consult: Template for independent consulting deliverables

Using Pandoc and LaTeX, this LaTeX template and shell script allows a small-time independent consultant to write consulting proposals (Statement of Work, Retainer Agreement, etc.) and consulting reports as nice, sane Markdown files and publish them as PDFs suitable for sending to clients.

You need pandoc and pdflatex installed on a UNIX-like system to use this template.

Output includes a simple layout, listing of basic facts of the engagement, and optionally a pre-filled "sign on the dotted line" acceptance page at the end.

The first eight digits of the MD5 hash of the source file (the result of md5sum /path/to/my/sow.md | cut -c -8) are patched in as a reference number for the document, helping to keep a bitwise handle on versions of a legally binding document when preparing an engagement with less organized clients.

Quickstart

$ rm ./examples/sow.pdf        # Blow away the example output.
$ ./consult ./examples/sow.md  # Build your own!
                               # Have a look at your own ./examples/sow.pdf.
$ git reset --hard             # Get back to where you started.

Add this repo to your ${PATH} or copy consult and consult_template.tex to a directory in your ${PATH} such as /usr/local/bin. Then you can run consult from anywhere:

/home/me/engagements/acme_anvils> consult sow.md

This publishes the document to /home/me/engagements/acme_anvils/sow.pdf.

Configuration

consult uses some crude Pandoc template logic to allow some flexibility through the YAML metadata at the top of the Markdown document. At the time of writing, there are no guardrails to ensure that your metadata makes sense, and Pandoc silently substitutes blanks for necessary but missing metadata, so use with care.

A Statement of Work by a sole proprietor consultant with an attached acceptance page, as in examples/sow.md, looks like this:

---
marketing_name: "Wile E. Coyote"
byline: "Land bird catching"
doc_title: "Statement of Work"
consultant_name: "Wile E. Coyote"
document_date: "17 September 1949"
document_hash:
client_name: Acme Anvils
client_representative: Jebediah Springfield
project_title: "Roadrunner Crushing Proof of Concept"
acceptance_page: true
agreement_text: |
    The parties hereto verify that the terms of this Statement of Work are
    acceptable. The Client Representative verifies that he or she is authorized
    by the Client to execute this agreement on the Client's behalf.
...

But some variations can be helpful.

• If Wile E. Coyote incorporated, he could add a consultant_representative and use consultant_name for his corporate name.
• Dropping the acceptance page by setting acceptance_page: false or just leaving the last two items off takes care of consulting reports or proposals where the client has their own contractual process.
• For reports, consultant_name and consultant_representative can be omitted to present more streamlined top matter.
• For projects without titles (such as retainer proposals), project_title can be omitted to present more streamlined top matter.
• (Coming Soon) If Wile E. Coyote got a corporate logo, he could substitute the marketing_name and byline for a pointer to the logo file.