Reseller agreement template

Reseller Agreements are often used to govern long-term business relationships. That's why it's important to get the terms of the transaction right first time.

Find out everything you need to know about Reseller Agreements and how they work in this guide. We've also got a free Reseller Agreement template for you to use.

What is a Reseller Agreement?

A Reseller Agreement is a legally binding contract between a supplier and a reseller, in which the supplier agrees to let the reseller sell their products or services. It's very similar to a distribution agreement.

Unlike some business contracts which only cover single transactions, Reseller Agreements are designed to facilitate ongoing commercial relationships, providing the framework for mutual obligations and responsibilities, as well as the ability for these to adapt over time.

They usually outline the dynamic of the relationship of the agreement, what each party should expect from the other, and how to address potential disputes if they arise.

Generally, a Reseller Agreement is accompanied by an order form and may refer to additional legal documents, such as an SOW and a DPA.

However, the Reseller Agreement forms the bedrock of the commercial relationship, making it a cornerstone in businesses that deal with resellers. The software industry often uses the reseller model, meaning that Software Reseller Agreements, or White Labal SaaS Reseller Agreements, are variations of this contract template you'll see often.

What is the purpose of a Reseller Agreement?

The purpose of a Reseller Agreement is to streamline future negotiations when creating contracts with the same reseller.

By outlining the basic principles of the business relationship and establishing how both parties plan to collaborate from the outset, the Reseller Agreement makes it easier and faster for you to agree these contracts repeatably in the future.

This helps to minimize lengthy contract negotiations, accelerates the contract review process, and prevents slowdowns in your contract workflow.

Moreover, having a Reseller Agreement in place helps avoid disputes later in the relationship as it irons out most of the key decisions before the contract comes into effect.

Who uses Reseller Agreements?

Given their broad scope and frequent usage in growing businesses, Reseller Agreements impact stakeholders throughout the business. Here’s how:

• Salespeople typically issue them, along with order forms.

• Legal teams would ideally 'own' the commercial terms, and define and control any changes to them.

• Various personas may have approval oversight over Reseller Agreements, including sales managers, finance leaders, and even the C-suite, depending on who has the authority to sign contracts.

• Other colleagues may influence Reseller Agreements - for instance, product/engineering leaders could be consulted on any commitments made regarding product availability.

• The designated signatories will need to approve the contract to finalize it.

• After signing, finance, business operations, customer success, and legal teams will all need to monitor the Reseller Agreement to ensure compliance with its terms.

What should a Reseller Agreement template cover?

1. Responsibilities of each party

Clearly outlining each party’s contractual obligations and responsibilities is essential in a Reseller Agreement. This sets the foundation for the contract and ensures that both parties understand what is expected of them.

2. Delivery requirements

Reseller Agreements should specify the details of the product or service delivery. Both parties should have a mutual understanding of the delivery terms, including the timelines, delivery responsibilities, delivery location, and method.

3. Payment terms

A Reseller Agreement should clearly state the terms of payment. This includes details such as the standard rate, payment method, amount due, and payment timelines, to avoid any confusion.

4. Intellectual property rights

The agreement should also cover broader issues such as intellectual property rights, delineating how rights over patents, copyrights, design rights, and other confidential information are to be protected and allocated.

5. Consequences of a breach of contract

The Reseller Agreement should define what a breach of contract is, the repercussions of such a breach, and the methods of remediation should it occur. In the case of a Software Reseller Agreement, the breach might involve a failure to adhere to the SaaS terms defined in the agreement.

6. Dispute resolution processes

A clear dispute resolution process should be outlined in the Reseller Agreement to guide parties in the event of a dispute or contract breach. This includes the applicable laws and jurisdiction.

7. Data protection and processing conditions

Reseller Agreements should stipulate how customer data will be used and processed, in compliance with the relevant data protection laws.

8. Terms for future contracts

It's common for a Reseller Agreement to outline expectations and terms for future contracts or agreements, laying the groundwork for long-term partnerships.

How are documents like Software Reseller Agreement templates typically managed?

In a manual contract workflow, the company's legal department will create a standard Word template for the agreement and save it on a shared drive. You can grab the free Reseller Agreement template PDF above to get started yourself.

