Hello again,
Today I would like to chat about contracts. Not an exciting subject, however, when you start a handyman business you will need to decide how you will handle giving people estimates. Will you use verbal agreements or more formal contracts?
I am not a lawyer and I am not giving you advise, however it has been our experience that going by a verbal agreement, no matter who the customer is, is not a good idea. Even if the job is small, doing work by verbal agreement can lead to big head aches. It only took one bad experience going on verbal agreement with a friend to realize not matter what, always put the main points of your job in writing. Even if it was a small job I always made sure that I would send a written agreement to the customer.
The problem with verbal agreements is that people have short memories. And if there is a problem with the job, that will really lead to head aches. Also if the job really got out of hand and one party wanted to take the other party to court, without something in writing it would be very hard to prove anything.
While you may not need a long, formal contract, you do need something. How much detail should you include? We will discuss this issue in the next post.
Until next time.