What each one is actually for
- The statement of work is per project: deliverables, dates, acceptance, price, revision rounds. It changes every time the work changes.
- The contract is per relationship: payment terms, who owns the work and when, confidentiality, how either side ends it, what happens in a dispute. It is signed once and mostly never reopened.
- A SOW without a contract has no answers when things go wrong. A contract without a SOW has no answers about what today's work even is.
- Big clients send you their contract to sign; your SOW then defines each piece of work underneath it. That order is normal and healthy.
What goes in the statement of work
- Deliverables in countable nouns: 'a five-page site', not 'a web presence'.
- Dates, per phase, including the client's own deadlines for inputs and approvals.
- Acceptance: what 'done' means, and how many days they have to review before it counts as accepted.
- Revision rounds by number, and what happens after them.
- The price, the payment schedule, and the change rule - every change gets a new line or a new SOW.
What goes in the contract
- Payment terms: the schedule, late-payment terms, and whether a deposit is refundable.
- Ownership: when the intellectual property transfers - usually on final payment, and saying so prevents the classic 'I own it because I thought of it' argument.
- Confidentiality, in both directions, in one sensible paragraph rather than five.
- A kill fee: if they cancel mid-project, work done is owed at the rate in the SOW.
- How disagreements get resolved, and which law applies. Two lines now can be worth everything later.
The honest order to set this up
- Sign one contract per client, before the first project, even with clients you like. Especially with clients you like.
- Write one SOW per project, from your template, with the numbers for that project.
- Keep them as separate documents, and reference the contract by name inside each SOW.
- When the work changes, change the SOW - not the memory of a phone call.
The free tool for this
There is no calculator that answers this one honestly, so here is the free set: eight calculators for rates, quotes, invoices, splits, prices and fees. They run in the page and send nothing anywhere.
If you would rather not build it yourself
Both templates - the SOW and the plain-words contract sections - ship inside the Proposal System, written to be signed rather than admired. Proposal System is $49. See it on the shop, and there is a plain page about it here: what it holds.
Questions people actually ask
Can one document be both?
It can be written as one file with two sections, and for small projects that is fine. What matters is that both jobs get done: the per-project answers and the per-relationship answers. A document that only prices the work has done half the job.
What if the client has their own contract?
Read it before signing, and look for three things: who owns the work and when, whether they can cancel without paying for work done, and any clause that lets them change scope without changing price. Ask about those three out loud; the answer tells you what the project will be like.
Read next
How to write a quote for freelance work, with the math shown, What belongs in a freelance proposal (and what never does), How to stop scope creep with one paragraph.