When a deal is on the brink of being sealed, a sales representative will retrieve a copy of this Reseller Agreement template - which may or may not be the most recent version - and tweak its stipulations to reflect what has been negotiated with the partner.

Following this, they will send the draft via email to their legal team for further revisions, potentially setting off a series of to-and-fro exchanges.

Once these amendments have been made, the contract will be sent to the reseller for approval, along with the purchase order.

At any point during this stage, revisions can be requested, potentially leading to multiple versions of the agreement without a thorough log of all previous modifications and contract redlines.

After the agreement is fully executed, either through a wet ink or electronic signature, the copies are then distributed via email to concerned parties, which may consist of sales, legal, finance, project management teams, and naturally, the reseller.

What are the problems with this approach?

This traditional method of handling Reseller Agreements and Reseller Agreement templates (like White Label SaaS Reseller Agreements) is far from efficient and introduces friction between involved parties.

It can take up to five different software tools just to get a straightforward Reseller Agreement over the line. For businesses growing quickly, this process quickly becomes laborious and chaotic.

In the worst-case scenario, this manual method of arranging and managing Reseller Agreements can hinder deals and slow down your growth.

Teams that manage their Reseller Agreements in this way report the following problems:

• Double work: “I find myself duplicating efforts - entering data and terms once in the Word document, and then again in our CRM.”

• Data consistency: “The contract data don't match the information in our CRM. Which one is correct? How am I supposed to make accurate projections?”

• Risk of outdated versions: “People are not using the latest version of the template - the conditions have been updated.”

• Lost time: “I constantly lose track of our negotiations and agreements amidst the email thread. Legal spends an inordinate amount of time sifting through correspondence.”

• Lost contract data: “I lose sight of contracts after they've been signed - this seems risky and makes it hard to report and forecast accurately to my finance team.”

Can you automate Reseller Agreements?

Luckily, it's possible to automate most of this routine contract admin and streamline the process used to create, agree and manage Reseller Agreements.

You can do this using Juro's flexible, collaborative and data-rich contract management software. With Juro, users can do the following things:

1. Generate contacts in seconds

Juro users can generate Reseller Agreements from automated contract templates in just a few clicks. They simply open the template they need and create a contract from it by filling in a few key details in a simple Q&A form.

The contract is then populated using the answers you provided, or by pulling data in directly from a CRM integration like Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive.

2. Control terms and set fallback positions

Juro empowers legal teams to establish alternative clauses and fallback positions within your Reseller Agreement templates using conditional logic.

This enables commercial teams to self-serve on Reseller Agreements while minimizing the risk of them drafting their own contract terms.

3. Streamline the approval process

Simplify the approval process with predefined roles for legal teams, CFOs, and signatories.

Our platform offers sequential triggered workflows, enabling multiple approvers to be notified in a specific order.

This guarantees adherence to standard terms and provides visibility for relevant stakeholders.

4. Collaborate on contracts in real time

Simplify the negotiation process by eliminating the need to switch to external tools like Word for redlining, which can compromise audit trails and data integrity.

With our intuitive comment threads, users can easily add comments, suggest changes, and discuss terms within the platform itself.

5. Sign contracts electronically

Juro's native electronic signature functionality means that parties can add legally binding signatures to reseller agreements from any device.

Juro's eSignature complies with eIDAS, E-SIGN and UETA acts.

6. Store agreements securely

Businesses can store Reseller Agreements in Juro's secure contract repository. Since Juro's contracts are built as structured data, they're also fully searchable. This makes it easy to track, query and monitor your contracts post-signature.

Automate Reseller Agreements in Juro

You're interested in our free Reseller Agreement template PDF above - but what if you didn't even need PDFs anymore? Juro lets you ditch clunky, inflexible PDFs and build a repeatable contract process that gets agreements signed faster every time.

If you're looking to improve your contract management process, why not join the 6000+ businesses that already power their contracts with Juro?

Juro's all-in-one contract management platform enables teams to safely automate 75 per cent of routine contract admin and agree contracts up to ten times faster.

To find out more, hit the button below to book a personalized demo.