Designing Contracts

Designing contracts allows you to fully customize the appearance and content of your documents, making them more tailored to your institution’s needs. By adjusting sections, adding fields, and setting up signature options, you can ensure that each contract is clear, professional, and easy to complete. This guide will walk you through every step, from initial design to final review, so you’ll have a contract template that works perfectly for both staff and students.

To get started, go to Home / Contracts, click the Contract title or Edit icon, then scroll down or select Design in the right-side menu.

Watch this step-by-step tutorial to see how to create, customize, and manage your contract’s sections and content.

When designing a contract, you have the option to add various sections, each serving a specific purpose. By default, four sections are created: Student Info, Fees, Payment Plan, and Signatures.

You must have at least one Signature Section for each contract. The Fees and Payment Plan Sections can be deleted if they’re not necessary. Additionally, you can add as many General Sections, PDF Document Sections, and Signature Sections as needed to customize the contract further.

Below, we’ll go over each type of section in detail and explain the customization options available to you.

General Sections are flexible sections that allow you to add a variety of fields to your contract. These sections can be customized to include any number of fields such as text, dates, checkboxes, and more, depending on your needs.

By default, ampEducator creates a General Section named Student Info. This is simply a General Section that has been customized for most institutions, as it's common for contracts to start with student-related information.

You can expand the section by clicking on the title to view more options. To edit the section details, press the edit icon next to it. To add or modify fields within the section, click the 'New Field' button once the section is expanded.

When you expand a General Section by clicking on its name, you can add new fields to the contract by clicking the 'New Field' button. There are several field types available, which can be selected from the dropdown menu.

You can add new fields or edit existing ones. Below are the field types you can choose from:

Note: The Input fields are for staff to fill out before the contract is sent to the student, while the Student fields are for students to complete when signing the contract.

As you select each field type, the available options will change. For example, when selecting Display Student Info, you'll be prompted to choose which student fields you want to display, such as name, address, and contact details.

This will add Student Info field placeholders, which will automatically display the student information from their profile when you add the contract to their file. If you need to edit the fields, change their column placement, or adjust their order within the section, you can use the icons next to each field.

The Fees Section allows you to add any applicable fees to the contract. You can only include one Fees Section per contract, but it can be deleted if it's not relevant to your contract.

To manually add a fee, click the + icon. This will add a fee to the list. You can choose from four default accounts: Tuition, Registration Fees, Materials, or Other. If applicable, you can also select and apply any configured taxes from the dropdown menu. After entering the details, be sure to click the green checkmark to save the fee before moving on.

Alternatively, click the down arrow icon to choose from your preconfigured fees, which include session fees, program fees, course fees, and any other custom fees you’ve set up.

Regardless of which method you choose, you can add multiple fees to the contract. This flexibility ensures you can tailor the fee structure to suit the specific needs of each contract.

The Payment Plan Section allows you to add payment details to the contract. Similar to the Fees Section, only one Payment Plan Section can be included per contract. If the payment plan isn’t needed, you can delete the section.

To create a payment plan, click the + icon to add a payment plan item. For each item, simply enter the due date, description and the amount. You can add as many payment plan items as necessary to accommodate the full payment schedule.

Every contract must include at least one Signature Section, but you can add as many as needed.

In the Signature Section, you'll first select the Signature Recipients. You can choose from Student & Staff, Student, Staff, or Third Party. If you'd like to include the date the contract is generated, simply check the Show Current Date box. This will automatically insert the generation date into the contract.

If you include Staff as a signature recipient, you'll be asked to choose the User Signature Type. You can select Set Per Contract or Fixed Signature. If you choose Fixed Signature, the contract will be automatically signed by the school using the staff member’s signature image. Additional fields will appear where you can enter the User Signature Name, User Signature Title, and the ability to Upload New Signature.

You can add as many PDF Document Sections as needed to your contract. These sections allow you to attach existing PDF documents for review, making it easy to reference documents within the contract.

To attach a PDF, simply expand the PDF Document Section by clicking on the title, select the PDF you want to include, and then press Upload New File to attach it to the contract.

For each section, you can press the edit icon next to it to change the section title, and decide if you want the section to be on a new page, hide the section title, or add a separator to divide sections.

In addition to the default sections, you can easily add new sections to your contract to meet your specific needs. To add a new section, simply click the New Section button in the Design area. From there, you can choose the type of section you’d like to add, including General, PDF Document, or Signature.

Each new section will be added to the contract, and you can further customize it by expanding the section and adjusting the available options.

If you need to change the order of the sections in your contract, it’s easy to do so. Simply click on the up and down arrows next to each section to move it up or down in the order.

This flexibility allows you to organize your contract in the most logical way, ensuring that sections appear in the desired sequence when the contract is finalized.

If you need to remove a section from your contract, you can do so easily by clicking the X icon next to the section. Please be sure that you want to delete the section, as this action cannot be undone once confirmed.