Retained Services Agreement (RSA)

MSAs are by no means the end-all, be-all of consulting contracts. In fact, if you have the reputation and marketing saavy to get away with using it, I think you should consider instead relying on a Retained Services Agreement or RSA.

The RSA is different from its cousin the MSA in several ways:

• You only need to execute it once, there are no SOW addendums.
• It specifies a monthly retainer that is paid upfront, every month
• It can easily specify an irrevocable minimum contract length
• It can easily mandate a minimum written notice of termination

Since you're always paid up-front with an RSA, it's significantly easier to pause work on late payment, which is one of the best, if not the absolute most effective way of making sure that you always get paid for your hard work.

Personally, I use an RSA for my consulting contracts nowadays instead of a MSA. As an entrepreneur and independent consultant that's really short on time, I can't afford to constantly renegotiate terms or be chasing after late payments.