As you would know, almost all businesses out there have multiple parties involved in all kinds of tasks. Whether you are talking about business partners, employees, third-party businesses, or the customers themselves, all businesses need to manage all of these various parties correctly.
Generally, this is done by using contracts and agreements that are legal documents for agreeing upon certain terms and conditions. Anything that is written in a contract needs to be followed exactly by all of the involved parties.
However, suppose any of the involved parties want to update a given contract to add new terms and conditions, update existing statements, or provide more information about something specific in a given contract. In that case, a specific method and procedure needs to be followed. To be more exact, if you want to add more things to a contract, you will need to use either an addendum or appendix. To pick the correct one, make sure to go through this comparison between addendum vs appendix till the end.
In this article
What is an Addendum?
Before understanding all the various differences between addendum vs appendix documents, you should first check the exact definition of addendums and appendices.
Starting with an addendum, is a document that is used for adding new terms, conditions, and information to an existing contract or legal agreement. In other words, if a contract needs to be renewed or updated to fix issues, you will need to use addendums for that. Anything you put in an addendum, will get added to the contract as a part of the contract. This is done in a way that the existing terms of a contract are not changed, and only new ones are added.
Some common examples of addendums include adding the duration of the contract to an existing contract. Another common use is to add newer terms at the end of the year of a contract as needed by the involved parties.
What is an Appendix?
Similar to knowing the addendum definition, you should also know the definition of appendix before you go ahead and use it for your legal documents.
Unlike an addendum, an appendix is not used to add new terms or information to the contract terms themselves. Instead, you are supposed to add an appendix to contracts in a way where they are explaining the importance and meaning of the existing terms and conditions. In other words, an appendix acts as a supplement to your contract. It does not change the meaning of a given contract and only helps the parties involved to understand the meaning.
A common example of using an appendix is to explain a complete contract in simpler words for your customers. While other businesses might be familiar with contracts and the terms used in them, most customers can get confused with legal terms. This is where appendices can make contracts much easier to understand.
Differences Between Addendum vs Appendix
While we have already covered the key definition and the basic differences between addendum vs appendix, some of you might want to know more. So, here are all the major differences between addendum vs appendix documents:
- Primary Usage: Depending on your needs, you can use an addendum if you want to add new terms to contracts and legal documents. As for appendices, they are used to provide information or explanation of existing terms and conditions of the given contract or legal document.
- Contract Validity: In case you add an appendix to contract documents or appendix to legal document files, you don’t need to get them approved again. But if you are adding an addendum, you are adding new terms to a contract, which means that the contract is invalid until it is approved by all the involved parties.
- Parties’ Permissions: Once you have added addendums and appendices to a given contract or agreement, you need all the parties to approve the addendums. As for appendices, they can be added without needing any approval.
- Requirement: If a given contract has expired, it will need to be renewed. In that case, you definitely require an addendum for adding the latest terms and information. On the other hand, an appendix is not needed in a contract, and it is completely optional.
When to use Addendum or Appendix?
Now that you know the key differences between addendum vs appendix, you may want to use the same as well. But when exactly do you use these legal documents and which one should you pick between addendum vs appendix? Let us explain.
Generally, an addendum is used with contracts and legal agreements if the parties want new terms to be added to the given contract. These can also be used for adding completely new information and other details to a given document.
As for an appendix, these are primarily used when you want to explain a contract properly. Since a contract can be shared with multiple parties, explaining every term and condition using supplementary information in the form of an appendix is definitely a great idea.
Who Can Write Addendum or Appendix Documents?
If you have a business, then you must know that all contracts and business are legal documents, and all parties need to comply with them. Since addendums and appendices are supposed to be a part of these contracts and agreements, they need to be designed and created in the correct way.
So, you should definitely get advice from legal experts like lawyers or paralegals for planning these. Another great way to write an addendum or appendix is to use templates for the same. This can be done using tools like Wondershare PDFelement, which offers templates for legal documents and all the tools you need to create and edit such documents.
Wondershare PDFelement: How to Create Addendum or Appendix Documents
Speaking of Wondershare PDFelement - PDF Editor Wondershare PDFelement Wondershare PDFelement, it is definitely a great option for creating addendum and appendix documents with ease. After checking the addendum vs appendix comparison above, you can pick the right one for you and use Wondershare PDFelement to create the same. This is a great option since PDFelement offers multiple features, including:
The best part about Wondershare PDFelement is that you can easily create legal documents like addendums and appendices as explained here:
Step 1
Start by installing and opening Wondershare PDFelement.
Step 2
Go to the Templates menu to find and open a legal document template as per your needs.
Step 3
Then, open this template and start editing the text in there as required.
Step 4
Once all edits are done, click on File and select Save As to export your addendum or appendix document.
Appendix to Contract and Appendix to Legal Document File Management
Once you have created an addendum or appendix, managing the same is quite important as well. You need to keep a few things in mind while creating and adding appendix to a contract or appendix to legal document files:
- Add all the important and specific details in your addendums and appendices
- All parties related to your contract or legal agreement need to agree with the addendum or appendix as well
- Include a time frame with all your contracts and legal documents
- Similar to a time frame, a certain budget should also be allotted to all contracts and legal agreements
Conclusion:
You may want to add more information to a given contract or legal agreement in various scenarios. Whether you are adding new terms to a contract or explaining more about the existing ones, using the correct legal procedure is necessary. Since you need to use either an addendum or appendix for this, we have given a comprehensive comparison between addendum vs appendix up above. Not only will you learn everything about addendum and appendix documents, but also the best tools for adding addendum to contract and addendum to legal documents as needed by you.
