Executive Support Provider Contract Checklist

Turn the sales promise into operating scope

Begin with the workflows the provider will deliver, the leadership outcomes they support, and the company inputs each requires. Name request classes, hours, locations, systems, sensitive data, decision owners, and excluded work. A phrase such as comprehensive executive support does not establish acceptance or capacity. Attach a schedule that a new operator and company reviewer could use without relying on a sales conversation or private memory.

Define deliverables and acceptance separately

A provider can complete an activity without producing an accepted result. For each recurring service, describe the output, source, timing, reviewer, correction path, and closure evidence. A calendar update may require conflict checks and stakeholder notice; a meeting brief may require approved sources and delivery before a stated window. Define what happens when company input is late. Acceptance should not depend entirely on subjective satisfaction after the work is done.

Write decision rights into the schedule

List what provider staff may prepare, recommend, execute, communicate, spend, or escalate. Identify limits and stop conditions for confidential, financial, people, legal, board, security, and new external commitments. Technical access never grants broader authority. Require written approval for changes to delegated rights and state who can approve them. This schedule should align with system permissions and the executive's communication charter.

Distinguish acknowledgment from resolution

Service windows should reflect the request class and dependencies. A provider may acknowledge an urgent request quickly while the actual resolution waits for executive approval, source evidence, or an external party. Define when the clock starts, pauses, resumes, and ends. Include working hours, time zones, holidays, and the route for genuine exceptions. Avoid one universal response promise that encourages shallow replies or hides decision waiting.

Name the people model

Clarify whether service depends on a named professional, pooled team, subcontractor, or rotating coverage. Address screening, training, location, supervision, substitutions, notice, and company approval where appropriate. A backup promise should identify activation, minimum access, action logging, and return handoff. The company should know who can reach its systems today, not merely which legal entity signed the agreement.

Connect security terms to the workflow

Specify individual identity, multifactor authentication, device expectations, approved storage, subprocessors, logging, incident notification, access review, retention, and deletion for the actual service. Reference a security exhibit without assuming it answers operational questions. Ask who can change configurations and how the company learns of a material change. Define cooperation and evidence after a suspected incident without requiring premature conclusions.

Protect company records and intellectual property

State who owns task history, instructions, contact logic, templates, briefs, decision records, and work created during service. Identify provider pre-existing tools and licenses separately. Company records should remain retrievable in a usable format. Do not let a provider-owned platform become the only copy of open commitments or access rules. Address confidentiality, permitted use, return, retention, and deletion without demanding records the provider must lawfully retain.

Expose the complete price

Document recurring fees, setup, minimum terms, overtime, after-hours work, tools, travel, taxes, currency, rate changes, change requests, replacement, transition assistance, and reimbursable expenses. Define approval before cost is incurred. Compare the price with the scoped operating model, including company supervision and access administration. Avoid unsupported savings claims based on every hour an executive might reclaim.

Control scope changes

Create a short change process naming the requested outcome, added or removed work, capacity effect, security impact, price, start date, approver, and revised acceptance criteria. Urgent temporary changes need an expiry. Repeated work outside scope should trigger a decision, not become free hidden service or an unrecorded authority expansion. Keep the current schedule identifiable and archive superseded versions.

Plan continuity before disruption

Require current instructions, an open-work register, named company owners, and backup arrangements proportionate to the service. Address provider outages, staff absence, company access loss, and unavailable executives. Test one bounded handoff. Continuity should preserve time-sensitive commitments without granting a broad pool of staff permanent access or copying sensitive information into an emergency document.

Read termination with the technology map

Cover notice, immediate termination rights, final fees, open-work reconciliation, export format, transition help, return of records, forwarding removal, integration transfer, access revocation, and deletion evidence. Confirm the company can operate after exit without the provider's identity or proprietary links. Test a sample export while the relationship is healthy. A contractual right to data is weak when the delivered file cannot restore the workflow.

Create an obligations register

After signature, extract material duties into a controlled register with owner, due date, evidence, review cadence, and exception path. Include access recertification, insurance or report delivery where applicable, rate notices, subcontractor changes, and transition readiness. The register supports performance review; it does not replace the agreement. Resolve contradictions among the proposal, order form, main terms, and exhibits before launch.

Define dispute and correction routes

State how the parties raise rejected work, invoice questions, confidentiality concerns, and repeated service failures without bypassing urgent containment or legal rights. Name notice channels and decision owners. A correction process should preserve the original evidence, agreed remedy, due date, and acceptance. Avoid a vague escalation clause that sends every operating issue directly to senior executives while leaving routine defects without an accountable path.

Align communications with authority

Specify when provider staff may contact employees, customers, directors, candidates, vendors, or personal contacts, which identity they use, and when company review is required. Drafting in an executive's voice differs from sending a message or making a promise. Require verification for unusual instructions and document approved channels. These terms protect relationships while allowing routine coordination to proceed without constant executive approval.

Use qualified review and a rehearsal

Operations should validate the workflow while authorized legal, security, privacy, finance, tax, employment, and procurement owners review their domains. Before access begins, rehearse a normal request, missing input, priority conflict, suspicious instruction, backup activation, change request, and exit. Record gaps and owners. The agreement is ready when it supports these decisions clearly, not when every possible event has been described in abstract language.

Related resources

• Executive assistant support
• Outsourced executive support evaluation
• Fractional executive support buyer’s guide