Contract compliance for contractors, construction teams, and builders, isn’t easy to navigate. Relying on old-fashioned paper contracts and manual processes can expose your team to countless risks.
Not only could you end up with documents missing crucial signatures or packed with ambiguous terms, but you may find it harder to enforce agreements and collect payments. Even worse, a poor contract management strategy could place your company in the path of legal disputes and fines.
As local regulations and federal regulations evolve, related to labor laws, building codes, and specific contract requirements, contractors need a new strategy to protect their companies, relationships with customers, and their reputations. That’s where a digital contract solution for contractors comes in, improving efficiency, security, and resilience.
The Legal Risks Contractors Face Without Proper Contracts
Similar to paper estimates and quotes, paper contracts are common in the contractor industry, but they’re far from the safest, or most efficient option. Traditional contract management methods frequently lead to costly disputes, and operational disruptions.
Countless companies still adhering to old-fashioned practices experience constant problems with:
- Misfiled documents: Physical contracts are easy to mis-file or use, particularly in the contracting space, where people are often moving between locations, or mailing contracts to clients for approval. When disputes arise, filing errors or lost contracts can hinder project timelines, and make it impossible to defend your position.
- No proof of signature: Getting signatures can be extremely time-consuming when you’re reliant on manual and paper-based processes. However, they’re also essential to proving you have the approval you need to complete a project. Misplaced or missing signatures can invalidate contracts, and leave you vulnerable to claims of breached terms.
- Ambiguous terms and errors: Creating endless contracts from scratch is time-consuming. It’s easy for contractors to make mistakes, or include ambiguous, or vague language that leads to misinterpretation. Ambiguity can create disputes over responsibilities, deadlines, and payment structures, complicating relationships and delaying project completion.
All of these issues make it extremely difficult for contractors to effectively enforce agreements, protect themselves when disagreements arise, and avoid legal vulnerabilities. Digitization is the key to streamlining contract management, improving accuracy, compliance, and customer experiences.
Mitigating Risks with a Digital Contract Solution for Contractors
A digital contract solution for contractors helps businesses of all sizes to side-step the risks and inefficiencies associated with traditional contract management. Tools like Hearth’s digital contract management system can improve the document management process, and accelerate approval workflows.
More importantly, they help to mitigate risks by:
- Creating an auditable trail of signed documents: Digital contracting systems automatically store and preserve all versions of an agreement and track changes throughout the project lifecycle. This audit trail is crucial to protecting your business when disputes arise.
- Ensuring contracts are legally binding: With integrated e-signature capabilities, digital contract solutions for contractors make it easy to collect legally-recognized signatures. This significantly improves your ability to defend yourself in court.
- Improving contract accessibility: By offering an all-in-one repository for contract and document management, digital contract solutions make it easy to retrieve and review documents. This reduces the risk of losing or misplacing essential paperwork.
- Enhancing contact clarity: With built-in templates that adapt to various different use cases, contractors can minimize the risks associated with ambiguous or vague contracts. They can ensure all documents include the right data to be legally enforceable.
- Enabling adaptability: A digital contracting solution allows users to rapidly update terms, clauses, and language based on changes in industry regulations. This ensures you can stay compliant with new standards as they evolve.
How Hearth’s Digital Contracting System Reduces Risk
Designed specifically for contractors, Hearth’s digital contracting solution simplifies compliance, and boosts efficiency for teams. With pre-built templates, dynamic system updates, and a host of valuable integrated tools, Hearth makes professional contracting easy.
With Hearth’s technology, contractors benefit from compliance-boosting features like:
Regularly Updated, Industry-Specific Legal Language
Local regulations in the contracting industry are constantly changing. Hearth’s digital contracting system is regularly updated with industry-specific legal language, mandates, clauses, and terms. Companies can ensure every contract includes the right local building codes, safety requirements, and payment terms to adhere to industry standards.
Plus, it only takes a few seconds to customize and send a contract from any device. Contractors can share contracts on the move, and even add financing options to every contract or quote.
Contract Creation Automation
Hearth’s system makes creating compliant contracts easier than ever. The technology can automatically generate professional contracts based on the specific project type and your chosen industry. Whether you’re issuing contracts for a roofing, HVAC, or building project, Hearth’s platform will intelligently customize each template to suit your needs.
These dynamic templates ensure every detail that needs to be included in a job-specific contact, from material specifications to warranties, is covered.
Integrated E-Signature Functionality
With traditional paper contracts, companies can spend weeks waiting for documents to be signed, returned, and filed. If a signature isn’t collected, this can render the entire contract void. With Hearth’s digital contract system, an integrated e-signature feature makes signature collection simple.
E-signatures are fully recognized as legally enforceable and valid in various regions of the world, protecting you from potential disputes. It’s also easier and quicker to collect signatures with a digital solution, reducing the time teams need to spend chasing down clients.
Automated Reminders and Tracking Features
Emerging contract deadlines, necessary client sign-offs, and legal stipulations can be easy to miss, particularly when you’re managing various fast-paced projects at once. Hearth’s digital contract solution includes tracking features and automated reminders to keep teams on tracks.
The system rapidly reminds team members when key actions, like obtaining approval from a client, need to be implemented. This can help to prevent costly delays, and reduce the risk of legal violations caused by missed deadlines.
Secure Document Storage and Easy Retrieval
Aside from making it easier to manage contracts and collect signatures, Hearth’s digital technology ensures companies have a centralized environment for storing all documentation. Rather than having to keep track of countless paper contracts and versions, contractors can store all essential files in one, convenient, cloud-based system.
The secure and centralized storage feature in Hearth’s system makes it simple for contractors to reference signed agreements and surface information when disputes arise. Plus, the in-built features make it easy to share documents and collaborate on contracts when necessary too.
Protect and Optimize your Business with Hearth’s Digital Contracts
Digitizing the contract process is one of the best ways to not only improve operational efficiency, but protect yourself from significant legal and compliance issues. Hearth’s digital contract solution for contractors ensures you can remain compliant with ever-changing regulations in your location and sector, and safeguard yourself against costly disputes.
With Hearth, contractors can rest assured that every agreement is backed by an auditable trail, and that each contract is tailored to the specific requirements of their industry. Plus, with a more efficient contracting system, you’ll benefit from greater consistency in contracts, simpler scalability, and time savings for your team members too.
Reach out to Hearth today to find out how our digital contract technology can help you avoid compliance issues, mitigate risks, improve efficiency, and enhance customer satisfaction.
