FLAT18 Terms of Service and General Procedural Guidelines

This document contains references to monetary values. You may choose to convert these prices to a more convenient denomination below.

This document has been updated with current procedural guidelines and improved compatibility with Flat18 Ease of Communication Standard (F18 EoCS).

1. Our limited liability company, FLAT 18 MICROSYSTEMS DEVELOPMENT LLC, is sometimes referred to as: @f18micro, F18, Flat 18, FLAT18.CO.UK on different social and internet platforms.
   Flat 18 and any project staged as a subdomain of flat18.co.uk are also governed by this document. The customer party will be referred to as you, your. Flat 18, the service-provider party, may be referred to as us, we, our.

2. Our interactions with you and our work undertaken for you are governed by the terms and guidelines set out below.

3. Hours of Operation

   Work at Flat 18 is conducted on highly-flexible schedules across multiple time-zones. Our availability to answer your questions and deal with queries, requests and other correspondences, is limited to our operating hours of 09.00 - 17.00 "UTC" Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), UTC +0 or "GMT", Monday to Friday.

   You will always be able to get a message to us, even outside of those hours and on weekends, but we will likely respond less promptly.

4. Engaging Flat 18 for work

   You may contact us about developing your project via any of our primary channels: Telegram (@f18micro), website live-circle (https://flat18.co.uk), email (hello@flat18.co.uk).

   During our chats we help you decide if Flat 18 is the right development company for your project.

   You will be asked to provide as much detail on your project, as is practical. Budget-size and desired completion date are also valuable to us in determining how to plan for and cost your project.

   We will then give you prices, samples, technical outlines and data on planned approach, schedule, methodologies and strategies to be employed (depending on your project).

   We would be delighted if you should choose us to develop your project and at that point, we shall create an account for you identified by a name, nickname, pseudonym or contact detail. We will produce and send you a quotation document detailing the agreed scope, and outlines of your project.

   You can contact us at any time regarding your project, but we also encourage weekly meetings to discuss progress or other matters, via our website live-circle, telegram or voice-call.

5. Scheduling and Queueing

   You will usually receive a quotation after discussing your project with us. Quotations accompany an invoice automatically, for convenience.

   Invoices for our Essentials Monthly package are due immediately since your development blocks of 40 hours must be paid for in advanced or pre-paid. Invoices for additional blocks of time or for our Flexible PAYG package are usually generated within the last week of a calendar month or at the end of a project, whichever is sooner. These invoices are due immediately since they apply to work already done.

   If your quotation does not include a planned date of commencement, we will begin development within 1-4 weeks of receiving a full payment of your invoice.

   We queue activities, reviews, jobs, changes and updates according to developer schedules and flow of work activities. This may mean that your development hours are likely to be distributed sporadically throughout a calendar month. You can always contact us for an update.

6. Payment

   Under normal circumstances, you should only pay an invoice for a new project if you would like to begin development work on that project.

   When using our Flexible PAYG package, 50% deposit will be required at the start of a project, for orders over 10 hours long or costing over £500.

   You may purchase development hours in blocks of 40 hours each as part of our Essentials Monthly package. We determine the exact spread of these hours over a calendar month. Development hours reset to 0 at the end of a calendar month and do not roll over. You may purchase additional blocks of 4-hour blocks if we can accommodate it. Rates will vary. You may choose to pause development on your project at any time to avoid needing to purchase additional hours. Monthly blocks of 50 hours should be paid for in advance but additional hours can be paid for at any time during the same calendar month that they will be used in.

   You will be invited to join a git repository for your project before commencement. The repository will journal the progress of your project development and account for time spent by the commit record. Commits may not always be pushed at the time of commit.

   Sometimes, it becomes necessary for us to adjust your project schedule. In these rare situations, we will usually allow your development hours to roll over to the next month if necessary.

   If you change your mind about developing a project after you have paid, you shall be eligible for a refund of your unused hours less 4 hours at the agreed rate. You are also eligible to apply your development hours to another project which is either ongoing or scheduled to start/restart within 3 months.

7. Discounts and Promotions Validity

   Unless otherwise agreed upon, prices which are discounted or marked down in an invoice are only valid before or on the invoice due date. If an invoice does not display a due date, the date of issue of the invoice is the due date. Invoice numbering scheme always denotes the invoice date of issue (E.g.: INV-20230113-XXX which represents 13^th January, 2023).

   Invoices paid after the due date shall be billed at full-price with no discount.

8. Supply of Materials

   You must supply all materials and information as we specify, when required. Such materials may include, but are not limited to: photographs, written copy, logos and other printed material, source-codes, log-in details, SSL certificates, API keys. Delays in providing these materials may cause undesired wasting of development hours since it may not be possible to use them within the calendar month, and they will not be allowed to roll over.

   Should a delay on your part cause a project to cease development before completion by the end of a calendar month, your project will be automatically paused and you will not be invoiced for additional hours until we are able to review your project with you.

9. Communication

   During development of your project, we encourage the creating of Issues on your git repository to track feedback and implementation.

