Contract templates

Contract templates (/admin/contract-templates)

The tenancy agreement a resident signs is written here, as a template: a document with fields that fill in from the reservation (names, rent, dates), optional conditional sections, and the signature blocks where each party signs. Open it from the Settings hub, under Guest communication → Contract templates.

Nothing is sent from these templates yet. You can write templates, preview them against real reservations and keep drafts. Publishing is limited to platform staff until signing in the app is switched on for your workspace. Until then, contracts go out exactly as they do today.

The list

Each row shows a template's language, its scope, its latest published version, and whether the draft has changed since. + Filter narrows the list by Language or Status (Published, Unpublished changes, Never published, Archived). + New template opens an empty contract straight away: paste or type it first, and name it when you save.

Deleting a template that was never published removes it. A published template is archived instead: new contracts stop using it, and its versions are kept, because issued contracts refer to them.

SignNow's own page has not moved: its connection test, its webhook and its template browser are under Settings → Integrations → SignNow, and stay there until signing in the app replaces SignNow. Once your workspace has a SignNow template ID set (under Settings → Client settings → Contracts), this list also shows SignNow settings, which opens that page, and Import from SignNow, which turns one of its templates into a new draft. The text comes across with a field wherever SignNow had one. Positions are approximate, so read the result line by line.

The three steps

A template is written in three steps, shown under its title:

1. Contract. The text and its fields, together. Fields are part of the text, so editing a sentence never moves a field out of place.
2. Save. For a new contract, this is where you name it and choose its language. After that, every change saves on its own.
3. Properties. Which buildings use it, plus the page and signing settings.

Version history sits to the right of the steps once the template has been published. Rename and Publish… are at the top right.

Which template a contract uses

When several published templates fit a reservation, the most specific wins. A template limited to named buildings beats one limited by property type. To word part of a contract differently for some buildings, keep one template and use a Building is condition (see Conditions). Priority only decides between templates limited in the same way. Publishing warns you when two templates would still tie.

Writing the contract

The Contract step shows the field panel on the left and the contract on the right. On a narrow screen the panel opens from the toolbar's Fields & blocks button. Edit | Preview above the contract switches to the preview.

Start with the text: click in the page and paste it, type it, or use Import from Word. Then place the fields.

The field panel

The panel sorts everything by who fills it in, and each kind keeps its colour in the panel and in the contract:

Sections and groups open and close with a click, and the panel remembers them in your browser. Find a field, block or condition searches labels and descriptions ("surname" finds the family name) and opens every group with a hit.

Hover over anything in the panel, or over a field in the contract, to see what it is, where its value comes from and what it prints for the preview's sample resident.

Placing fields

• Blanks. Gaps the pasted text leaves for a value are highlighted: underscores (＿＿＿, ___), circles (○○○), short placeholders in brackets ([Tenant name]) and spaces before 年, 月, 日 or 円 (令和　　年　　月　　日). Drop a field on a highlighted blank and it replaces the blank. The bar above the contract counts the blanks left. Next blank selects the next one; then click a field to replace it.
• Fields. Drag one into the text, or click it to insert it at the cursor. With some text selected in one paragraph, clicking a field replaces that text. A field shows as a chip. Double-click the chip, or select it and press Edit selected, to set what it prints when the value is empty or to make it required. A required field that is empty stops the contract from being issued rather than printing a blank.
• The annex. The Annex group holds special_terms, the annex itself: the discount, the season rent schedule, additional fees and the temporary-room note, each only when it applies. Put it near the end, before the signatures. Annex reference prints one sentence pointing to it ("See Annex for additional terms.") and belongs in the rent clause. Both print nothing when there is nothing to disclose.
• Fees. Every active fee in your fee catalogue has fields for its amount and its label, under Rent & fees. If you later deactivate a fee, its fields show as unknown and block publishing until you remove them.
• Co-occupants. Under Occupants, choose Co-occupant 1, 2 and so on, then insert their fields. A field for a co-occupant the contract does not have prints nothing.
• Signature blocks. One per signer: the resident, the co-occupants (one block repeats for every co-occupant) and the legal representative. Choose the boxes it holds: signature, initials, name, date signed.
• Upload requests. A document the signer uploads while signing, such as an ID. It is not printed on the contract.
• Formatting. Headings, lists (including 第1条 numbering), tables, quotes, page breaks, bold, italic, underline and alignment are in the toolbar.
• Undo and Redo are the two arrows at the start of the toolbar (Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z; ⌘Z and ⇧⌘Z on a Mac). They take back anything done in the contract: typing, pasting, placing a field or block, adding or editing a condition, and changes saved from an Edit drawer.

Conditions

Click in a paragraph, or select several, then click Show only if… under Conditions. Choose what decides in the rows that open and press Wrap selection: that part prints only when the condition holds. The section shows its condition on its header. Press Edit there to change it or add more.

