Contractor Contract Template: Three You Can Copy

Three documents you can copy below: a work agreement for going direct with an owner, a subcontract agreement for when you engage someone else, and a review checklist for the situation most trades are actually in.

Almost every guide to contractor contracts assumes you are the one writing it. Most of the time you are not. If you sub for a general contractor, you sign their paper, and the clauses in it decide whether the job makes money. The third document is for that.

These are starting points, not legal advice. Construction contract law is state law, some of the clauses below are limited or unenforceable in some states and perfectly fine in others, and the money at stake on a single commercial job is far more than an hour of a construction lawyer’s time. Use these to know what you are looking at, not to avoid getting advice.

A quote is not a contract, and the difference is the boring half

A quote says what you will do and what it costs. A contract says what happens when something goes differently – and something always goes differently.

• Who pays when a permit takes three weeks instead of three days
• What counts as extra work, and who decides
• When you get paid, and what happens when you do not
• What you are on the hook for if someone else damages your work
• How either side gets out, and what is owed at that point

None of that is in a quote, and all of it is where disputes live. The good news is that on residential work the contract can be short. The quotation and exclusions sheet already carry the scope and the price; the contract only has to carry the rest.

One thing worth knowing before you write your own: many states set mandatory content for residential contracts above a dollar threshold – things like a cancellation notice, licence number, or a specific disclosure in specific words. A template that omits a required clause is not just weaker, it can be unenforceable. Check what your state requires before you use anything on this page, including these.

If you are not sure which body sets those rules for you, NASCLA lists the contractor licensing agency for every state. The mandatory-content rules for residential contracts sit with them, and they are the difference between a contract that holds and one that does not.

Work agreement: direct for the owner

For work direct with a homeowner. Short on purpose – the scope lives in the attachments.

WORK AGREEMENT
Between [YOUR BUSINESS NAME], licence #__________
and [CLIENT NAME]  ("the owner")

Property: [full address]
Date: [date]        Agreement #: [number]

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1. THE WORK
The contractor will carry out the work described in the
attached quotation #________ dated ________ and the
attached exclusions and allowances sheet, both of which
form part of this agreement.

Anything not described in those documents is not included.

2. PRICE
Fixed price of $____________ plus applicable tax, subject
only to change orders signed by both parties.

3. PAYMENT
  On signing                    ___%    $__________
  On completion of ___________  ___%    $__________
  On completion of ___________  ___%    $__________
  On final sign-off             ___%    $__________

Each payment is due within ____ days of the invoice being
received. Amounts unpaid after that accrue interest at
____% per month, to the extent permitted by law.

4. START AND DURATION
Work will start on or about ____________ and take
approximately ____ working days, weather and inspections
permitting. Delays caused by the owner, by owner-supplied
material, or by authorities are added to that period.

5. CHANGES
No change to the work is authorised until a change order is
signed by both parties. Verbal instructions are not
authorisation.

6. PERMITS AND INSPECTIONS
[Contractor / Owner] will apply and pay for permits.
Inspections required by authorities are included / excluded.

7. INSURANCE
The contractor carries general liability insurance and,
where required, workers compensation. Certificates
available on request.

8. WARRANTY
The contractor warrants workmanship for ____ months from
completion. Materials carry the manufacturer's warranty
only. The warranty does not cover damage from misuse,
alteration by others, or normal wear.

9. SITE
The owner will provide access, power and water, and will
clear the work area of belongings before the start date.

10. TERMINATION
Either party may end this agreement in writing. The owner
pays for work completed and materials ordered to that date.

11. DISPUTES
The parties will attempt to resolve any dispute in good
faith before commencing proceedings. This agreement is
governed by the law of [state].

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Owner __________________________  Date ____________
Contractor ______________________  Date ____________

Attached:  quotation #______   exclusions sheet   change
order form

Clause 5 is the one that pays for itself. Verbal instructions are how a job grows twenty percent and gets paid for at the original price. The change order form is what clause 5 refers to.

Subcontract agreement: when you engage someone

The moment you put someone else on your job, their insurance, their licence and their mistakes become your exposure. This agreement exists to move that back where it belongs.

SUBCONTRACT AGREEMENT
Between [YOUR BUSINESS NAME], licence #__________
("the contractor") and [SUB NAME], licence #__________
("the subcontractor")

Project: [address]        Main contract #: [number]
Date: [date]

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1. SCOPE
The subcontractor will perform: [describe precisely - the
trades, the areas, what is and is not included]

Attached: drawings rev ____, specification section ______

2. PRICE AND PAYMENT
Fixed price $__________ / rate $______ per ______

Payment within ____ days of an approved invoice.
Invoices must be received by the ____ of the month to be
included in that month's run.