   We will suggest at least one day of every week during which we should meet via text chat on your website live-circle, telegram or a voice call for at 10-30 minutes to discuss progress updates and voice any concerns. Due to time-constraints, we may schedule a further meeting/call to cover additional topics.

10. Support

    In any case where a period of support or review period has not been defined, we will honour reasonable requests for technical support or revision of work delivered for up to one month after a project has been completed. For the purpose of efficiency, we limit support requests to 2 requests no less than 2 weeks apart. The period of support ends after 1 month (or the specified time) even if no request for revision or support has been made. We reserve the right to withhold support for any service for which payment is outstanding.

11. Variations

    You may request as many reviews or changes to your project scope as you would like. Changes may be implemented in as little as 2 business days. More complicated updates or changes may require additional meetings and materials.

    If we consider a change or variation to be complicated and require additional dialogue and materials, we will inform you and temporarily cease development until we have reviewed your project with you.

12. Project Delays and Client Liability

    Should a delay on your part cause a project to cease development before completion by the end of a calendar month, your project will be automatically paused and you will not be invoiced for additional hours until we are able to review your project with you.

    You will not be eligible to receive any refund of unused hours.

13. Termination of Service

    You may terminate a project at any time by contacting us via our website live-circle, telegram or a voice-call. You will be required to answer questions about your project to prove your identity and approve the termination.

    If have already paid for development hours, you shall be eligible for a refund of your unused hours less 4 hours at the agreed rate. You are also eligible to apply your development hours to another project which is either ongoing or scheduled to start/restart within 3 months.

    If development on your project has begun, you may not be entitled to a refund of any part of the unused hours. Your project will be paused and you will not be invoiced on the following month.

    Unused and unassigned hours are expired within 1 week from terminating the project. They cannot be used or refunded.

14. Warranty by You as to Ownership of Intellectual Property Rights

    You must obtain all necessary permissions and authorities in respect of the use of all copy, graphic images, registered company logos, names and trade marks, code, frameworks, applications, programmes or any other material that you supply to us to include in your project.

    You agree to indemnify us and hold us harmless from any claims or legal actions related to the content of your project.

15. Licensing

    Once you have paid us in full for our work we grant to you a license to use the product and its related software and contents for the life of the project excepting such software or content that is hosted by us and may be governed by a separate licensing policy.

16. Search Engines

    We do not guarantee any specific position in search engine results for your website. We perform basic search engine optimisation according to current best practice.

17. Consequential Loss

    We shall not be liable for any loss or damage which you may suffer which is in any way attributable to any delay in performance or completion of our contract, however that delay arises.

18. Disclaimer

    To the full extent permitted by law, all terms, conditions, warranties, undertakings, inducements or representations whether express, implied, statutory or otherwise (other than the express provisions of these terms of service) relating in any way to the services we provide to you are excluded. Without limiting the above, to the extent permitted by law, any liability of FLAT18 under any term, condition, warranty or representation that by law cannot be excluded is, where permitted by law, limited at our option to the replacement, re-repair or re-supply of the services or the payment of the cost of the services that we were contracted to perform.

19. Subcontracting

    We reserve the right to subcontract any services that we have agreed to perform for you as we see fit.

20. Privacy & Non-Disclosure

    We (and any subcontractors we engage) agree that we will not at any time disclose any of your confidential information to any third party. Additionally, all data collected regarding you, your business and your project is protected under our privacy policy.

    It is standard procedure for Flat18 to inform you that you should change passwords or revoke any keys or security details provided to us for a project, once the project is completed or the authentication articles have become surplus to our requirements.

21. Additional Expenses

    You agree to reimburse us for any requested expenses which do not form part of our proposal including but not limited to the purchase of templates, third party software, stock photographs, fonts, domain name registration, project hosting or comparable expenses.

22. Backups

    You are responsible for maintaining your own backups with respect to your project and we will not be liable for restoring any client data or client websites and software except to the extent that such data loss arises out of a negligent act or omission by us.

    Flat18-hosted or GutHub-hosted gits are not regarded and should not be treated like project backups.

23. Ownership of Domain Names and Hosting

    We will supply to you account credentials for domain name registration and/or project hosting that we purchased on your behalf when you reimburse us for any expenses that we have incurred.

24. Governing Law

    The agreement constituted by these terms of service and any proposal will be construed according to and is governed by the laws of The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. You and FLAT18 submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts in and of The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago in relation to any dispute arising under these terms of service or in relation to any services we perform for you.

25. Best-Practice & Compatibility

    We endeavour to ensure that the projects we create are compatible with all current, modern technologies while maintaining reasonable backwards-compatibility which may vary. We are not able to guarantee perfect compatibility with any single platform or technology but will adhere to industry-standard, established best-practice measures throughout your project.

26. E-Commerce

    You are responsible for complying with all relevant laws relating to e-commerce, and to the full extent permitted by law will hold harmless, protect, and defend and indemnify FLAT18.CO.UK and its subcontractors from any claim, penalty, tax, tariff loss or damage arising from your or your clients’ use of Internet electronic commerce.