Freelance contract template that prices the extra work.
Your contract probably bills extra work at your hourly rate and says nothing else about it. That one line is why a freelancer can absorb a quarter of a project fee without ever raising an invoice for it.
A freelance contract template is the document you fill in before a project starts, so the work, the fee, the dates and the rates for anything added later are written down while both sides still agree about them. The full version is printed further down this page with the figures already in place for a $13,400 six-week photography project, free to copy or take as a Word file or a PDF. Section 4 is the part almost every other template skips, because it puts a price beside each thing a client might reasonably ask for once the work is underway.
Go looking for one of these and you land in a strange place. Half the results are legal form builders that hide the actual document behind a signup flow, and the other half are articles listing clauses in the abstract without ever showing you a finished contract. Both leave you writing the awkward paragraphs yourself, on the evening you needed the contract sent, which is exactly when nobody writes them well. So the wording below is printed in full and the numbers are real ones.
What should a freelance contract include?
It has to survive the moment the relationship stops being friendly, which means saying who owns the work before it has been paid for, what happens if either side walks away mid-project, and what an extra round of revisions costs. Legal Templates folds the same ground into a shorter set of headings and puts indemnification in a clause of its own, while Freelancermap builds its version around must-have clauses and gives a kill fee a section to itself. The published lists don't agree with each other, and they don't need to. Where they all land in the same place is the easy half: who the parties are, what you're making, when it lands, what it costs, who owns it at the end, and two signatures.
Then there are the five parts that only matter once something has already gone wrong. Exclusions state the work you aren't doing, and say what it would cost to add it. The rate card puts a real number beside every addition anyone can see coming. Assumptions record the conditions the price was built on, so a client who sends product samples two weeks late can see for themselves why the delivery date moved. Acceptance defines finished and gives the client a fixed window to object before something counts as done. Then one clause names a single person, by email address, whose written yes is the only one that commits money.
Describing the work is the part most freelancers do badly and the easiest one to repair. Compare "product photography for the new range" against "forty-eight product shots on white, one angle each, plus twelve lifestyle scenes". The first is a description, and a description can be stretched by anyone who wants more of it. The second is something both of you can count in week six, which is the only quality that helps once somebody disagrees with you. We made the longer argument for countable nouns in what makes a deliverable billable.
Can you see a freelance contract with the numbers already in it?
Here it is in full, written out for a real-shaped project rather than left as empty brackets. Section 2 is the part you always replace, since it describes somebody else's photography job instead of your work. What carries over almost word for word is the machinery around it: the exclusions, the rate card, the acceptance rule, the named approver and the change-pricing paragraph, with your own numbers swapped in. Those rates are set for a project somewhere between eight and twenty thousand dollars, which is a reasonable place to start if you've never put a price on an exclusion before.
Project: [project name]
Reference: [ASH-01]
Date: [date]
1. PARTIES AND STATUS
1.1 Client: Ashcombe Cider Works, [address]. Client contact: [name, title, email].
1.2 Contractor: [your name or business name], [address, email].
1.3 I'm working as an independent contractor, not an employee. I use my own equipment, set my own hours, pay my own taxes and insurance, and I'm free to work for other clients while this project runs.
1.4 This document covers the work in section 2, the fee, the dates, the rates for anything added later and the way additions get approved. It replaces any scope described in earlier proposals, emails or calls.
2. WHAT I'M DELIVERING
2.1 Forty-eight product photographs on a white background, one angle per product, delivered as full-resolution files plus web-sized copies.
2.2 Twelve lifestyle scenes photographed on location at the Ashcombe premises, delivered in the same two sizes.
2.3 One round of retouching on every delivered image, covering color correction, dust and blemish removal and background cleanup.
2.4 One shared gallery containing every final file, kept online for twelve months from final delivery.
2.5 A written shot list agreed before the first session, listing all forty-eight products by name.
3. WHAT'S NOT INCLUDED
3.1 Models, stylists, props and prop hire aren't included. Ashcombe books and pays for these directly.
3.2 Studio hire isn't included. Product shots are photographed at my own studio, and lifestyle scenes at the Ashcombe premises.
