when the old frame comes out — none of it is visible at survey and all of it costs money. If the contract is silent, you are choosing between absorbing it and having an argument on site. The workable version: the price covers the listed specification only, and anything else is quoted separately and carried out only with written agreement. That protects the customer from surprise bills as much as it protects you, which is why it rarely gets pushed back on.
If the contract is concluded at the customer’s home or at a distance rather than at your premises, it is an off-premises or distance contract under the Consumer Contracts Regulations 2013. The customer gets a statutory right to cancel, and you have obligations beyond mentioning it — prescribed information on a durable medium, including a cancellation form. Get that wrong and the cancellation period can extend well beyond fourteen days. Made-to-measure goods are treated differently, which matters enormously in an industry where almost everything is bespoke.
Once the customer accepts the quote, a contract takes one click. The products, prices, sizes and timings are already known, so the document fills itself in, picks a clause set from the site address, and lands in the same brochure the customer already has open. They type their name to sign, it is timestamped, and it drops onto your project timeline. A signature is final — re-signing is refused rather than overwriting the record.
Unformed’s clause sets are a template that saves you typing the obvious terms. They have not been reviewed by a solicitor, and they are not legal advice. Every contract the app produces carries that disclaimer, and it cannot be switched off. Add your own terms, and have your solicitor check the wording before you rely on it — particularly the cancellation clause if you sign customers up in their homes.
Nothing in any contract displaces the Consumer Rights Act 2015: work must be carried out with reasonable care and skill, and goods must be as described and of satisfactory quality.
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