Sending a contract

How to draft, send, and collect an e-signature on a contract — from inside Studiohaus, no DocuSign needed.

Contracts in Studiohaus are full design agreements (or change orders, or addenda) drafted, sent, signed, and stored inside the project they belong to. Your client gets an email with a link, signs in their browser, and you get a PDF you can download. No third-party tool, no extra fee.

📸 Caption: the project's Contracts tab showing the list of contracts and the contract-creation buttons.

Where contracts live

Each contract belongs to a project. Open the project, click the Contracts tab, and you have three ways to start one:

New contract — draft from scratch in the editor.
From template — start from one of your saved contract templates (you build these under Templates → Documents). Studiohaus doesn't hand you boilerplate legal language — the template is whatever you save — but once you've saved one, every future contract is two clicks away.
Import existing — already signed something off-platform? Attach the signed PDF so the record lives with the project. It lands as Signed, no signing step needed.

Drafting

The contract editor opens. You'll see:

A title field (e.g., "Design Services Agreement," "Change Order #2").
A rich-text editor for the body — paragraphs, headings, bold, italic, bulleted and numbered lists.
A Save button (saves a draft without sending).

A few practical notes on the body:

Your contract language is your own, and is probably worth a lawyer's eyes — especially for new firms or unusual terms. Many studios paste from a .docx they've relied on for years; the editor keeps headings, lists, and basic styles and strips the rest.
For the variable bits (client name, project name, fee amount), type them in directly — there's no merge-tag system, so read the draft once before you send.

You can edit a draft as many times as you like before sending.

Sending

When the contract is ready for signature, click Send. You'll get a small set of options:

Leave Email the link checked and Studiohaus emails the client a link to the signing page, with your studio's name on it.
Or uncheck it and copy the sign link to send however you like — text, your own email, a client portal message.

Either way:

The contract gets a unique 64-character token and a signing URL that works in any browser, on any device — no Studiohaus login required.
The status changes to Sent.

📸 Caption: the Send options with the "Email the link" checkbox and the copy-sign-link button.

What the client sees

The client opens the link and lands on a clean, single-page signing view:

The full contract text, read-only.
A field to type their full legal name — a signature preview renders as they type, so they see exactly what will land on the PDF.
A checkbox confirming they've read the contract and are authorized to sign.
A Sign contract button, which stays disabled until the name and checkbox are both filled in.

Once they sign, the page confirms it and they can download a PDF immediately. On your side, the signature appears on the contract — with a timestamp and the IP it was signed from — and the status flips to Signed.

📸 Caption: the public signing page showing the contract body, the name field with live signature preview, the agreement checkbox, and the Sign contract button.

After it's signed

Signed contracts become read-only. From your end:

Download PDF — for your records, the client's accountant, whoever needs it.
The signature, signing time, and IP are preserved on the contract record permanently.
The project activity log notes that the contract was signed.

A note on legal weight

Electronic signatures are recognized in the US under the ESIGN Act and in the EU under eIDAS — a typed name plus a click-to-sign on a unique link is enforceable for most design work. That said:

This isn't legal advice.
Some jurisdictions and some agreements (real estate, wills, certain regulated industries) still require wet signatures.
For high-value or unusually complex projects, your attorney is the right person to ask.

Re-sending and voiding

If a client says the email never arrived, or you need it to go to a different address, open the contract and Send it again (or copy the sign link and send it yourself). The link stays valid until the contract is signed or voided.

If you sent the wrong contract, Void it from the contracts list. Voiding kills the sign link immediately and is irreversible — the contract can't be sent again — so start a fresh one in its place.