3.3 Video, motion and animated content of any kind aren't included, and aren't priced in section 4.
3.4 Compositing, background replacement and any retouching beyond 2.3 aren't included, and are priced in section 4.
3.5 Products that arrive damaged, unlabeled or after the shoot dates in section 6 aren't covered by this fee. Reshooting them is priced in section 4.
4. RATE CARD
These rates apply to anything added after signature, and they hold for ninety days from the date above.
4.1 Additional product photograph, one angle on white: $180 each.
4.2 Additional lifestyle scene: $310 each.
4.3 Retouching round beyond the one included in 2.3: $45 per image.
4.4 Additional location day, up to eight hours including travel: $1,040 per day.
4.5 Reshoot of an image already delivered and accepted: $210 each.
4.6 Delivery of any addition inside three business days: the rate above plus 25%.
4.7 Anything with no line above: $95 per hour, quoted and accepted in writing before it starts.
5. WHAT I'M ASSUMING
5.1 All forty-eight products arrive at my studio at least five business days before the first session.
5.2 Ashcombe returns written feedback on each delivered batch within five business days.
5.3 The lifestyle location is available on the dates in section 6, with power and clear access.
5.4 If any of the above slips, the dates move by the length of the delay, and I'll tell you by how much before anything shifts.
6. DATES
Start: [date]. Final delivery: [date], being six weeks from signature.
Product photography sessions: weeks two and three. Lifestyle location day: week four.
Retouched product files delivered: end of week four. All remaining files delivered: end of week six.
7. WHEN SOMETHING IS ACCEPTED
Each batch in section 2 is accepted when Ashcombe confirms it in writing, or five business days after delivery if no written feedback has arrived by then. Anything requested after a batch is accepted is priced from section 4.
8. FEE AND PAYMENT
Total fee: $13,400 USD, fixed for the scope in section 2.
Forty-eight product photographs at $180 each: $8,640.
Twelve lifestyle scenes at $310 each: $3,720.
One location day: $1,040.
Payment: $4,690 (35%) on signature, $4,690 (35%) on delivery of the retouched product files, $4,020 (30%) on final delivery.
Invoices are payable within fourteen days. Overdue invoices carry interest of 1.5% per month. Work pauses on any invoice more than fourteen days overdue, and the dates move by the length of the pause.
9. WHO APPROVES EXTRA WORK
[Name, title, email] approves additions and costs on behalf of Ashcombe. I only photograph, and only invoice, work that this named person has accepted in writing.
10. HOW EXTRA WORK IS PRICED AND APPROVED
Either of us can propose a change to section 2 at any time. Where the request matches a line in section 4, I'll confirm that rate and the effect on the delivery date within one business day. Where it doesn't, I'll price it under 4.7 and reply within two business days with the cost, the hours behind it and the new date. Work on an addition starts once the person named in section 9 accepts it in writing, and nothing outside section 2 is photographed or invoiced without that written acceptance.
11. OWNERSHIP AND LICENSES
Ownership of the delivered images transfers to Ashcombe on payment in full, for unlimited use in Ashcombe's own marketing, packaging and retail listings. Until payment in full, the images stay mine and aren't licensed for any use. My raw files, presets and working methods stay mine. I keep the right to show the delivered images in my own portfolio unless section 12 says otherwise.
12. CONFIDENTIALITY
Product designs, recipes, launch dates and pricing shared with me stay confidential, and I won't publish or show any image before the launch date Ashcombe gives me in writing.
13. ENDING EARLY
Either of us can end this contract with fourteen days' written notice. The deposit in section 8 isn't refundable and covers the time already reserved. Ashcombe also pays for every item completed to that date at the rates in section 8, plus any addition accepted under section 10, and I hand over every file shot so far.
