'Can you do a contract for Sam, starts Monday'
The email arrives on a Thursday afternoon. The client has hired a warehouse supervisor. It includes a name, a salary and 'same as the last one'. Your consultant finds the last contract for that client, which was for a part-time admin role, and starts editing: hours, place of work, probation, notice, overtime, the bonus clause that does not apply. Then emails back to ask about the start date, the reporting line and whether the role is on the shift pattern.
By the time the answers arrive it is Monday. The contract goes out late and the consultant is quietly worried they missed a clause from the admin role.
Why this keeps happening
Contracts are built by copying the nearest previous example, so every error or client-specific oddity travels forward. Clients do not know what information you need, so they send some of it. And the details that differ between roles, such as hours, shift patterns, commission, company vehicles or remote working, are not captured anywhere structured.
There is also no single place that says what each client's normal terms are. The consultant who set the client up knows that their holiday year runs from April and that managers get an extra day after five years. Anyone else has to work it out from old contracts, which is exactly how mistakes travel.
What the manual route costs
| Problem | Effect |
|---|---|
| Copying the last contract | Clauses for the wrong role carried over |
| Missing details | Two or three rounds of email per contract |
| No link to the client's standard terms | Notice or holiday differs from their handbook |
| Late contracts | New starters begin without paperwork |
| Consultant time on assembly | Less time for advice clients actually value |
It also makes the work hard to price. Some contracts take ten minutes and some take a morning, and the difference is mostly admin.
How we build contract generation
- Your advisers' approved contract templates are turned into structured templates with fields and optional clauses, for example part-time, fixed-term, shift work, commission or company car.
- Each client's standard terms are stored once: holiday entitlement, sick pay, pension provider, notice periods, place of work and the handbook version they use.
- Clients request a contract through a short web form that asks only relevant questions. Choosing 'fixed-term' asks for an end date, choosing 'commission' asks for the scheme.
- Answers are checked against the client's standard terms, and anything unusual, such as notice below the client's norm, is flagged for the consultant.
- A draft contract and offer letter are generated in the client's branding and sent to the consultant's review queue.
- Once approved, the documents go to the client or directly to the new starter for e-signature through a tool such as DocuSign or Adobe Acrobat Sign, and the signed copy is filed.
- New starter details can be passed on to the client's HR system, such as BreatheHR or BambooHR, if you manage that for them.
Legal wording stays in the templates your advisers control. The system chooses between approved clauses based on answers. It never writes clause text.
What changes for the team
Requests arrive complete, so the email tennis stops. Consultants review a draft rather than hunting for an old contract. Clients get their paperwork sooner and can see its status. And because every contract comes from the current template, a clause update reaches every new contract from that day on.
Recognise any of these?
- Contracts start from 'the last one we did for this client'.
- Requests arrive without the details you need.
- You have found a clause from the wrong role in a signed contract.
- New starters sometimes begin before their contract is issued.
- Contract work is hard to price because the admin varies so much.