Terms and conditions
Your standard terms — and making sure they actually bind your customers.
How we can help
- Drafting terms that reflect your sector and how you sell
- Advising on incorporation, which is where most terms fail
- Payment terms, interest provisions and retention of title
- Handling the battle of the forms where both parties have their own terms
- Reviewing inherited or copied terms for enforceability
- Separate terms for business and consumer customers where both apply
What happens next
- Send us your current terms and tell us how orders are actually placed.
- We review incorporation and content, and flag what would not survive challenge.
- We redraft and advise on how to bring them to customers’ attention properly.
Fees for this work
Fixed fee for a full set of terms. Reviewing existing terms is usually cheaper than starting again.
Common questions
Our terms are on the back of the invoice. Is that enough?
Almost certainly not. Terms must be incorporated before the contract is made, and an invoice usually arrives afterwards. This is the single most common reason a business finds its terms worthless at the moment it needs them.
What is the battle of the forms?
Where each party sends its own terms, the general rule is that the last set sent before performance prevails. Businesses that always respond to a customer’s order with their own acknowledgement tend to win it; businesses that do not, tend to lose.
What is retention of title?
A clause under which ownership of goods stays with you until you have been paid. Properly drafted, it can let you recover goods if the customer becomes insolvent. Poorly drafted, it is worthless — and the difference is technical.
Do consumer rules apply to us?
If you sell to individuals rather than businesses, yes, and a number of terms that are perfectly acceptable business to business are unenforceable against consumers. If you do both, you need two sets.
Tell us what's happened
Confidential, reviewed by a solicitor, answered within one working day.