14. WHICH LAW APPLIES
This contract is governed by the law of [state or country]. If we disagree, we'll each put the problem in writing and talk within ten business days before either of us takes it further.
15. THE WHOLE AGREEMENT
This document, once signed by both of us, is the agreement for the work described in section 2. Changes to it are made by the process in section 10, and not by a call, an email or a message thread.
SIGNED
For Ashcombe Cider Works: ____________________ Date: __________
For [your name]: ____________________ Date: __________
Two things about it are easy to miss on a first read. Most of the word count sits in sections 3, 4, 7, 9 and 10, and the weighting is deliberate, because those are the sections you reread every time the project moves while the client reads them once and signs. The clause numbers matter nearly as much as the clauses, since a reply saying "that's 4.3, so it's $45 an image" closes a conversation that a paragraph of explanation would have kept open, and a client who can find 4.3 in ten seconds usually stops pushing.
The version above rolls the work and the commercial terms into one signed document, which is how most freelance and small-studio projects run. Take out the fee, the ownership transfer and the exit clause and you're left with a different document, published separately as a statement of work template filled in for a $27,400 video project. If you're wondering whether the proposal you already sent does any of this work, we untangled that in proposal vs contract.
How should the contract price work the client adds later?
With a per-item number written into the document, agreed before anyone is under pressure. Here's what that's worth on the Ashcombe project. In week four the seasonal range lands earlier than planned, and the client asks for fourteen more product shots and a second pass of retouching on twenty of the images already delivered. Both requests are on the rate card, so the reply is arithmetic: fourteen shots at the 4.1 rate of $180 comes to $2,520, twenty images at the 4.3 rate of $45 comes to $900, and the addition is $3,420 against a signed fee of $13,400.
Now price the same two requests under the clause most templates offer instead. Freelancermap's sample wording is "any additional work will be charged at a fixed rate of $85/hr", and its revisions example runs along the same lines, offering two free rounds and additional changes at an hourly rate. Legal Templates tells you to state a revision count and to "clarify if revisions will be billed separately and at what rate", without ever showing a rate. None of them says who has to approve the cost, or when, or what happens if nobody does.
So the week-four conversation becomes an estimate you have to produce on the spot, while you're mid-project and behind, opposite a client who is already treating the request as small, and almost nobody ends up billing for it at all. That's $3,420 absorbed on one project, which is 25.5% of the fee, and it disappears without ever appearing on an invoice or in any record of the job. The same arithmetic across a year is the subject of what scope creep actually costs, and the annual figure surprises most people who run the numbers for the first time.
There's a second effect that only shows up over several projects. When the rates are printed and signed, the uncomfortable part of the exchange already happened at kickoff, when nobody was under pressure and everyone felt good about the project. When they aren't printed, you invent a number under pressure, and it's nearly always low, because you're weighing it against the relationship rather than against your own costs.
What can a freelance contract actually settle on its own?
It settles what was agreed, which turns out to be most of what people argue about. The overwhelming majority of client disagreements never go near a lawyer. They're decided in a tense exchange of messages where one side can point at a dated document with a number in it and the other side can't, and the side holding the document usually ends the conversation in one reply. That's what sections 4, 7, 9 and 10 are for, and it's a modest claim rather than a grand one.
What the document can't do is decide a question it never covered, and since we build software rather than practice law, treat everything here as a starting draft and have a lawyer in your own jurisdiction read anything carrying real money. Section 14 deliberately leaves the governing law as a blank for you to fill, because the answer depends on where you and the client each are, and a template that guessed for you would be worse than one that asks.
The gap no clause fully closes is authority. If a marketing coordinator accepts a $3,420 addition and the owner later says nobody was allowed to commit that, the contract can show the acceptance and still leave you in an awkward conversation. Section 9 is the practical mitigation: name one email address at signature, accept written approvals only from it, and the problem mostly disappears before it starts. Holding to that rule once a project is actually moving is the part people drop, and it's the reason we build Docket, which sends each priced addition to the one named address and keeps the reply, the timestamp and the exact wording that was accepted. We wrote about the mechanics of making an approval stand up in the approval that holds up.
