Most coaches sign their first ten clients on a Stripe link and a DM. It works until a client stops paying in month three and says you never told them there was a minimum term, or asks for four months back because they did not get the result they wanted. At that point you find out what your agreement says, which is nothing, because there isn't one.
What you actually need is not a document to copy. It is a clear list of the decisions your agreement has to make, so that when you have it drafted or reviewed you know what to ask for and you can tell whether the result covers your business.
Why this article does not hand you clauses
This is not legal advice, and nothing here is drafting you can lift into an agreement. Contract law and consumer law differ by country and by state — what a cancellation term or a liability limit is allowed to do in one place is unenforceable in another, and consumer protections routinely override whatever the parties wrote down. A clause copied off a blog is worth exactly nothing at the moment you need it, and worse than nothing if it lulls you into thinking you are covered.
So: have your agreement drafted or reviewed by a lawyer where you operate, before you use it with a client. What follows is the brief you take to them.
The cost objection is real and it is smaller than it looks. A solicitor reviewing a short, already-drafted service agreement is usually a one-off fee in the hundreds, not the thousands, and it is the same agreement for every client you sign for the next three years. Set that against one disputed four-month refund, or one chargeback you cannot answer because you have no written terms.
What a coaching agreement has to cover
Each row below is a decision. Skipping one does not mean the question goes away — it means it gets answered later, by whoever is more stubborn.
| Clause area | What it does | What goes wrong without it | Question for your lawyer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parties | Names who is bound — you or your company, and the client | You sign personally when you have a company, or a parent pays for a teenager nobody named | Should this be in my business name, and what do I need for a client under 18? |
| Services | Defines what the client is buying and, explicitly, what they are not | Every request becomes arguable — meal plans, calls, replies at 10pm | Is my inclusions list specific enough to defend, and how do I word the exclusions? |
| Term and renewal | Sets start date, minimum term, and how it rolls on | Client says they were on a month-to-month; you say twelve weeks | What notice do I need to give before an automatic renewal here? |
| Fees and payment | Amount, currency, billing date, method, what happens on failure | Failed cards drift for weeks and chasing them looks like a favour | Can I charge a late fee or suspend service, and does it need to be disclosed upfront? |
| Cancellation | How each side ends it, with how much notice | You cannot get out of a client you should never have taken | Does my notice period bind me the same way it binds them? |
| Refunds | What is refundable, when, and what is not | The default becomes whatever the client asks for | What can I legally exclude, and where do consumer guarantees override this? |
| Pausing | Whether a client can freeze, for how long, how often | Injuries and holidays turn into indefinite unpaid limbo | Is a pause a suspension of the term or an extension of it? |
| Scope of practice | States you coach exercise and nutrition, and do not diagnose or treat | Advice gets read as clinical, and you are outside your insurance | What language keeps me inside my scope and my insurer's cover? |
| Health and medical | Requires disclosure, clearance where needed, ongoing updates | You program around a condition the client never mentioned | Do I need medical clearance, and what does the disclosure have to say? |
| Liability | Sets the limits on what you are responsible for | Unlimited exposure to an outcome you did not control | Which limitations are enforceable here, and which are void? |
| Image consent | Permission for photos, results and testimonials, and how to withdraw it | You post a before-and-after and lose the client over it | Does consent have to be separate from the main agreement? |
| Data and privacy | What you collect, where it is held, how long you keep it | You hold health data with no stated basis | What do my privacy obligations require me to say here? |
| Disputes | Which law applies and how a disagreement gets resolved | Both sides argue about where to argue | Which jurisdiction should I name, and is mediation worth requiring first? |
Parties, services, and what you are not selling
The exclusions do more work than the inclusions. Anyone can list "individual programming, weekly check-ins, nutrition targets, direct messaging". The paragraph that saves you is the one that says what is not in the package — no video calls unless purchased, no rehabilitation programming, no same-day replies on weekends. If you have already written a sales page and a coaching sales script, your inclusions list should match them word for word. Anything you say on a discovery call and leave out of the agreement is the version the client will remember.
Get the parties right, too. If you trade through a company, the agreement should be between the company and the client, not between you and the client. Coaches sign personally by accident more often than they think.
