Terms of business
Terms of business are the contract between an agency and its client. They set the fee and what it is calculated on, what counts as an introduction, payment terms, the rebate or replacement clause and how long a fee is owed. Without signed terms, a fee claim is much weaker.
Most UK agency terms cover the same ground: the fee percentage and the definition of salary it applies to; what an introduction is and how long it lasts; payment terms, commonly 14 days for perm; the rebate schedule; VAT; and what happens if the client passes a candidate's details to someone else who hires them. The Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003 require an agency to agree terms with a hirer before providing work-finding services, so this is not optional paperwork.
How terms are accepted matters as much as what they say. A signature is best. Some terms claim acceptance by conduct, for example by the client interviewing a candidate after receiving them. That can work, but where there is no signed agreement, disputes tend to turn on whether the terms were sent before the introduction and whether the agency was the effective cause of the hire, which is a harder argument to win than pointing at a signature.
Larger clients often insist on their own paper, a supplier agreement that overrides the agency's terms, usually with a lower fee, a longer rebate period and stricter rules on introductions. Once that is signed, the agency's standard terms stop being the ones that apply, and the consultants need to know it.
Terms also need to reach the people who use them. The consultant quoting a fee on a call, the person raising the invoice and whoever chases payment all need the same figures. When terms live only as a signed PDF in a shared drive, each of them works from memory, and the mistakes surface as disputed invoices months later, usually on the placements that mattered most.
Where it goes wrong: terms signed years ago at a fee nobody charges any more; a negotiated change that lives in one consultant's email; three versions of the terms in circulation; or payment terms that never reach the invoicing system, so invoices go out with a due date the client never agreed to.
How Vayora handles it
Your commercial terms are held as data in settings: perm and contract payment days, standard fee percentage, the sliding rebate schedule, chase cadence, VAT and invoice numbering. Kit can read an uploaded Terms of Business document and propose those rules, which apply only once you review them. Each client record has its own perm and contract payment terms, the date terms were agreed, and a Send terms action that emails the document, copies a link or sends it for signature, and a completed signature records the agreed date. Invoice due dates follow the client's terms, then yours, then 14 days. The roles list flags roles whose client has no agreed terms, and submitting a candidate to such a client shows a warning with a send-for-signature option.
FinanceThe longer answer: What is a rebate period in recruitment?