What contracts should a growing business have in place?

Growing businesses should prioritise contracts that protect governance, income, employment and key business relationships. Depending on the business structure and operations, these may include shareholder or partnership agreements, service agreements, employment contracts and supplier agreements. Seeking legal advice early helps reduce risk and prevent costly disputes as the business grows.

Governance is about the rules and processes you have in place to determine how decisions are made, who is accountable and what can be delegated. There are laws that set out rules for different business structures like companies, trusts, or partnerships.

Starting with strong foundations, if you have your governance documents are in order, it will make it so much easier to set up bank accounts, borrow money, and to resolve disputes between co-owners.

As soon as you want to borrow any money, set up an offset account or set up an overseas transaction account, you will need to supply copies of your company statement if set up as a company, and a Trust Deed if your business operates through a trust, with or without a corporate trustee. (If you have a trust and your accountant hasn’t explained your business structure to you, check out this video

If you’ve created a family partnership you might not have bothered with a partnership agreement (contract between the partners), but it will still be covered by legislation, and each partner in a partnership is 100% liable for the operations of the partnership, whether or not they are actively involved. For this reason, we strongly recommend all partnerships be covered by a Partnership Agreement either at the outset, or as soon as possible after starting.

Trust Deeds are contracts between the founder of the trust and the trustee to act in the interests of the beneficiaries. Trust Deeds have come under scrutiny as a result of the changes to trust law and the Australian Federal budget announcements in 2026, resulting in a lot of people seeking either amendment to their trust deeds, or change business structures.

For companies, a Board Charter will often set out how disputes can be resolved between directors, and a Shareholder Agreement is the contract between the company and each of its shareholders, and the shareholders between themselves. The Shareholder Agreement should address what will happen if a shareholder exits the company, whether voluntarily or otherwise.

Not all business owners realise that their insurance contracts are just one form of risk mitigation for their business and not the overall solution to every problem. Working with a good insurance broker can help you identify where the greatest risks are in your business and how to reduce those risks, including through the use of appropriate insurance. Often a way to reduce insurance premiums is to ensure you have robust contracts in place for delivery or your products or services.

Depending on your immediate business priorities, we will recommend that you get appropriate contracts in place to protect how you make money in your business first. Contracts that help protect how you make money include contracts with the people who supply essential products or services to you to enable you to make sales, and your service or supply contracts between you and your customer or client.

There are also a whole range of contracts for using other people to sell your products or services like contracts with distributors, resellers, sponsors, influencers, promoters, franchisees, licensees or other independent contractors. You might also go into a joint venture with another business, and if so, should have a contract for that relationship to avoid or at least actively manage, potential disputes.

If you are a service provider, we recommend getting your contract with your clients sorted out shortly after starting business, and reviewed every 12 months to 2 years to address changes in law and consumer expectations. Without a clear contract for services, you risk scope creep with each supply (doing more work than you are paid for) and disputes if your clients don’t pay.

If you sell products, having clear terms of supply, sales contracts and warranties in place, often in the terms and conditions of your website if you are selling through a website, can help significantly reduce disputes with customers. Have a look at eBay’s terms and conditions. There are pages and pages of them addressing every concern raised over the history of the platform. eBay has multiple terms and conditions because it serves two different customer sectors – sellers and buyers – and manages complaints between those sectors, as well as between eBay and those customers.

Employment is highly regulated in Australia and if you haven’t done it before can feel quite overwhelming. If you’re looking for guidance, grab our hiring checklist here.

Fundamentally, have in place an employment contract with every employee. Fair Work make some basic downloads available for free, which are better than no contract at all, and not as good as an employment contract tailored to your business.

Ideally, you should also have in place policies and procedures, particularly for health and safety. It is now mandatory for all businesses who engage employees to have in place a “Sexual Harassment Prevention Plan” and a risk assessment for the management of psychosocial safety.

If you are going to engage contractors, ensure that they are truly contractors and not likely to be deemed employees either according to Fair Work, or according to the ATO, each of which have slightly different tests. If engaging contractors, ensure you have strong contracts in place so that you can measure delivery of what you are paying for and resolve disputes quickly.

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