Each one is a finished contract, not an outline, tagged with the way of working it was written for and a plain note on who carries the warranty and when money is due. Pick one and you get your own copy to edit however you like. A preview shows it filled with sample numbers, so you read it the way a customer will. Post-frame and barndominiums, nobody else — so the shelf holds contracts for kit suppliers, turnkey pole barn builders and barndo design-build, not kitchen remodels.
Also called: contract templates · starting point contracts · contract presets · sample construction contract
A shelf of finished contracts, not outlines
Four complete agreements, each written for a different way of running a building business. Not clause fragments to assemble — whole documents you copy and make your own.
The builder means to sort the contract out properly, so he keeps using the one he inherited from a supplier eight years ago. It says he self-performs work he now subs out, and nobody notices until the sub damages something and the paperwork says the builder is on the hook.
Every builder already has a contract he's unhappy with — what he lacks is an afternoon to fix it. A finished document written for how he actually works turns 'one day I'll sort the contract out' into a job done this week.
Each one tagged with how you actually build
Material supplier and installation coordinator if you sell the kit and coordinate a third-party crew. General contractor, turnkey if you self-perform with your own employees. Design-build with subcontractors if you take the job from design through construction with mixed labour. Each card says who carries the warranty and when money is due.
Contract templates online are written for general construction and say nothing about post-frame, kits, or coordinated installers. The builder picks the closest one, edits the obvious bits, and leaves the liability language exactly as it was — which is the part that mattered.
A kit supplier and a turnkey builder carry different risks, and the contract should say so. Picking the one written for your way of working keeps you from quietly accepting liability for work you don't do.
Read the whole thing before you take it
Preview shows the entire contract filled with sample numbers, so you read it the way your customer will rather than as a template full of placeholders. Grid view for the summaries, list view when you know what you are looking for.
The builder picks a template from a name and a one-line description, uses it on a live job, and reads it properly for the first time when a customer asks about clause nine.
A builder can only judge a contract he can actually read. Previewing it filled with real numbers, the way the customer will see it, means you choose with confidence instead of discovering clause nine on a live job.
It becomes yours the moment you take it
Choosing one copies it into your account. Edit any word of it in the contract builder — blocks and clauses, facts picked by name, no codes to learn — and later changes to our library never reach back and alter what you have.
A platform updates its standard agreement, and every builder using it discovers their live contract wording changed without warning. Nobody signed off on the new text and several signed customers are now on a document nobody can reproduce.
Nobody wants their signed contracts to change because a software company edited a template. Copying on take means your wording is yours from the first click — and no update of ours can ever touch it.
The job's facts fill themselves in
The customer's legal name, the build site, the approved price, the payment stages and the lien notice for their state go into your contract as named fields — Project Name, Contract Price, Build Site — picked from a list rather than typed as codes, and they fill themselves in at signing from the approved estimate and their intake form.
The estimate says one figure and the contract says another because somebody typed it at the end of a long day. There is now a signed piece of paper for the wrong number and no good way to argue it.
The office shouldn't be retyping figures at the end of a long day. Tokens fill the names, address and money from the job, so the contract and the estimate can't disagree — and nobody has to argue about a typo.
The state clause follows the build site
Try itMissouri and Kansas carry their own statutory lien wording; elsewhere the agreement names the state and its lien rights generally. Taken from the build address on the form, not from where your office is.
The contract carries the notice for the state the builder lives in, on a job forty miles across the line. It is wrong in a way nobody reads until it matters.
A builder working across a state line shouldn't have to remember whose law applies. The site address picks the clause, so a whole category of mistake disappears without anyone thinking about it.
Mark the clauses they must initial
Switch on Ask the customer to initial this clause on any numbered clause and the agreement becomes a contract that takes initials per clause — and the server refuses the signature until every one is there.
A dispute turns on whether the customer was told about the allowance. The only evidence is one signature at the end of eleven pages, which proves the document existed and nothing else.
When a dispute turns on one clause, the builder needs proof it was read. Numbering the clauses in the template is what lets the signing page ask for an initial on each — turning a signature into evidence.
Saving makes a version, it does not overwrite
Try itEvery save is a new version. Contracts already signed keep the exact body they were signed on, frozen. You can also switch one job to a different template without touching anyone else's.
The builder improves his contract in March. In August a dispute arises over a job signed in January, and the only version anybody can produce is the current one — which is not the document that was signed.
When a lawyer asks what was agreed in January, you need January's words. Each save keeps a version, so improving your contract in March never erases what a customer actually signed.
A record that counsel actually looked at it
Mark a template reviewed by your attorney and it is an auditable record. Saving any change to the body resets it, so an edit made after review forces a re-review rather than quietly inheriting the old sign-off.
The contract was reviewed by a lawyer two years and nine edits ago. Everybody still refers to it as the reviewed contract, and nobody can say which parts of it counsel ever saw.
A builder should never believe a paragraph he added last week was checked by his lawyer. The review stamp resets the moment the wording changes, so 'reviewed' always means what it says.
Your crews sign a different document entirely
Try itThe acceptance agreement a crew lead signs when they take a project is its own template with its own placeholders — labour total, project name, today's date — kept well away from the customer-facing library.
Crew terms live in a Word file on the office computer, get printed when someone remembers, and are signed by about half the crews. Which crews accepted which terms is a question with no answer.
Sending a crew the customer's contract — or the other way round — is an embarrassment nobody needs. Keeping crew acceptances on their own shelf means the right people sign the right terms, and you can see which crews have.
And the customer reads it on their own page
Try itNo attachment, no portal login. The finished agreement sits on their project page with everything else, and stays there after signing.
The customer asks for a copy of what they signed, usually because a bank wants it. The builder searches sent mail, finds three attachments and cannot tell which was final.
Customers lose emailed PDFs; they don't lose a page they already bookmarked. Leaving the signed agreement on their own page means the bank's request in month eight is answered without a call to you.
- 1Open the library from your intake and contract settings.
- 2Read each card's business model badge and its paragraph on liability, warranty and payment shape.
- 3Hit preview to see the whole contract filled with sample values.
- 4Choose Use this template and a copy is saved as yours, set as the default for new jobs.
- 5Anything already signed keeps its own locked copy and is not touched.
Plenty of builders sell six-figure buildings on a quote and a handshake, or on a contract borrowed off the internet that was written for a remodeler. The wording that protects a kit supplier coordinating an independent crew is not the wording that protects a turnkey builder carrying his own workers' comp — and finding that out during a dispute is expensive. So the library ships real contracts, one per way of working, and every one of them says on its face that a lawyer in your state has to read it before you use it.
- Builders operating without any written agreement at all
- Using a turnkey GC contract while actually only supplying a kit and coordinating an installer (or vice versa)
- Not knowing what a contract for your liability profile should even contain
Three ways of working, three liability positions
Material supplier and installation coordinator — you sell the kit and line up an independent crew, the workmanship warranty comes up from the installer, materials are paid up front and labour in stages. Turnkey builder — you self-perform with your own people, carry your own liability and workers' comp, and warrant your own workmanship. Design-build with subs — you are the builder of record, your subs' warranties flow up to you, and their insurance is on file before anyone sets foot on site.
Your own contract, loaded as your starting point
Your verbatim legal text becomes a preset in your own library. You duplicate it per building type instead of retyping it.