Retainage of ____% held, released ____ days after the
project reaches [milestone].

3. SCHEDULE
On site from ____________ to ____________.
The subcontractor will give ____ days notice of any delay
and will not leave the site without notice once started.

4. INSURANCE - REQUIRED BEFORE STARTING
  [ ] General liability, minimum $__________
  [ ] Workers compensation, or evidence of exemption
  [ ] Certificate naming the contractor as additional
      insured, received and on file
No one starts work before these are on file.

5. LICENCES
The subcontractor holds the licence required for this work
and will maintain it for the duration. A copy is attached.

6. CHANGES
No extra work is authorised without a signed change order.
Extra work performed without one is not payable.

7. QUALITY AND REWORK
Work not conforming to the drawings, specification or code
will be corrected at the subcontractor's cost, including
any consequential trades affected.

8. SITE CONDUCT
Site rules, hours, PPE, exclusion zones and clean-up
obligations apply. Rubbish generated is removed daily.

9. LIEN WAIVERS
Conditional waiver with each progress invoice,
unconditional on payment. Payment is not due until the
waiver for the prior period is received.

10. TERMINATION
The contractor may end this agreement on ____ days notice
for convenience, paying for work completed, or immediately
for failure to remedy a breach within ____ days of notice.

11. INDEPENDENCE
The subcontractor is an independent business, supplies its
own tools and labour, and is responsible for its own taxes
and personnel.

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Contractor ______________________  Date ____________
Subcontractor ___________________  Date ____________

Clause 4 is not paperwork. An uninsured sub who is hurt on your site can end up as your workers compensation claim, and an uninsured sub who damages something can end up as your liability claim. Certificates on file before anyone starts is the cheapest risk control in this trade – and it is the same test your own insurer will apply to you at audit, as covered in the payroll guide.

Reading a contract someone hands you

Here is the situation nobody writes for. A general contractor sends you a subcontract, it is eleven pages, you are due on site Monday, and you sign it because you want the work.

You are not going to redline it and they are not going to negotiate with a one-person outfit. What you can do is know what you agreed to, price accordingly, and identify the two or three clauses worth asking about – because contractors who ask sensible questions get taken seriously, and the terms you accept on the first job become the terms you are offered on the next.

READING A CONTRACT SOMEONE HANDS YOU
Project ____________________  Issued by __________________
Date received ______________  Response due ______________

Most trades never get to use their own template. If you sub
for a general contractor, you sign theirs. These are the
clauses that decide whether the job makes money.

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GETTING PAID
  [ ] PAY-IF-PAID  - does it say you are paid only IF the
      owner pays the GC? Enforceability varies by state.
      This is the single most expensive clause in the
      document. Ask about it before anything else.
  [ ] PAY-WHEN-PAID - paid within a "reasonable time" after
      the GC is. Shifts timing risk onto you.
  [ ] Retainage: what %, released when, on what trigger
  [ ] Invoice cut-off date - miss it and Net 30 is Net 55
  [ ] Lien rights: does the contract ask you to waive them
      in advance, and is that even allowed here?

TIME AND DELAY
  [ ] NO-DAMAGE-FOR-DELAY - can you claim costs when
      someone else delays you, or only extra days?
  [ ] Liquidated damages: how much per day, and are they
      capped?
  [ ] Who owns float in the schedule
  [ ] Notice periods for a delay claim - often very short,
      and missing one waives the claim entirely

RISK YOU ARE TAKING ON
  [ ] Indemnity: are you indemnifying them for THEIR
      negligence? Many states limit this. Read it twice.
  [ ] Insurance limits demanded - can you actually get
      them, and what will they cost?
  [ ] Additional insured, waiver of subrogation, primary
      and non-contributory - your broker needs to see this
      clause, not just the certificate request
  [ ] FLOW-DOWN: does it bind you to a main contract you
      have not been shown? Ask for it.

SCOPE
  [ ] Is scope defined by drawings and specification, or by
      a phrase like "all work necessary to complete"?
  [ ] Who decides whether something is extra work
  [ ] Change order process, and whether verbal direction
      counts

GETTING OUT
  [ ] Termination for convenience - can they end it with no
      reason, and what do you get paid?
  [ ] Cure period before they can remove you
  [ ] Dispute process: negotiation, mediation, arbitration,
      and where it happens

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THREE THAT ARE WORTH A PHONE CALL TO A LAWYER

  1. Pay-if-paid
  2. Indemnity for the other party's negligence
  3. Flow-down to a contract you have not read

An hour of a construction lawyer's time, once, on your
first GC contract, is cheaper than any one of these going
wrong. And the terms you accept on the first job become
the terms you are offered on the next.

