Brand deal deliverables tracker

What counts as a deliverable

A deliverable is one finished thing you hand over, described precisely enough that two people reading the line agree on what it is. "Social content" is not a deliverable. "One thirty second vertical video, delivered as a clean file with no burned-in captions, plus three story frames with a link sticker" is. The difference is not pedantry. Every dispute about scope on a brand deal starts with a line that was vague enough to be read two ways.

Write the format, the length, the platform, the delivery file type and who posts it. Note whether the brand may recut the footage, because a recut is a new asset made from your work and it is worth deciding on before it happens rather than after. And keep raw files as their own line. Raw footage is a separate thing you are handing over, and treating it as part of the content fee is how creators end up giving away the most valuable asset in the deal for nothing.

Why revision rounds need a number

Unlimited revisions is the single most expensive phrase in creator work, and it usually arrives by omission rather than on purpose. Nobody writes it down, so nobody knows where the work ends, and a two-day job turns into three weeks of small changes that each feel too minor to push back on.

Put a number in the agreement, and define what a round is. One round is one consolidated set of notes from the brand, returned once. If notes trickle in over four separate messages, that is still one round only if you agreed it. State what happens past the number too: a per-round rate, or a note that further changes are quoted separately. The point is not to be difficult. It is that the brand's team also has a budget, and the fastest way to get clear notes is for both sides to know the rounds are finite.

What an approval window is and why it protects you

An approval window is the number of working days the brand has to respond after you deliver. Five is common. Without one, your deadline is fixed and theirs is not, so a brand sitting on a file for two weeks still expects the posting date to hold, and the compressed schedule lands entirely on you.

The clause that fixes this is short: if the brand does not return notes within the window, the deliverable is treated as approved. That keeps your delivery date, your posting schedule and your payment trigger intact, and it gives the brand a reason to move. It is a normal term in agency work and reasonable to ask for in yours.

How to track a rights expiry date

Usage rights are the part of a brand deal most likely to be worth money later and most likely to be forgotten now. A twelve month organic licence sounds like a detail when you sign it. It becomes a real question when you find the video still running in paid ads two years on and cannot remember what you granted.

Record three things on the deal: what the licence covers, when it starts, and the exact date it ends. Not "twelve months" written in a PDF, a date you can see on the same screen as the deliverables. This tracker keeps that date at the top of the deal and counts down the days. When the date passes and the content is still running, you have a factual message to send rather than an argument to have, and a renewal is a straightforward thing to price.

When to invoice

Invoice on the trigger in the agreement, and make that trigger approval wherever you can. Delivery is too early for most brands to accept. The live post is too late for you, because it hands your payment date to a content calendar you do not control and a launch that may slip a quarter.

On larger deals, split it. Part on signature covers your production costs and filters out brands who were never going to pay. The rest on approval keeps the incentive to review your work promptly. Whatever you agree, invoice the day the trigger is met rather than at the end of the month, because net thirty starts when the invoice lands, not when the work finished.