Create a contract draft from scratch or an existing template
Creating a contract draft accessible to your company requires specific permissions. To create a draft directly in a shared contract space, you must be the creator of the space or have permissions to "Manage contracts" within that specific source contract space.
Choose the contract draft’s location
To understand how to create a contract draft and where to create new drafts to best fit your workflow, you can choose from several locations based on your contract management needs.
Navigate to private contract views, like the default My contracts view, to create new drafts for personal uses.
Navigate to a company-wide type of contract view, like the default All contracts view, to create drafts visible to the whole company. All company users with enabled permissions to "Manage all contracts" in the company will be able to see, edit, and send the new draft for signatures.
Navigate to a specific contract space to create a draft directly within it. You must be the creator of the space or have the required “Manage contracts” shared access to the space in order to use this option.
Start a new contract draft
Once you have decided on the location, you can create your new draft from scratch or use an existing template.
Click the Contracts tab from the main navigation menu at the top of the screen.
Select your preferred contract view or contract space from the left-hand sidebar.
Click the blue Create and sign button located in the top right corner. If you are inside an empty contract space, you can also use the direct button located in the center of the page to start adding drafts in there.
Select Create a draft from the dropdown menu to start the creation process.
Choose a template or start from scratch
After initiating a new draft, a window will appear allowing you to select your starting point. You can navigate through the available sidebar options to locate the right template for your new contract draft.
Use the left-hand sidebar to choose the source location of your template:
Select My templates to access your private templates.
Select Shared templates to find specific templates shared across your company within shared template spaces.
Select Contractbook library to browse our collection of professional, pre-made templates.
Click on the name of the specific template from the list to generate a draft based on its contents.
You can also review the template first by hovering over its title in the selected list and clicking on the Preview button.
Alternatively, click the Create a blank draft option at the top of the window to start entirely from scratch.
If you need to learn more about setting up your templates, read our complete guide on building and managing templates.
Edit and review your contract draft
Once your draft opens, you can use the advanced editor to format the text, add images, tables, attachments, data fields, message to recipients, parties and signees.
Modify the body of your contract draft using the formatting toolbar.
Click the green Review and sign button in the top right corner when you are ready to finalize the contract.
Clicking this button takes you to a dedicated contract review step where you can double-check contract details and set up the signing order.
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