A contract is a record of what two parties agreed, written for the version of themselves that has forgotten. Most contract disputes are not bad faith — they are two people who genuinely remember the conversation differently.
This template covers the structure of a straightforward services agreement. It is a starting point for the drafting, not a substitute for advice.
Start with the parties, exactly
Use full legal names and registration numbers, not trading names. "Northwind" is not a party to anything; "Northwind Traders Pvt Ltd, CIN U51909KA2016PTC091822" is.
This is the most common defect in contracts drafted without a lawyer, and it is the one that causes the most trouble, because an agreement with a party that cannot be precisely identified is difficult to enforce against anyone.
The effective date is not the signature date
They are often different, and the contract should say which governs. Work that began before signature is extremely common in services relationships; if the effective date is earlier than the signatures, state it explicitly so the earlier work is covered.
Scope is where the money is
Vague scope is the leading cause of a relationship going wrong. Two techniques help more than careful wording:
Describe outcomes, not effort. "Provide warehousing, pick-and-pack fulfilment and last-mile dispatch across the Bengaluru metropolitan area" is checkable. "Provide logistics support" is not.
Put the detail in a schedule. Keep the body of the agreement about the legal relationship and put service levels, rates and deliverables into Schedule A and Schedule B. Schedules can be updated by agreement without reopening the whole contract, which is what you want when the commercial detail changes yearly and the legal frame does not.
Sections worth having
| Section | What it settles |
|---|---|
| Scope | What is being provided. |
| Fees and payment | How much, when, and what happens if late. |
| Term | How long, and whether it renews automatically. |
| Obligations | The standard each side is held to. |
| Termination | How either side exits, and with how much notice. |
| Confidentiality | Or a reference to a separate NDA. |
| Liability | Caps and exclusions. |
| Governing law | Which jurisdiction, and which courts. |
Termination deserves more thought than it gets
Every contract ends. The clause is written when both parties are optimistic and read when at least one is not.
Say how much notice, in writing, to which address. Say what survives — payment for work already done, confidentiality, and anything that by its nature should outlast the agreement. And say what happens to work in progress, data and materials, because that is what people actually argue about at the end.
Get it reviewed
This template gives you a structure and clean typography. It does not give you legal advice, and no template can — the clauses that matter most depend on your jurisdiction, your industry and what is actually at stake.
Use it to draft, then have it reviewed before it is signed. A lawyer reviewing a structured draft is a much smaller engagement than one drafting from scratch.