Terms are the legal language behind a Custom Agreement. You write them once, pair them with a Cover Page, and update them as your legal position changes without disturbing agreements that are already signed. Common Paper calls them custom Terms when it needs to tell them apart from the Common Paper Standard Terms.

Go to the Templates page and click Manage your Terms in the upper right. This opens the Your Terms page, which lists each set of Terms you've created with two columns:

The Templates page also shows which Terms each template uses, in its Terms column, along with the version and the number of completed agreements.

You can start new Terms from either page:

Both open the New Terms page, where you can either write your Terms directly in Common Paper or upload a file you have already drafted.

Give your Terms a Name. This name is public-facing and appears in every agreement that uses these Terms, so use something a counterparty will recognize.

Write the Terms themselves in the Terms editor. The toolbar covers headings, bold, italic, strikethrough, bulleted and numbered lists, block quotes, links, and tables. If you'd rather work in markdown, click Switch to markdown below the editor.

Click Save when you're done. Your Terms are saved as version 1, and you return to the Your Terms page. The confirmation message there includes a Create a Cover Page template button, so you can go straight on to building the Cover Page that uses them.

If your Terms are already final and you don't need to edit them inside Common Paper, click Upload a set of terms at the top of the New Terms page. This brings in Terms you've already drafted elsewhere as a file rather than editable rich text.

To change existing Terms, open the ⋮ menu on the row and choose Edit terms. This opens the Edit Terms page.

Every save creates a new version, and that version becomes the one new agreements are built from. Agreements that are already in flight or already signed stay pinned to the version they were created from, so updating your Terms never changes an agreement someone has already agreed to.

NOTE: Cover Pages always use the current version of the Terms they reference. Publishing a new version therefore applies to every Cover Page built on these Terms, and to every agreement created from those Cover Pages from that point on, without anyone editing those Cover Pages. See Cover Pages for how the two halves fit together.

Before making a significant change, check the Used By These Templates column, then check those templates' Completed Agreements counts on the Templates page. Together they tell you how much relies on these Terms.

Choose View terms from the same menu to read the current version without opening the editor.

Duplicate creates a copy of your Terms as a new, separate set starting at version 1. This is the right move when you want a variant for a different region, product line, or counterparty type. Editing the copy has no effect on the original.

Archive terms removes a set of Terms from the list so nobody creates new agreements from it. Archiving does not affect agreements that already use those Terms.

Terms that a Cover Page currently references cannot be archived. If you try, Common Paper shows a These Terms are in use warning. Point that Cover Page at different Terms first, or archive the Cover Page.

To see what you have archived, click Show archived Terms below the list on the Your Terms page. This opens the Archived Terms page, where Restore brings a set back into the list.

Terms don't produce an agreement on their own. You pair them with a Cover Page, which supplies the fields your team fills out when creating an agreement. To start one from a set of Terms, open its ⋮ menu on the Your Terms page and choose Create a new Cover Page. See Cover Pages for how to build one.