Build a contract from an estimate

A contract is the paperwork behind the deal. In Dispatch Bros you build it from the estimate itself, so the work you quoted, the person you quoted it to and the price they agreed are carried across for you instead of being retyped — and you can do it while you are still preparing the estimate.

Prepare it with the estimate; the client meets it after approving

You add the contract whenever it suits you — while writing the estimate, after sending it, or once it is approved. What never changes is the client's side: on their link the contract appears after they approve the estimate. Approving belongs to the estimate; in the contract you only sign, and your client's signature fields stay locked until you have countersigned.

When you send a contract for signature, the send window lets you choose per person how the signing link travels — Email, Text, or both. On the contract's own page you can also Remind whoever's turn it is, or Copy signing link to paste anywhere — the link only unlocks according to the same rules (you first; an estimate's client after they approve).

The one thing a contract cannot attach to is a dead deal — a rejected or expired estimate refuses one; raise a fresh estimate first. On the create page the "Add contract" button also waits until you have picked a customer and added at least one line item, because those are what the contract fills itself in from.

Add it while you prepare the estimate

At the bottom of the create-estimate page, the Contract & Terms section is where the contract lives:

1. Pick your customer and add your line items, then click "Add contract".
2. A picker opens. Choose one of your saved templates, or "Build it from this estimate" to have the contract drafted for you — the scope of work as the estimate lists it, the agreed price (and deposit, if there is one), any terms already written below, and signature lines for you and your client.
3. Decide whether to include the estimate's line items. Untick the checkbox and the scope-of-work table stays out, so you can write the scope in your own words instead.
4. Click "Create contract". The estimate is saved first, then you land in the contract's editor with the finished wording in front of you — the client's name and details already filled in.

When you come back to edit the estimate later, the same section shows the attached contract with its status and an "Edit the contract" link.

Or add it from the estimate's page

The estimate's own page has a Contract card that does the same job: click "Add contract", choose "Build it from this estimate" or a saved template, review the two names, and click "Create and review the wording". You will see a banner reading "Building from" the estimate, as a reminder of where the details are coming from.

Edit the wording

Everything is editable before it goes out. Change a clause, add a paragraph, delete a section — this is the contract for this job, not a locked form.

Two buttons sit above the editor:

• "Insert a signature line" adds a place for someone to sign, initial, date or tick. It is added at the end; drag it up into the right part of the text.
• "Insert a detail from the estimate" drops in a placeholder such as the client's name or the total, which fills in when you save.

Click "Save changes" and the document is rebuilt. The confirmation tells you how many pages it came to and how many signature fields were placed.

Signature lines must sit on their own line

A signature line has to be on a line by itself. If one ends up in the middle of a sentence, saving will refuse and name the paragraph so you can fix it — it will never quietly put a signature box on top of your words.

Why the signature never lands in the wrong place

This is the part worth understanding, because it is what makes editing safe.

The signature lines are part of the text, not pinned to a spot on the page. Every time you save, Dispatch Bros rebuilds the document and works out where each line has ended up in the new layout. Add thirty lines of scope of work and the signature block moves down with them — possibly onto a later page — and the fields go with it.

Each field also carries a fingerprint of the exact document it was measured against. If those two ever stopped matching, the contract would refuse to send rather than guess.

Templates: write one first, or save one for next time

There are two ways to get a template, and both end up in the same list — the one the estimate's contract picker shows.

Write one directly. Go to Contracts → Templates and click "New template". You land in the template studio with a ready starter: your reusable wording with placeholders where the client's details, the scope of work and the totals go, plus signature lines for both of you. Keep the double-braced placeholders — they fill themselves in from each estimate the template is used on. A dynamic template can be reopened and edited there at any time with its Edit button.

Or upload your own PDF. On the same New template screen, choose "Upload a PDF" — a statutory contract form, your existing paperwork, any fixed document. You land in the field studio on that exact document: drag signature, date, initials and text boxes onto its pages, then click "Save as template". The words stay exactly as your PDF has them; the fields replay onto each new contract, and only the names change. One thing to know: a fixed PDF's blanks do not fill themselves from the estimate — whoever a text box is assigned to types into it at signing.

Or save a finished contract. Once a contract's wording is how you like it, click "Save as template" above the editor and give it a name. The customer-specific parts — the client's name and address, the scope of work, the totals — become placeholders again, while any wording you changed is kept exactly as you wrote it.

Either way, the next time you build a contract from an estimate, the template fills in with that job's details. The previous customer's information does not come across.

Your logo on the contract

The contract PDF's letterhead carries your business name and logo — and when the estimate is sent as a job source, the source's own name and logo, exactly like the estimate itself. The logo must be a PNG or JPG image; set it in Invoices → Settings (or per job source).

Moving the boxes by hand

If you want pixel control over where a field sits, use Lock the text? — the "Edit the wording" button becomes the drag-and-drop studio.

This is a one-way choice, and the app says so before you take it. Once the text is locked the wording is final. That restriction exists for a reason: if you could edit the text afterwards, rebuilding the document would shift the boxes you had just positioned by hand.

If you open the drag studio on a contract that is still edited as text, it will point you back with "Open the editor" rather than letting you place a field that the next save would discard.

English only, for now

The contract PDF is produced with fonts that cover English and standard Western characters. Curly quotes, dashes and accented letters are fine. Other alphabets and emoji are not — if you paste something that cannot be printed, saving tells you exactly which characters to remove instead of failing with an error you cannot act on.