General terms

Introduction

1.    We believe in fair play and in sticking to quotes. However, we work in areas that are flexible and hard to define, performing tasks that can be as long as a piece of string and subject to change. These terms of trade attempt to impose some order and certainty by specifying exactly what is and is not included.

Order implies acceptance

2.    Your placing of an order for us to perform work or supply goods implies your acceptance of our terms of trade as applicable at the time of order.

The brief

3.    Underlying our work flow is the idea of a brief: that you tell us what you want and we work and quote to that. A detailed brief is better. If the brief changes as we go, then naturally costs change and the quoted price and time frame can be varied.

Work is commissioned, not speculative

4.    When you commission us to perform a task, for example to create a design, you are agreeing to pay for that work, provided it addresses the brief and is to industry standard. We do not do speculative work where payment is for example contingent on use or subject to your liking of the product.

Limitation on amendments

5.    Changes made subsequent to an original design or report are completely open ended and can easily lead to major cost blow-outs. Our terms of trade include limitations on changes in certain circumstances and as appropriate we may quote excluding amendments; where there is no specific statement our quotes include for up to three rounds of changes to the original. A round is defined by sending you a revised proof.

Quotes with deadlines

6.    For quotes with deadlines please note that our quote is based in part on the deadline creating a de facto limit on work time. Usually when deadlines are shifted it is to create “extra time” to work on the project, so the project is expanded. Time worked beyond the original deadline is charged at our hourly rate if it exceeds the total allowed for in the job.

Time limit on complaints

7.    By placing an order you agree any complaint regarding product quality will be lodged within 21 days of receipt of the work or goods and that complaints lodged after this time will not be subject to any refund or reworking unless agreed to by us in our own absolute discretion.

Ownership and copyright

8.    Ownership and copyright in materials we produce for you shall not pass until payment is cleared in full.

9.    Copyright acquired by you shall be limited where items used are subject to an original copyright or are in the public domain. In particular, library photos supplied by us are provided under various sub-licence arrangements. Most commonly they allow repeated use of the image in future items we produce for you but they do not allow you to supply the image to others or to use it yourself in work we do not produce.

10.    Where the work we produce for you is a report or other information or advice or a plan you do not acquire copyright. Unless specifically agreed the same concepts, expressions and data (excluding data that is confidential to you) may be used by us in other contexts. You may not resell our work or rebadge it without our consent.

Manufacturers warranty

11.    Where we supply items contracted from a third party those items have the original manufacturer’s warranty only.

Storage of material

12.    We take all care in storing your material including artwork, reports, etc that is in our possession and will do this at no charge for as long as you remain a client, however we take no responsibility for loss due to computer failure, fire or other disaster, or error. You may wish to consider double-backup, off-site storage options (at an additional cost).

Incidental costs

13.    Incidental costs not included in quotes unless specified include delivery, couriers, costs of lodging advertisements (please refer to our price list), additional pdf files (eg, for web or email use) and making CD/DVDs.

GST, errors and omissions

14.    All our quoted prices include GST. Accidental errors and omissions made in good faith are exempted.

Validity of quotes

15.    Print and web quotes are valid for 30 days. Non-web design quotes are valid for 90 days.

Payment terms

16.    Except for web work, our payment terms for approved clients are 30 days from the end of the month of invoice.

Monthly invoicing

17.    Unless specifically agreed, work in progress will be invoiced monthly. If a quoted project is not completed the invoice shall tally amounts invoiced against the quote, to show balance remaining.

18.    By agreement invoicing may be on a project completion basis, but no project may span more than two calendar months without an interim invoice.

Undertaking to pay

19.    By placing an order with us you agree to pay the appropriate costs according to the agreed terms and you warrant that you have a reasonable expectation of being able to pay your accounts when they are due.

Payment of costs of collection

20.    By accepting these terms of trade you agree to reimburse us for any reasonable costs of collection of amounts outstanding more than 60 days, providing we notify you in advance in writing of our intention to take collection action.

Automated legal action

21.    Please be aware that we automatically commence legal proceedings on amounts overdue 85 days or more, including notification to the Credit Reference Association of Australia and lodgement of a Section 459 Statutory Demand for a declaration of insolvency, once the debt is declared by a court.

Disclaimer

22.    We’ll work hard to ensure you get the best possible results. Your support in explaining as fully as possible your business and what you want to achieve will help us do a better job for you.  Any advice we offer you as part of our work together will be given in good faith, based on our experience and professional judgement, but it cannot be guaranteed perfect. The practicalities of implementation in a changing market involve a level of uncertainty. The decision as to which suggestions you adopt is for you and your business. We accept no legal liability for the consequences of such decisions. We do not offer accounting, legal, or financial advice and nothing we provide should be construed as such.

