Building Contract Templates

Building Contract Templates

Your default contract template is a good starting point, but every rental operation has its own wording, policies, and quirks. Custom templates let you codify those once and stop copy-pasting forever.

Where templates live

Go to Settings > Contracts. You will see two sections:

• Default template — the one TrailerBase ships with. You can use it as-is, duplicate it as a starting point, or replace it with your own.
• Custom templates — any templates you or your team have created.

Each template has a name, a short description, and a "use for" tag (like "standard", "long-term", "commercial") so your team knows which to pick when.

The rich text editor

Clicking a template opens a full rich-text editor with the formatting controls you expect — headings, bold, italic, lists, tables, indentation, page breaks. Under the hood, contracts render to print-quality PDF, so anything you format on screen prints exactly the same.

Useful editor habits:

• Headings for section breaks. "1. Parties," "2. Trailer," "3. Payment," etc. They double as anchor links on the signing page.
• Page breaks before signature. Keep the signature block on its own page for clean printing.
• Tables for pricing summaries. Renters scan tables faster than paragraphs.

Merge tags via cursor menu

Type {{ anywhere in the editor and a menu pops up with every available merge tag, grouped by category (Renter, Trailer, Rental, Business). Click the one you want and it drops into place.

You do not have to memorize tag names — the menu knows them all. See the dedicated Merge Tags for Contracts article for the complete reference.

If a merge tag references something that does not exist (say {{renter.company}} on a renter with no company), the contract falls back to a blank rather than printing the literal tag text.

Save as new version

This is the part that matters most: when you save a change to a template, you can pick Save as new version or Overwrite.

Save as new version (recommended) creates a new version of the template. Any contracts that were already signed under the old version remain bound to the old version forever — their PDFs and their audit trail all reference version N, so the paperwork you have archived is stable.

Overwrite replaces the current version in place. This is fine for typo fixes but dangerous for meaningful clause changes. A good rule: if the change could affect the legal interpretation of what was signed, save as new version.

Every version has a timestamp and an "edited by" attribution so you can audit who changed what.

Managing multiple templates

Common setups:

• Standard — your everyday rental agreement.
• Long-term — 30+ day rentals, with different payment and cancellation terms.
• Commercial / DOT — rentals to companies with commercial drivers, adding DOT inspection and authorization language.
• Seasonal — winter or high-season language if you operate in a climate that matters.

You can mark any template Default — that is the one pre-selected when you click New Contract on a reservation.

Keep your legal team in the loop

Templates are legal documents. If you make significant edits, run them by an attorney familiar with rental law in your jurisdiction. TrailerBase handles the tech and the e-signature compliance; you own the language.