The most common sections in a contract

The most common section in a contract is the one about money. Across the 87 finished agreements on this site, counted on 13 September 2026, 76 carry a top level heading about price, fees or payment, 72 carry one about what is being supplied, and 62 carry one about the term and how the agreement ends. Below those three the sections depend on the kind of deal, and some that feel essential are rare: only 15 agreements have a dispute heading and only 3 have definitions.

The agreements behind the count

The corpus is the agreement set in this site’s document example library: 87 agreements for fictional Australian businesses and people, from a two page equipment loan to a thirteen page managed services contract, each built in the document builder and snapshotted as rendered pages. It includes sales, leases, trade and professional services, employment, confidentiality, licences and company agreements.

A script read every top level heading in every agreement, 722 headings in all. Sub clause headings such as 4.1 were left out, so the count is about sections a reader would see in a contents list.

The headings are written in plain English rather than legal labels. An agreement is more likely to say “What the seller promises” than “Warranties”, or “When a partner leaves” than “Cessation”. So the headings were grouped into topics by the words they contain, and one heading can count toward two topics when it names two things, such as “Liability and general”. The word lists, in short:

• Payment: fee, price, payment, pay, charges, rent, cost, invoice, GST, deposit, bond, interest, repayment, capital, profits, contributions, outgoings.
• Scope: services, the work, deliverables, scope, what is being sold or built, and the thing itself (the goods, the vehicle, the equipment, the booking).
• Term and ending: term, ending, termination, how long, cancel, exit, leaves, return.
• Liability: liability, indemnity, insurance, risk, damage, if it goes wrong.
• Warranties: warranty, promise, guarantee, condition, standard of work, defects, inspection.
• Ownership: intellectual property, ownership, copyright, licence, moral rights, title.
• Others: confidential, privacy, data; dispute, deadlock, remedies; variation, changes; definitions; general, notices; signing, execution; schedule, annex; parties, background, purpose.

28% of the headings match no topic at all. Those are the sections that make an agreement specific: “Fit out” and “Make good” in a lease, “Shifts” in a casual employment agreement, “Keys, alarm codes and locking up” in a cleaning contract. They are counted in the section totals but not in the table.

This is one site’s example set, not a sample of contracts in circulation, and it grows as examples are added.

The sections most agreements share

The table below this article ranks fourteen topics by how many agreements carry them. Four clear up almost everything a small business contract has to answer:

1. What is supplied, in 83%.
2. What it costs and how it is paid, in 87%.
3. How long it lasts and how it ends, in 71%.
4. General terms, in 68%.

That matches the short list business.gov.au gives for a simple contractor agreement: the work, how much and when payment happens, when the work counts as finished, and how disputes are handled. The one difference is disputes, which most agreements here fold into the general section rather than give a heading of their own.

The single most repeated heading word for word is “General”, used 32 times. “Parties” is next at 16, then “Fees” at 10.

The order they appear in

The median position column shows a sequence that holds across very different agreements:

• Opening, position 0: parties and background, or straight into what is supplied. 37 agreements open with a parties or background heading and 36 open with the scope.
• Early, around 29: price and payment, usually the second or third section.
• Middle, about 40 to 70: ownership and intellectual property, changes, confidentiality and warranties.
• Late, 75 to 88: liability, then the term and how it ends, then disputes.
• Last, 100: general terms, signing, and schedules.

The master services agreement follows that order closely across 14 sections: parties, how the framework works, term, charges, intellectual property, confidentiality and data, warranties, liability, insurance, people, termination, resolving a dispute, general and schedules. It puts the term early because a framework agreement runs for years, which is the kind of reason to move a section.

How sections change by agreement type

Group the agreements by what they do and the middle of the table reshuffles.

Sales of goods and vehicles (11 agreements) are about the thing and its condition. All 11 have scope and payment headings, 7 have a warranty or condition heading, and only 3 have a term heading, because a sale ends at handover. The motorcycle sale agreement has five sections: the motorcycle, price and handover, the roadworthy certificate, what the seller promises, and signing.

Trade and home services (16) are about the job and what happens when something breaks. 14 of 16 have a liability or insurance heading, 9 have a standard of work or defects heading, and none has a confidentiality heading.

Leases and rentals (14) are about money over time. 13 have payment headings and 13 have term or ending headings, and 11 have liability, because the property can be damaged.

Professional and business services (23) add the sections a trade job skips: 11 have intellectual property, 11 have confidentiality, and 7 have a schedule.

Confidentiality and restraint agreements (5) are the only group where definitions appear, in 3 of the 5, and none has a payment heading. The mutual NDA spends its eleven sections on what counts as confidential, what each party must do, what is not covered and when disclosure is allowed.

The sections missing most often

Some sections are absent from most agreements, and the reasons differ:

• Definitions, missing from 84 of 87. Plain English agreements explain a term where it is used.
• Disputes, missing from 72. Many agreements put a short dispute rule inside the general section. That is fine for a small job and thin for a long relationship.
• A signing heading, missing from 70. Every one of the 87 agreements ends in signature blocks; most simply do not put a heading above them.
• Changes and variations, missing from 72. This is the one worth adding back. A contract that runs longer than a single job will change, and without an agreed way to vary it the change happens by email and argument.
• Liability, missing from 40. Mostly sales, releases and restraints, where the risk sits elsewhere.

Some clauses sit inside other sections rather than having their own heading. A force majeure clause, for example, usually lives inside the general terms, which is why it does not show up as a topic here even when the agreement has one.

A default section order

If you are starting from a blank page, this order covers what most of these agreements carry, in the sequence they tend to carry it:

1. Parties and background
2. What is supplied
3. Price and payment
4. Ownership and intellectual property, where anything is created
5. Changes and variations
6. Confidentiality, where anything sensitive is shared
7. Warranties and standard of work
8. Liability and insurance
9. Term and ending
10. Disputes
11. General terms
12. Signing, then schedules

Drop the sections your deal does not need, add the ones that make it specific, and write each heading as a plain statement of what the section decides. The Australian Government Style Manual gives the same advice for any heading: start with the keywords, keep it under 70 characters, and avoid phrasing it as a question.

How to use this

Check your draft against the table: a missing payment or scope section is a gap, a missing definitions section usually is not. The numbered clauses document page shows how numbered sections and sub clauses are laid out so cross references resolve, and the document builder components guide covers the headings, sections and tables that hold them. For what each common clause means inside those sections, read common contract clauses explained.