Whether you’re starting your own business or already have one up and running, having the right legal framework in place will help to build business credibility and trust with your clients and customers and also hopefully avoid any time-consuming legal disputes in the future. Getting your legals in order means you can keep moving to focus on the things that you love and the things that you do best!
Here at Cherrypicka we have taken the guess work out of it and have set out below some of the essential documents that every business needs:
| What is it? | Why do I need it |
| Website Terms and Conditions | This document is the unsung hero of every website. It sets out the rules about how visitors to your website can or cannot use your website, prevent users from posting abusive comments or copying content. |
| Privacy Policy | Use it to tell customers, clients, visitors to your website and even employees, how you use, collect, store and share their personal information. It is best practice to have a Privacy Policy on your website regardless of whether your business is legally required to have one. |
| Client Terms | If you are running a business that deals with clients or customers it is important that you have legal terms that set out your trading terms including things such as payment terms, scope and changes to scope, the obligations of each party and liability (to name a few). E.g. if you are an interior designer you will need interior designer terms to send to your clients. If you are a landscaper you will need landscaper terms. If you are a cleaner, you will need cleaning terms! You get the picture! Your client terms should be unique to your industry to make sure you cover all of the important and relevant info. |
| Non-disclosure agreement (NDA) | Use it to protect your valuable ideas and commercially sensitive business information from misuse. For example, you are looking to engage a contractor to perform some work for your business but before you formally engage them you need to share sensitive business information about your business to enable them to provide you with a fee estimate or quote. Use a NDA to ensure that the contractor can only use that information for the purposes of preparing a quote. |
| Independent Contractor Agreement | Use it to appoint service providers and independent contractors, freelancers or consultants to help your business with a special project for times when you need “more hands on deck”. For example, you are bringing on a freelance designer to help you with some marketing materials. Or you are hiring a digital marketing agency to help grow your brand. Defines the key roles and responsibilities between your business and the contractor. |
| Employment Contracts | Use them when you hire casual, part time of full time employees to clearly set out the terms of the employment relationship. |
| Letter of Demand | While we hope you will never have to use this letter of demand, it may come in handy if you ever need to recover money from clients or customers who continue to fail to pay even though you have tried repeatedly through sending polite emails and making calls. This can be sent as a final step before formal recovery action. |