Custom work terms

Zach Lagden, a sole trader based in Ascot, Berkshire. No company, no team. When you deal with me, you deal with me.

I am not registered for VAT, so there is no VAT to add to any price on this site or on an invoice.

Email me at zach@zachlagden.uk. If you need my full trading address for your records, ask and I will send it.

I work with businesses only. That includes sole traders and people running something on the side, as long as it is a business.

I do not take on personal or hobby projects. When you order, you are confirming you are buying this for business purposes.

If you are not sure whether what you are doing counts as a business yet, tell me before we start and I will be straight with you about it.

Before I start, you get something in writing that says what I am building, what it costs, and when you pay. That document is the agreement between us.

If anything in your agreement contradicts this page, your agreement wins. This page fills the gaps.

Anything outside the Essential site, the Complete site and the audit.

In practice that has meant booking and quote systems, fixing email that lands in junk, reworking a site somebody else built, moving a site between hosts, and internal tools a business uses day to day.

If you are not sure whether what you want is custom or one of the fixed options, ask me. It is usually cheaper if it fits one of the boxes.

Every custom job is quoted before I start. You will never get an invoice for work you did not agree to.

If a job turns out bigger than either of us thought, I stop and tell you before doing the extra work. You then decide whether you want it done.

For a website build you pay half up front and half on completion, both by bank transfer. Work starts once the first payment clears.

By paying the deposit you are asking me to start straight away, and accepting that once the work is finished it cannot be unwound.

The deposit is not refundable once I have started work. If you change your mind before I start, you get it back.

If an invoice goes unpaid, work pauses until it is settled. I do not charge a late fee. An unpaid invoice for delivered work remains a debt.

Anything bought from somebody else is yours to pay for: your domain, business email, paid stock images, and any booking or payment service.

You can buy those yourself, or I can buy them on your behalf and put them on your invoice at cost. I do not add a markup.

Some custom work is handed over and lives on your systems. Some runs on mine, in which case your agreement says what that costs and what I am responsible for.

Where it runs on my systems: I aim for 99% uptime, I respond the same working day if it goes down, and I tell you what is happening.

Ongoing support and future changes are not automatically included. If you want them, we agree that separately.

Once you have paid in full, what I built for you is yours.

Two exceptions. Anything running on my infrastructure works the way the Complete site does: the design and your data are yours, the systems running it stay mine.

And general purpose code I wrote before your project stays mine to reuse, which is what stops you paying me to solve the same problem twice.

Anything you send me for your site, text, photographs, logos or reviews, you are confirming that you own or have permission to use.

If I write the words for you, I write them from what you tell me about your business. Read them before the site goes live.

Anything describing your qualifications, insurance, accreditations or how long you have traded is a claim your customers can check. Those need to be accurate, and only you can confirm they are.

I will not put anything on your site that I know to be untrue.

Most projects wait on something from you at some point, usually photos or wording. I will chase you rather than sit in silence.

If I have not heard from you for 60 days, the project is closed and the deposit is not returned.

If you want to pick it up again after that, message me and we will sort something out.

I can end a project too. If I do, I refund anything you have paid that I have not yet earned.

I would only do that if something has gone properly wrong between us, or if I am being asked to publish something I believe is untrue.

I will tell you why rather than just disappear.

A fix is something that has stopped working, or never worked properly. I sort those free for a year from the day your site was finished.

Any further paid work on the site restarts that year.

A change is you wanting something different from what we agreed. New wording, a new page, a different photo. Changes are always quoted before I do them, however small.

If we disagree about whether something is a fix or a change, tell me and I will look at it.

I will do this work with reasonable care and skill. I cannot promise a website will bring you customers, rank in Google, or make you money.

Some things I will never limit: liability for death or personal injury caused by my negligence, and liability for fraud. Nothing here affects anything else that cannot legally be limited.

I am not responsible for problems caused by things outside my control. That includes your domain registrar, your email provider, and any third party service on your site.

I am not liable for lost profit, lost revenue, lost business, lost contracts, lost goodwill, lost savings or wasted expenditure. That applies whether the loss is direct or indirect.

I am not liable for loss or corruption of your data or content. Keep your own copy of anything you would be upset to lose.

For everything else, my total liability is limited to what you have paid me for that piece of work.

Each paragraph above stands on its own. If a court decides one of them goes too far, the rest still apply.

Any claim has to be brought within 12 months of the work being delivered.

These limits are part of why the price is what it is. If you need me to carry more risk than this, ask me and I will quote for it.