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Models
Service agreement
Service agreement is the contract between you and the Philippine company that employs the worker or runs the job. It is not the employment contract. Mixing the two documents is how people lose both arguments.
Also called client services agreement
How it works
The service agreement should name the job or the seat, the fees, the start mechanics, the replacement window, who owns IP, who is the personal information controller, and who can end the commercial relationship. The employment contract, signed by the worker and the local employer, names wages, hours, probation, and statutory benefits. If you put U.S. at-will language only in the service agreement, the worker never saw it and the Labor Code still applies to them. If you put the worker’s salary only in the service agreement, payroll has nothing to remit against.
Example: service agreement: $2,400 search plus ₱70,000 basic loaded monthly after start, 90-day restaff. Employment contract: ₱70,000 basic, 8-hour day, 6-month probation, 13th month. A founder later ‘cuts the rate’ in Slack. The employment contract did not move. The service agreement did not either.
How it differs
An offer letter is a promise to the candidate. A statement of work for a true contractor is a different object. A data sharing agreement covers personal data, not wages.
Common errors
One PDF doing all jobs. Changing pay in email and never amending the employment contract.
In practice
Treat Service agreement as a week-one operating object. Name the employer on the contract and the manager in Slack. If those two names cannot both be true at once, the model is theater. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have service agreement yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.