Article V - Legal Awareness Series

 Formal Documentation – General understanding and requirements


Thus when we move in the journey of business entrepreneur’s growth from doing business through friends and relatives based customers to doing business with social/society-based customers, we are entering into a phase where many times we do not know/ have in front of us the face of “our customer” to whom we are providing products/ services. This is because now we are going to provide the products/ services to the “Society” based customers rather than an “individual” based customers.

We always find that every person in his /her life tries to adopt the easiest way /path to achieve his needs/ requirements may be even goals……and certainly business entrepreneur is not an exception to this general rule of life.

We may times find that such so-called “formal documentation” is not governed by any specific rules/regulations or laws but rather results from the requirements of the business or a particular deal. This documentation many times results in an exchange of documents – some of the examples are :

  •     Entrepreneur’s Business Proposal & Customer response thereto
  •     Entrepreneur’s Business Quotation & Customer response thereto
  •     Customer purchase order /letter of appointment
  •     Customer purchase order

e)      Entrepreneur’s invoices for products/services …………etc.

 We will find that in maximum dealings of the majority of small business entrepreneurs’ transactions are executed and completed through one or more of the documents listed above. So what is the normal content? do the information captured in them sufficient to protect the interest of all parties entering into these documents?. These and many other concerns certainly need to be addressed properly.   

As seen in Article IV- the nomenclature of such “formal documentation” is not important but the substance of the document executed/ exchanged is very crucial and important in each deal.  Thus, formal documentation can take any shape and need not be formatted/ crystalized in terms of any specific legal/ law requirements as long as they capture the substance.

Cont...

For any query feel free to contact me.


Mahesh Vaidya
M.Com, LLM, ACS, DFM, CAIIB  
Legal Adviser
Cell Number 9769949701 / 9223173695
Email ID maheshvaidya2706@gmail.com

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