Design work additional terms

One design

23.    Quoted prices are for the creation of one basic design and concept. Changes which amount to a fundamentally new design or which substantially vary the original brief are extra to quote and charged at our hourly rate.

Three rounds of adjustments

24.    Prices include up to three rounds of adjustments, each round with an emailed pdf proof, plus one final high resolution pdf for print. Additional rounds of adjustment and additional pdfs are charged at our hourly rate.

25.    A “round” of adjustments means work instructed at one time, eg via one email or one phone call or one meeting and resulting in a new proof pdf being produced.

26.    Substantive changes which vary the original instructions, for example by changing the objectives or introducing new material or requiring a redesign, are an additional cost.

All materials supplied final

27.    Where you are supplying material (eg, text, photos, tables, graphs) our price or quote assumes that all supplied material will be correct and final when supplied. Changes to supplied material after work has started will be an extra cost. Please note that once material has been worked into a design it can take much more time to apply changes than it takes to change the original document.  For example, a modified Word document cannot be simply copied over the top of text which has been formatted; the new text must be reformatted from scratch, or the changes marked and made one by one, by hand.

28.    Our quote is based on all material being to hand before work starts. While we will on your instructions start work in advance, going back to add in late-arriving elements is an inefficient work practice and can result in additional charges at our hourly rate.

Brief

29.    Projects which start with a written brief achieve the best time and cost control and this is our preferred model. Work within the brief is covered by the quote (subject to these standard terms) but variations to the brief made after work has started are an extra cost.

Development work

30.    Design projects express your organisation’s identity. Often the design process is used as a tool for exploring and developing that identity, by creating varied designs and evaluating what they say about you. This can be a very effective tool, but the amount of design work involved is under your control, not ours. We like doing this work and we are good at it, but it can only be done at an hourly rate and is outside the scope of any quote or fixed price.

Deadlines and time pressure

31.    Time pressure causes mistakes. This is a universal law of design and print. We understand that business is always pressed for time and we will respond to your needs to the fullest extent possible, however if you reduce the work time we have quoted to or expand the work within it, then you accept responsibility for the increased risk of errors and extra costs incurred.

32.    Changes made in writing (such as an email) or documented at a face to face meeting are safer and are highly recommended. Dictating changes over the phone produces a high risk of errors; note if you do require to work this way you have accepted responsibility for the increased risk of errors.

33.    Time frames can be shortened if you are able to book in advance, including the deadline and when we will receive material.  To make this possible we will clear other work from that time period. If however you change booked dates at short notice and we suffer an opportunity cost then you will be liable for an extra charge.

34.    When a document is with you for checking or when we are waiting on material then the “work clock” is stopped. Keeping to tight deadlines requires fast turn-around from you too.

35.    Non-delivery of material on a booked date may delay project completion. In some cases it may directly incur extra costs (eg, if we have booked press time or a designer and excluded other work from that time slot).

36.    Costs of image creation and/or manipulation (eg, colour balancing, enhancing, etching) are not included in our standard design price list.

Sign off

37.    Please note that you are responsible for final sign off on your project and that by signing it off you accept any errors in it. Please take special care with phone numbers, email and web addresses and any unusual spellings.

Proof reading

38.    No formal proof reading is included in your quote. Close reading of the proofs for each round of refinements plus the final proof is usually sufficient for most people. The dramatic reductions in print and design costs achieved over the last two decades have included the virtual demise of proof reading as an occupation. We may be able to refer you to proof readers but note that in the past decade we have had not one client decide to pay the cost of professional proof reading.

39.    If included in your quote we will run a computer spell check on the final version. Please note that computer spell checks are nowhere near 100% accurate (they use algorithms with error rates, they do not compare every word against a dictionary), problems of US-Australian and other spelling variants abound and they are almost useless with grammar. They are at their worst with technical language, acronyms and homonyms. Technical documents can take a surprisingly long time to run through a spell checker, for not much gain.

Supplied material

40.    Our quote includes dealing with supplied photos and other graphic elements to convert them within standard industry formats. Not included unless specified is scanning, colour balancing, enhancement, clipping (remove backgrounds) and other work directly on the image. You accept responsibility for the quality of images provided. Please note that images copied from a website will always produce inferior print results. Please ask for advice on file sizes needed for best results.

41.    By supplying (or instructing us to obtain) images, text and other material, you warrant that you hold appropriate copyright licence and you indemnify us against any resultant action including for copyright, libel etc.

Website work additional terms

Introduction

42.    No area is as subject to cost over-runs (and performance short falls) as websites. Unless specified our web quotes are based on adherence to the workflow described following. We have developed this system through long experience and know that it is essential to delivering websites on time and budget and to specification.

