Mandate

Mandate is the working word for a representation agreement. It is the document that makes the relationship a professional one rather than an understanding, and it is the reason an agency can claim a commission at all.

What a mandate typically fixes: the scope of the authority, whether it is exclusive, the territory, the term, and the commission. Beyond that the shape varies by jurisdiction and by what the parties negotiated, so the document itself governs rather than any general rule.

The date that matters most is the end date. Mandates expire quietly. There is no fixture, no notification, and nothing that forces a conversation, which is why they are the thing agencies most often discover too late. An expired mandate does not announce itself; a rival agent noticing it does.

For an agency rather than an individual agent, the mandate is also the asset. It is what makes a roster transferable, what survives one person leaving, and what a buyer would be buying. That only holds if the agreement and its dates exist somewhere other than in one person's memory.