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If you sell services to clients or manage ongoing projects, professional documents like proposals, estimates, and contracts are part of establishing your working relationship and your fee. The documents you send to clients are among the first interactions they have with your business. It’s important for them to be professional, detailed, and reflect your brand , so you can turn leads into paying clients and earn their trust with clear agreements. On Squarespace, you can create and manage client documents that reflect your website style with project proposal templates, project estimate templates, and contracts.
Determine what kind of document you need
- Proposals: These give clients a high-level overview of your business and services. This introduction is your first opportunity to secure someone’s business.
- Estimates: An estimate outlines the services you will provide for a project and the associated costs.
- Contracts: This document outlines your terms of service and makes project expectations and deadlines official.
Creating client documents on Squarespace
To send documents to your leads or clients on Squarespace, you’ll need to create a project . The project is a central place to track documents, invoices, client information, and project milestones. You can create a document from any project’s dashboard.
Start any document with one of the document templates and replace the content to fit your business. Once you’ve picked the type of document you’d like to create, you can customize the layout, fonts, and colors. Create a custom design or apply your existing site styles to match your website’s look.
Create a project proposal
Your project proposal is a chance to sell a potential client on your services and get them excited about the prospect of working with you. It’s an opportunity to showcase your business and your services.
- A custom heading with the client’s name for personalization
- A brief description of your business
- Service packages to choose from with associated costs
- Next steps
- Testimonials from previous clients
- Images of previous work
- FAQs
- A proposal acceptance
When creating a proposal, think about the main priority or problem your client has and how you can solve it for them. Emphasize those services and the benefits so that the client feels understood and sees the value of working with you . For example, images of your previous work could showcase projects for past clients with similar goals.
Including an Acceptance step is optional. If you do include it and it’s accepted, it constitutes a formal agreement. If proposal acceptance is part of your workflow, make sure you’re clear with clients about what they’re agreeing to at this stage.
Create a project estimate
An estimate is a document outlining the services included in a project and the cost for each service. This gives your client a more detailed account of your pricing .
A project estimate should include:
- A custom heading with the client’s name or project name
- Details of the service package
- Cost breakdown of the selected package
- Add-ons that you offer
- Next steps for the client
- FAQs
- An estimate acceptance
We recommend including an Acceptance step in your estimate document, so you have a record of the specific services and pricing you and your clients agreed to at this stage. Some business owners combine proposal and estimate details into one document so that a lead can consider their pitch and the pricing breakdown together.
Generate and manage client contracts
A contract is usually the final step to kicking off a client project. The contract sets out the details of your services and the terms of your agreement. That includes legal language around liability and guidelines for terminating the contract.
We recommend working with a legal professional or legal service for advice on what your contract should include. Some common information in contracts are:
- Details of the project timeline and costs
- Terms of the agreement, including promised services
- Payment, refund, or cancellation terms
- A contract acceptance
Once you’ve sent a document to your client, you can track its status. You and your client will both get email notifications when the document is sent and accepted, and you’ll see its status in your project dashboard.
Benefits of managing client documents on Squarespace
Creating and managing client agreements in your Squarespace account can help you centralize your administrative work into one platform and keep your documents in line with your business branding. That way, you can work faster and don’t have to switch between tools or go searching for documents.
Squarespace’s client document templates can:
- Match your site styles. Matching the style you’ve already created on your website helps you quickly adopt a professional, consistent look.
- Customize your communication. When you’re ready to send a document to a client, you can personalize and send an email directly from your account.
- Simplify your workflow. You have the option to duplicate documents for quicker customization.
Once you send out a document, you can manage the rest of your project from your dashboard. Consider sending an invoice to collect a deposit or full payment or create upcoming project milestones to stay on top of important dates.
