When you are self-employed or a freelancer and enter into an agreement with a customer on the delivery of a service, you can use DM’s instructional standard contract as inspiration.
Consider the points that are mentioned in the following contract in relation to the service you are supposed to deliver. Write it over, or use it as is.
Remember that this is an instructional model for consultant and cooperation agreements. There can be elements that are irrelevant to your task, as well as some that will be relevant to agree upon in a given situation, which are not mentioned.
Contact DM at 38 15 66 00 or dm@dm.dk, if you are in doubt about any of the terms in the contracts.
1. Company’s name and address
2. The employee’s title, name and address, and CPR number
3. The nature of the work or assignment
The work or assignment should be described and specified in such a way, that there is no doubt later on about to what degree the task is completed and the contract thereby fulfilled. There can be, for example, an indication of qualitative as well as quantitative specifications, just as there can be provisions for reporting on the progress of the work, especially if it is a larger project, and finally approval of the finished product.
If it is such that the employee should participate in meetings during their work with the project, or conduct travel, etc., that should be stated.
It can be practical to agree upon how and in what form the finished product should be delivered.
4. The place where the work should occur
It is typical that the workplace is either assigned by the employer or that the employee carries out the work from their home or office—or both/and.
5. The time period when the work or assignment should occur
The work tasks can be agreed to be performed on certain days, weeks, or ahead of time in certain periods, with an indication of the numbers of hours the employment entails.
It can also be agreed upon, that the employee gets a certain amount of hours to perform the task and a deadline for when it should be delivered.
If it is a task that will be paid for with an overall fee, there will typically be in the contract a fixed time period for when the work begins and when it should be delivered.
6. Salary/fee
The amount of the agreed-upon salary per hour/day/week/month should be stated along with a provision for the point in time it will be paid out, for example the last weekday of the month or immediately after the completion of the work.
When the salary is agreed upon as a collected fee, it can either be agreed upon that the entire fee is paid out when the task is completed, or—especially in larger projects—that the fee is paid out continuously while the task is worked on, for example, monthly or after pre-agreed reporting.
7. Holiday pay
If it is salaried-work and there is an agreed upon salary per hour/day/month, the working conditions are included in the Holiday Act, and there should be a holiday compensation of 12.5% paid to the holiday account (Feriekonto). If the payment is agreed upon as a set fee, it should be agreed in the contract that on top of the fee, the company will pay the holiday compensation into the holiday account.
8. Cancellation of or changes in the contract
It is recommended that the conditions and circumstances under which the contract can either be cancelled or changed are agreed upon.
If there are not provisions for the termination of the contract, both parties will be tied to it, unless there is a significant violation from one of the parties. You can write into the contract what parties consider a serious violation, for example, missing payment of fees/salary, unsatisfactory reporting on the project, etc. Beyond that, it can be a good idea to describe what unforeseen incidents can dissolve (parts of) the contract (force majeure provisions).
If the contract is cancelled by the company without it being due to circumstances that the employee bears responsibility for, the company will be required to pay the salary or fee that is agreed upon.
9. Copyrights/further use of the product
A contract will typically include a provision that the right of use or copyright for the result of the work is transferred to the employer.
It is important to consider if there should be provisions in the contract about payment for further use of the product.
10. Coverage of expenses
It should be agreed upon which expenses in connection with the completion of the work should be covered by the employer—and to what degree. This can be, for example, photocopies, telephone or other communication expenses, transportation or hotel expenses, as well as other expenses related to travel.
11. Disputes
It can be practical to have provisions about in what way disputes related to the contract can be resolved.
A common formulation is:
Questions of doubt in relation to the interpretation of the contract and other disputes should attempt to be clarified by the parties.
If a solution cannot be determined, the dispute is decided by one of the Danish Institute of Arbitration’s established arbitration tribunals. The dispute is resolved in agreement with the applicable law and the use of “Rules for the treatment of cases by the Common Arbitration Tribunal in Denmark.” The Arbitration Tribunal’s decision is final and binding.
12. Signatures
Date and signature—company
Date and signature—the employee
