Agreements every small business should have
Most small businesses don't need a legal department — they need five or six agreement types on hand, ready to send the moment a supplier, employee, or partner situation calls for one. Scrambling to draft an agreement from scratch when the need arises usually means the paperwork happens after the risk, not before, which is exactly backwards from how it should work.
Key agreements to keep ready
- Vendor agreement
- Service agreement
- Employment contract
- NDA
- Rental agreement
Why each one matters for a small business specifically
- Vendor agreement — sets pricing, delivery terms, and what happens if a supplier misses a deadline
- Service agreement — defines what a provider (you, or someone you hire) actually delivers, and at what cost
- Employment contract — covers pay, role, and termination terms for anyone joining the team
- NDA — protects business information shared with contractors, partners, or prospective hires before they're onboarded
- Rental agreement — covers equipment, space, or property the business leases or leases out
How to tell which one you need right now
A quick way to sort it out: if money is going to change hands before any work has started, you need a vendor or service agreement in place first — not a verbal understanding you'll formalize later. If someone is joining the business in any ongoing capacity, even part-time, that's an employment contract, regardless of how informal the arrangement feels at first. If a conversation is about to involve pricing, a customer list, a product roadmap, or anything else you wouldn't want repeated outside the room, that's the moment for an NDA — before the conversation, not after it's already happened.
What it costs to skip one
The pattern shows up the same way across small businesses. A supplier raises prices mid-order and there's nothing written down about notice periods, so the increase either gets absorbed or turns into a standoff. A contractor who helped set up an internal process leaves and starts consulting for a direct competitor, and there was never an NDA to point to. A new hire disputes their termination terms because pay and role were only ever discussed verbally. None of these are dramatic legal failures — they're the ordinary cost of not having the right one-page document ready when the moment called for it.
A practical way to get started
Rather than drafting all five at once, keep a free template for each ready and fill it in the first time a real situation calls for it. Save the completed version as your working template for next time — most small businesses only need to write each agreement type once, then reuse the structure repeatedly. Documents with two or fewer signers stay free to send; a flat $10 a month covers everything beyond that, with no per-signer pricing to track. Signers never need to create an account to open and sign, which matters most for the first document you ever send someone — it's the one most likely to stall if there's friction.
When an agreement needs more than two signatures
Some of these aren't strictly two-party. A rental agreement might need a co-signer; an employment contract might need sign-off from both the new hire and a manager before it's final. For those, an ordered signing sequence makes sure each person only sees the document after the person before them has signed, and a timestamped audit trail records exactly when it was delivered, opened, and signed by each party — useful if a termination or delivery dispute ever needs a paper trail to settle it.
Go deeper on the ones you'll use most
This page is meant as the starting checklist — for the agreements small businesses touch most often, a closer look at how to actually run them pays off. If client-facing work is where most of your paperwork happens, see how to structure the whole onboarding sequence. If suppliers are the bigger source of friction, the vendor agreement deep dive covers price-change clauses and delivery disputes directly. And if you're sending the same document on a repeating schedule — invoices, renewals, compliance forms — the recurring documents guide covers how to template and version them properly.
How to streamline client onboarding
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a lawyer to review all of these?
Not typically for standard versions of these agreements. A lawyer's review is worth the cost for anything involving significant dollar amounts, unusual terms, or regulatory exposure — but a standard vendor agreement or NDA rarely needs one.
Which agreement do most small businesses skip that they shouldn't?
The NDA, usually — it's easy to assume a conversation with a supplier or contractor is casual enough not to need one, right up until sensitive pricing or plans get shared in that same conversation.
What if an agreement needs to be signed by more than two people?
That's still supported — you can route it through an ordered signing sequence so each party signs in turn, or send it to everyone at once if the order doesn't matter. It only stops being free once a document has more than two signers.
Free templates for small businesses
Why teams start with Docracy
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Also: Compare e-sign pricing · Free mutual NDA template
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