The clauses that cost the most

Four clauses do most of the damage, and they are rarely the ones people read carefully.

• Pay-if-paid. You are paid only if the owner pays the general contractor. It moves the owner’s credit risk onto you for work you have already done and materials you have already bought. Some states refuse to enforce it, some allow it if worded explicitly. Find out which yours is before you sign, not after a job goes bad.
• No-damage-for-delay. If someone else delays you, you get extra days but not extra money – so the standby time, the second mobilisation and the crew you kept available are yours to absorb.
• Broad indemnity. Agreeing to cover the other party for losses caused by their own negligence. Many states limit how far this can go, and many contracts are written as though they do not.
• Flow-down. A single sentence binding you to every obligation in a main contract you have never been shown. Ask for the main contract. If the answer is no, price the unknown.

The pattern across all four: they transfer someone else’s risk to the smallest party in the chain. That is what the clauses are for, and that is why they are standard.

What a template cannot do

A template gets you a document. It does not get you the four things that actually decide whether it holds up:

1. The state-mandated clauses. Residential contracts above a threshold often must contain specific notices in specific words. A generic template will not have yours.
2. Whether a clause is enforceable where you work. The same paragraph can be routine in one state and struck out in another.
3. Consistency with your other documents. If the contract says Net 30 and your invoice says due on receipt, the contract wins and your invoice is decoration.
4. The bit that applies to this job. Every job has one thing the template did not anticipate, and writing it in badly is worse than not writing it at all.

So: use a template as a checklist of what to cover, get it looked at once by someone qualified in your state, and then reuse the version they fixed. That is one bill, not a bill per job.

There is one blank a template genuinely cannot fill for you. Both agreements above open with [YOUR BUSINESS NAME], licence #____, and if the name in that blank is not a registered entity, the contract binds you personally — which is the opposite of what most people think they are getting when they sign as a business. Registering it yourself with your Secretary of State costs the state fee. If you would rather not deal with it, Bizee files the entity and bundles registered agent service with it, which matters for contracts specifically: the agent address is where a dispute notice legally has to land, and it should not be a job site. How long the included service runs depends on the package, so confirm it at checkout.

Change orders belong to the contract

A change order is not a separate courtesy document. It is an amendment to the contract, and it only works if the contract says so – which is why clause 5 exists in the agreement above.

Three things make one enforceable in practice: it describes the change, it states the price and any added days, and it is signed before the work happens. A change order signed at the end of the job is a request for money, not an agreement.

The full form, including the line about work requested verbally, is in the invoice template guide.

What to attach, and in what order

One agreement, and everything else attached to it. Order matters, because a well-drafted contract says which document wins when two disagree.

• The agreement – terms only, short
• The quotation or estimate – price and scope
• The exclusions and allowances sheet – what is not included
• Drawings and specification, with revision numbers and dates written down
• Change orders, numbered, as they are signed

Write the revision numbers in. “The drawings” is not a scope; “drawings rev C dated 14 September” is. Half of all scope disputes are two people looking at different revisions of the same page.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a written contract for a small job?
Many states require one above a dollar threshold, and the threshold is often lower than people assume. Below it, a signed quote plus an exclusions sheet covers most of what matters. Find out where your line is.

Can I just use a template I found online?
As a starting point, yes – including these. As a final document on a job worth real money, no. The state-specific content is the part templates get wrong, and it is the part that decides enforceability.

The GC will not negotiate. Is reading it pointless?
No. You are not reading to change it, you are reading to price it. A contract with pay-if-paid and no-damage-for-delay is a more expensive job to take than one without, and it should be quoted that way.

What if the client wants to use their own contract?
Read it with the same checklist. A homeowner’s contract is usually something they downloaded, which means it may be missing the clauses that protect them and contain ones that are unenforceable. That is not automatically good for you.

Is an email chain a contract?
Often, yes – which cuts both ways. It also means a casual “yeah go ahead” can be evidence of agreement to something you did not intend. Keep the agreement in one document and the emails about the weather.

Related guides

• Contractor estimate template – the quotation and the exclusions sheet this contract attaches
• Invoice template for contractors – progress billing, payment terms and the change order form
• Contractor payroll and the first hire – insurance and classification when you take someone on
• Going independent as a tradesperson – the order to do things in

When to pay a lawyer

Not for every job. Once, on the version you will reuse.

The moment that is clearly worth it: the first subcontract a general contractor hands you. That document sets the terms for the relationship, and a single hour spent understanding pay-if-paid, indemnity and flow-down before you sign is worth more than any template on this page.

After that, get your own agreement reviewed once and reuse it. Ask for a plain-language explanation of which clauses are mandatory in your state and which are yours to choose – that is the knowledge that keeps paying, and it does not go stale as fast as the document does.