Money: fees, timing and what happens when payment fails
Three things need to be unambiguous: the amount, the day it comes out, and what happens when it does not.
That third one is where agreements go quiet. Your terms should say how long a client has after a failed payment, whether access is suspended in the meantime, and whether anything is added. Whether you can charge a fee, and how it has to be disclosed, is a question for your lawyer — the answer varies by jurisdiction and by how the fee is framed. What is universally true is that suspending a service is far easier to justify when the agreement said in advance that it would happen. The practical side of chasing the money, without wrecking the relationship, is in how to handle late payments from coaching clients.
If you offer a discount for paying three or six months upfront, the agreement needs to say what happens to that discount if the client leaves halfway. Otherwise you are refunding at the discounted rate for months they used at full service.
Ending it: cancellation, refunds and pausing
Coaches write cancellation clauses that bind the client and forget to write themselves an exit. You need one. Clients who are abusive, who ignore every program, or who need care you are not qualified to give have to be able to leave your roster without you breaching your own terms — how to do that conversation well is a separate problem, covered in how to end a coaching relationship well.
Notice periods should be symmetrical unless you have a reason they are not. Thirty days from either side, in writing, is a common shape and easy for a client to accept.
Refunds are the clause most likely to be overridden by consumer law, which is precisely why you should not draft it yourself. Decide your commercial position — no refunds on time already coached, unused prepaid months refunded pro rata, that sort of thing — and hand that position to a lawyer to turn into something enforceable where you operate.
Pausing needs its own treatment because it is the request you will actually get. A client breaks a wrist or travels for six weeks. If your agreement does not say whether a pause suspends billing, extends the term, or has a cap on frequency, you will invent an answer under pressure and then be held to it by the next client who hears about it.
Scope, health disclosure and liability
These three sit together because they are the ones that matter when something physical goes wrong.
Scope of practice is a statement that you provide exercise and general nutrition coaching and do not diagnose, treat or prescribe. It is there partly for the client and largely for you — it is the line your insurer expects you to have drawn and stayed behind.
Health disclosure is an ongoing obligation, not a one-off. A client who develops a condition in month five is more dangerous to you than one who declared something at signup. Your onboarding client intake form collects the baseline; the agreement is what obliges them to keep it current.
Liability is where amateur drafting causes the most damage. A blanket clause disclaiming everything is often unenforceable, and an unenforceable clause can take the reasonable parts of the same paragraph down with it. Say what you want limited and let a lawyer tell you how far that goes where you are. Many coaches also run a separate signed waiver alongside the agreement — what a liability waiver covers and where it stops is a different document with a different job.
Image consent, data, and disputes
Testimonials and before-and-after photos are a marketing asset you can only use with permission, and permission is cleaner when it is specific: which images, on which channels, and how the client withdraws it later. Some coaches keep this as a separate opt-in precisely so that a client who says no to photos is not saying no to the whole agreement.
Data deserves a plain paragraph. You are holding weights, measurements, photos and health history — sensitive information in most privacy regimes. Say what you collect, where it lives, who else can see it, and what happens to it when coaching ends.
Disputes is one short section naming the law that applies and the process before anyone escalates. It is cheap to include and expensive to leave out.
Getting it signed, and keeping the signed copy
An agreement nobody can find is close to no agreement at all. When a client disputes a charge nine months in, you need the signed version, dated, with the terms they actually agreed to — not the current version of your terms, which you have edited twice since.
If your onboarding already runs through a form, that is a reasonable place for it to live: Fitsly forms support consent agreements with a linked or embedded set of terms and a required tick, plus a signature question, and each submission stores the questions as they were when the client submitted them, so the record does not change when you update your template. See forms and check-ins for how that fits into onboarding. Whatever you use, the requirement is the same — a dated copy of the exact terms that client agreed to, retrievable in under a minute.
One last thing worth saying plainly: most coaches operate without a written agreement until something goes wrong, and then draft one in a hurry with the wrong incentives, aimed at the client who just burned them. Getting it done while nothing is on fire produces a better document and a much shorter argument later.