A condition is a set of rows, like a filter in a spreadsheet: Show this section if what to test, how, against what. For example:

• What to test is the property type, a building, one of the yes-or-no situations (people, situation, fees), or any field. Type to search.
• Building tests the building itself, not its name, so renaming a building (in English or Japanese) never changes which contracts print the section. For several buildings, add one row per building joined with or — or, for "none of these", rows of is not joined with and.
• How depends on the field. Amounts and counts compare with =, ≠, >, ≥, < and ≤, against what the contract prints. Dates compare with is before, is after, is on or before and is on or after. Text compares with is, is not, contains and does not contain, ignoring capitals and full-width letters. Every field can also be is empty or is not empty.
• Restoration fee already paid at the first booking holds only on an occupant-change amendment in a room whose restoration fee is charged on the first invoice, when that fee was paid at the first booking. The amendment does not charge it again: Has a restoration fee and Restoration fee charged upfront are then No and the restoration fee field prints nothing, so put a sentence such as "The restoration fee for this room was already paid at the first booking." under this condition. When the fee is still billed on the first booking's unpaid invoice, the amendment prints as it always did; when it was never billed, the amendment states it as deducted at move-out, over the whole stay.
• A field with no value fails every comparison, so is not and does not contain hold for it. Add an is not empty row to leave empty values out.
• + Add condition adds a row. The second row chooses and (every row must hold) or or (one is enough), and the rows after it follow.
• + Add condition group adds a box of rows that join the other way, for a test such as apartment and (rent over 100,000 or has co-occupants). A group cannot hold another group; for that, put one conditional section inside another.
• A section tests at most 10 conditions in at most 5 groups. Save names the first row that is not finished.

Select whole items of a numbered list to make articles conditional: a hidden article is left out and the ones after it renumber. Conditions nest at most three deep. To take a condition off, press Remove condition on the section's header. The editor will not delete, cut, type or paste over a selection that runs across a section's edge, because that would move text into or out of the condition. Select inside the section, outside it, or the whole section instead.

Pasting and importing

Pasting from Word or Google Docs keeps headings, lists, tables (with each cell's alignment) and basic formatting, and drops everything else. Text written as {{monthly_rent}} becomes the matching field when it is pasted or imported, even where Word has split it with spelling marks or formatting, and as you type its closing }}. Import from Word replaces the whole draft with a .docx file's content in the same way.

Saving

A new contract is not stored until you press Save…. That asks for a name and the contract language, which is pre-selected from the text, then opens Properties. Leaving before that asks you first.

After the first save, every change is saved as the draft a moment after you stop typing. The Save step reads Unsaved changes, Saving… or All changes saved; clicking it saves at once. Save and continue to properties under the contract does the same, then opens Properties.

If the template is saved from another tab, or by someone else, after you opened it, saving stops and a red banner offers Reload the latest draft. Your unsaved edits are not merged into theirs, so nothing of theirs is overwritten.

A draft is never used for a contract. Only a published version is.

Preview

Choose Preview above the contract. It is available once the contract has been saved. The preview shows the saved draft on an A4 page with the template's margins and the contract fonts, so lines wrap where they will in the PDF. In a narrow window the page is scaled down to fit. Preview it with the sample resident, choosing co-occupants, a legal representative and the property type, or with a real reservation in your workspace, found by name, reservation ID or room. Fields with no value for that resident are listed above the page. Open as PDF prints the same preview as a PDF, without the contract number and page footer an issued contract carries.

Properties

The Properties step decides which buildings use the template:

• All buildings, including ones added later. New buildings are covered without anyone remembering to add them.
• Only the buildings I choose. Tick them in the list. Search it, narrow it to apartments or sharehouses with + Filter → Type, or use Select all shown. Until you tick one, the template still applies to all buildings.

Each row shows what a new contract in the template's language at that building would be issued from:

• This template;
• another template, named;
• Tie: two templates fit equally well, so the contract fails until one has a higher priority or a narrower scope;
• No template: nothing fits, so the contract fails to issue.

The line above the list counts each. On a template that has never been published, the list shows what happens once it is.

Page and signing, below, holds:

• the page margins (the bottom margin holds the contract number, the page number and any initials, so it is at least 20 mm);
• the base font size;
• how many days a signing link stays valid;
• the signing order: one signer after another, or the resident first and then all co-occupants at once;
• which signers initial every page.

Once a template is published, changing its scope or archiving it changes at once which contracts it is used for, without a new version. That is also limited to platform staff until signing in the app is switched on. Such a change is refused if it would make two published templates fit the same contracts equally well, and every change is recorded with who made it.

Publishing and versions

Publish… runs every check first. It refuses a template that has any of these:

• an unknown field or condition;
• a field for an inactive fee;
• no signature box for the resident;
• no signature box for the co-occupants, or for a legal representative. To print one only when the contract has that person, put it in a "Has co-occupants" or "Has a legal representative" conditional section;
• a character the contract fonts cannot print.

It warns about weaker problems, such as another template that would tie with this one, or a landlord detail the contract prints that your workspace has not filled in yet. It also says which contracts the template will be used for (an archived template is used for none until it is made active again under Properties → Advanced), lists your workspace's other published templates, and asks for an optional note.

Publishing freezes the draft as a new version, which never changes, and contracts issued from it keep pointing at it. Version history lists every version with its note, who published it and when. Preview shows a version. Restore to draft copies it back into the draft, to edit and publish again.

Your company on the contract

Contracts name your company as the landlord, from Settings → Client settings → Branding → Legal identity: the legal entity name and the representative, in English and Japanese, and the real-estate licence number. Fill these in before you publish a template that prints them. Platform staff viewing all workspaces must first choose yours to edit them. See Settings.