If your business buys or sells goods for later delivery, you'll want to record the deal with a sales contract to minimize confusion and misunderstandings.

For instance, if you order five desks for your offices, use a sales contract that sets forth the terms: the purchase price, delivery date, method of payment and so on.

This particular contract assumes the buyer will pay over a period of months or years. Sellers can detail a precise schedule of payments, as well.

Important to Know:

• If you want to create a contract in which the buyer will pay in one lump sum, use "Sales Contract (Lump-Sum Payment)."
• Note that a sales contract doesn't complete a sale -- for that, you'll need a "Bill of Sale for Goods."
• Sellers often want to create a "Security Agreement for Sale of Goods" to provide collateral for this type of sales contract.

Operating system: Windows- and Macintosh-compatible. The computer you use to purchase an eForm must be the same computer you will download it to. (For example, don't purchase the eForm using your computer at work if you intend to download it later on to your home computer; instead, wait until you're on the computer you intend to download the eForm to and then make your purchase. After you've downloaded the file, you will be able to "transfer" it to another computer by copying it to external media or by email.) In addition, you will not be able to download this file if:

• cookies are disabled on your computer, or
• a firewall prevents you from downloading files from the Internet.

Software: Before you can use an eForm, additional software must be installed:
To expand the ZIP archive you download after making your purchase, you'll need:

• A decompression utility such as the following, both of which can be downloaded for free:

• 7-Zip (http://www.7-zip.org) (for Windows users).
• StuffIt Expander (http://my.smithmicro.com/mac/stuffit/expander.html) (for Macintosh). Please note: Many recently manufactured Macs have a native capability to decompress zip files. See your computer's user manual for verification of this and instructions for access.

To open, fill out and print an eForm, you need a word processor that "reads" RTF (rich text format) files:

• Windows XP & Vista both come with WordPad, an RTF-compatible word processor.
• Macintosh OS X comes with TextEdit, an RTF-compatible word processor; non-OS X users need Word 5.0 or greater, WordPerfect 2.1 or greater, or another RTF-compatible word processor.