43.    Design work additional terms also apply to website work, except for rounds of corrections and payment procedures.

Essential website workflow

44.    Deviation from the workflow will incur extra costs.

A.    Functional specification is prepared (either by you or by us). This document defines every page, every link, every downloadable and every function of the website. It also includes all text for all pages. See our reference document All_About_Websites.pdf for details.

B.    You sign off on the functional specification. This is the most important step. Changes to screens, functions or text after this point are an extra-to-quote cost, as it will result in an adjustment of the design and workflow.

C.    A design template is made. Usually this includes several adaptations/templates of the theme for different kinds of pages (eg, lists, forms).

D.    You sign off on the design. This step is also important. Changing the design during the construction phase is an extra-to-quote cost and can be quite expensive.

E.    Site goes to construction. It is built to match the functional specification. Anything not in the functional specification or varied from it is an extra-to-quote cost.

F.    Site is reviewed and tested via a private site, adjustments made.

G.    Approved site is mounted for public access.

All materials supplied final

45.    Where you are supplying material (eg, text, photos, tables, graphs) our price or quote assumes that all supplied material will be correct and final when supplied. Changes to supplied material after work has started will be an extra cost.

46.    Our quote is based on all material being to hand before work starts. While we will on your instructions start work in advance, going back to add in late-arriving elements, this is an inefficient work practice and can result in additional charges at our hourly rate.

Options for dealing with changes during construction

47.    Good websites are always evolving. We recommend starting planning for the next round of upgrades during the current build, by logging all the extras thought of during construction for review for inclusion in the next round. This way no good ideas are lost, but the current project is protected from blow-out.

48.    Another option is to build in an allowance for variations and apply that to agreed changes to the specifications. We recommend an allowance from 10% to 20% of the total. We will deduct variations from this budget and refund you any unused proportion, but variations that exceed the allowance will be an extra-to-budget cost. This is not an “unlimited kilometres” option.

Joomla! sites

49.    Where the site being built is based on the Joomla! open source system then the Joomla! Components will be created by our technology partners Foote Francis Pty Ltd (F2).

50.    Components provided by F2 will be subject to F2’s standard terms and conditions and warranted by F2 according to those terms and conditions.

51.    We will manage the entire project including work by F2, so you have a single point of contact.

52.     We will include F2 components in our quote and invoices, at the same price F2 would charge for a direct sale.

Payment

53.    All website work is based on 40% deposit being paid before work starts, with a further 40% on approval of both the base design and the functional specifications and the balance on the site being mounted for public viewing.

Print additional terms

Proofing artwork

54.    You are responsible for the final accuracy of your artwork: there is no refund for errors you have signed off on. Please check carefully, especially numbers, addresses and email addresses. We recommend if you can having several people in your office check the artwork, including people who have not seen it before (when you’ve seen it before you tend to see what you know should be there, rather than what is there).

Lead times

55.    In printing, time is money: if you can arrange longer lead times, you will get cheaper prices.

14-day payment

56.    To give you the best possible price we will normally quote print based on 14-days from invoice terms and by accepting a quote you agree to these terms.

Consulting additional terms

Contract rates

57.    For continuing clients, a fixed-price monthly contract is often the best option. Work may fluctuate up and down, but your charge is the same.

58.    Fixed-price contracts cover specified types of work only. Generally they do not include travel and out of pocket expenses.

59.    Involve us more and get better value! We believe that contract clients get the best value for money overall, largely because we learn more about them and can achieve better results.

Fixed item prices

60.    If you regularly require the same types of work (eg, write stories for a newsletter, write press releases) we can quote you fixed prices for these items.

61.    We can quote fixed prices for major projects, based on a detailed project brief that defines what we are quoting to do. Variations to the brief are extra to quote.

Government relations (lobbying)

62.    We deliver government relations work under long term (six to 12 months), fixed-price contracts. Developing a relationship with government is a long-term proposition; short term action is of little value.

63.    Charges for government relations work cover drawing on our expertise and contacts built up over decades. These charges are related to use of these resources, not to the time spent that is directly attributable to a specific client. Consequently, charges are service based not time based.

Quoting costs

64.    While we do not normally charge for quoting, please be aware that quoting even a medium project can take a day or more, so we cannot afford to do repeated or speculative quotes: we require a detailed brief to quote to.

Quotes versus jobs

65.    Some “quotes” are actually jobs. A typical example is being asked to quote for “a marketing strategy”. We cannot quote the implementation of a strategy without planning what it should be, and that is a paid job. In this situation we can only quote to develop the strategy; once the strategy is developed it can be costed. As a rule of thumb, any “quote” that requires market or organisational research or that involves strategic decisions or planning is actually a job.