Do you need a separate scope of work as well?
Not for a one-off project the size of the one above. Section 2 does everything a scope of work would do, and splitting the same material across two documents for a six-week job mostly creates a chance for the two to disagree with each other. One signed contract, with the work inside it, is easier to write and much easier to point at later.
The split earns its keep once a client comes back a third time. At that point the sensible arrangement is one contract that stays signed, holding your status, ownership, confidentiality, payment terms and the change process, with a short scope document per project underneath it carrying only that project's deliverables, dates and fee. Renegotiating ownership every eight weeks is a waste of both sides' time, and the standing-agreement pattern is the same one large clients use, which we covered in statement of work vs contract. Whichever shape you pick, the exclusions still need prices attached, for the reasons set out in in scope vs out of scope.
Why the hourly-rate fallback is the most expensive line in the document
Because an hourly rate is a unit of measurement and not a price, so it moves the argument to a place where you always lose. Say "extra work is billed at $95 an hour" and the client's next question is how many hours, which you have to answer before you've done the work, in a conversation you didn't schedule, knowing that whatever number you say becomes the ceiling. Say "that's 4.1, $180 a shot, fourteen of them, $2,520, and it moves final delivery by four days" and there's nothing left to estimate, because the price was settled months ago by someone who wasn't in a hurry.
That's the entire difference between the contract above and almost every other one you'll be handed, and it comes down to a single clause. Keep 4.7 as the last resort it's meant to be, put a real per-item number on the five or six additions you can already predict from your own last three projects, and the week-four request stops being a negotiation. If you want the wording for the request itself once the rates exist, it's in the change request form template.
Frequently asked questions
What should a freelance contract template include?
Fifteen parts in the version on this page: the parties and your status as an independent contractor, countable deliverables, written exclusions, a rate card, the conditions you priced against, dates, an acceptance rule, the fee and its payment schedule, a named approver, a paragraph saying how extra work gets priced and accepted, ownership on payment in full, confidentiality, an exit clause, the law that applies, and signatures. The published clause lists disagree about the count, and the count matters far less than whether the rate card carries real numbers.
Can I write my own freelance contract, or do I need a lawyer?
People write their own every day, and for a small project it's usually how the work gets started at all. What you're writing down is a record of what both sides agreed to: the work, the fee, the dates, the rates for anything added later and the name of the person who can say yes. We aren't a law firm and this template isn't legal advice, so anything with real money or real risk attached deserves a lawyer in your own jurisdiction reading it before you send it.
What happens if the client asks for extra work halfway through?
That depends entirely on whether the contract already carries a price for it. In the version on this page, section 4 gives a per-item rate for every addition anyone can reasonably expect, and section 10 says the work starts once the named approver accepts the price in writing. So a request in week four becomes a one-line reply quoting a clause number rather than a negotiation you have to hold while you're already behind.
How much of a deposit should a freelance contract ask for?
The contract above asks for 35% on signature, which is a common shape for project work in the one-to-twenty-thousand-dollar range, with the rest split across a delivery milestone and final handover. The number matters less than what it's doing, which is covering the block of time you've set aside and turning the deposit into payment for work already completed if the project ends early. Set it against your own costs rather than against what feels polite to ask.
Does a freelance contract template need a separate scope of work?
Not for a single project of this size. The version on this page folds the work, the exclusions and the commercial terms into one signed document, which is how most freelance and small-studio engagements are handled. Splitting them makes sense once the same client keeps coming back, at which point the contract becomes the standing agreement and each new project gets its own short scope document underneath it.
Is a freelance contract template enough on its own for a large client?
A client with a legal department will normally send you their own paperwork instead, and the useful move is to read their version for the four things this one is careful about: whether extra work has a price, whether acceptance has a deadline, whether one named person can approve a cost, and whether ownership passes on payment or on delivery. Those four answers decide how the project goes far more than the length of the document does.