During the past season, some of my clients and II have experienced authorized woes that have had critical effects on our bottom line. All these lessons range from small to significant. The bottom line is that as a business owner, you must be sure to protect yourself. You have to be sure that you put suitable systems in place to be specific that someone else cannot come in along with, snatch your business right from underneath you, or pursue just about any legal action that can mean you can have to close the doors within your company. Why choose the best bail bonds in San Jose?
So this week, I am about to share with you five legal instructions learned that this client and I learned collectively in the past 12 months to ensure that you do not have the same challenges.
Legal Tutorial 1 – Make sure you have a contract in place for EVERY LITTLE THING.
You need to have a contract in place with the subcontractors. You must have a contract available even for your customers to ensure you are protected and coated as tight as a swaddled baby. You may be thinking, “why do I need a contract with this customer.” Well, depending on your industry, this is a must requirement.
An agreement with your customers lets them know the scope of the job you are performing. The idea removes any ambiguities throughout the types of services that you are supplying and the extent to which you happen to be offering them. Because, overly often, customers and clientele, once they begin working with you, wish to change the scope of the involvement.
Second, you need to have an offer in your contract that declares what would happen if virtually any changes are made or further services are provided, what these additional fees would be, of course, and if anything needs to be negotiated beneath a separate agreement.
Legal Tutorial 2 – Make sure that a legal professional reviews the written agreement.
If you want to create your agreements with templates that you locate online, make sure that you have a professional legal review them afterward to ensure everything that needs to be in the arrangement is included in the agreement. Again, to provide the provisions of the contract protect you and, to a point, your client.
You don’t desire your agreements to be entirely one-sided to the point where the client won’t even want to sign that. So be sure that some items are in there to protect them. Be sure that your agreements contain provisions around the start and forestall times, detailed high-level methods around what will be conducted, how the contract can be terminated by you or the consumer, and who is liable or perhaps responsible for legal fees in the event of a case. Including all of these provisions will ensure that you are safeguarded if something occurs (knock on wood) and a lawsuit pursues.
Legal Tutorial 3 – Be sure to have agreements along with your subcontractors and independent technicians
Subcontractors and independent technicians are vendors who do the job. And what I have found far too often in small businesses is that these kinds of contractors want to be treated as employees. Employees are paid on a regular payment schedule. Many people do weekly, biweekly, monthly, or perhaps bimonthly.
When working with a company, subcontractors and independent building contractors often want to be paid on the same program as your employees. Even worse, they want to be paid the minute a job is completed. Originating from a cash flow perspective, that is a recipe for disaster.
So be sure that your agreements include the main points when payments are made, the proper source document that must be submitted before payment will be even made. That legitimate documentation must be signed and received before any obligations are issued. I cannot anxiety this enough.
You need to be positive they understand that costs must be submitted before repayment is rendered and that refund will not be issued just because they will show up at your office entrance. That is not how business is performed. Payments are not published in demand. Don’t allow subcontractors to be able to rule or govern how you will pay your bills. Your job as a business owner truly is to generate these policies and treatments and ensure that these procedures are usually explained in detail in your vendors.
Legal Tutorial 4 – Include a non-performance offer
This is often forgotten. What happens if the subcontractor does not complete what they say will end? Do you still pay these individuals? If your agreement does not affect the status, which would happen in the event of non-performance, you may still be required to send payment.
Add a process all around reviewing a job once it is complete before submitting monthly payments to that vendor. Make sure this process is stated in your subcontractor agreement so that they cannot say that they performed and you did not pay. They need to be obvious, be evident and understand that their closing payment is contingent upon a reasonable job completed.
Legal Tutorial 5 – Have a legal representative on retainer.
All of these hints that I am sharing with you, which both my clients and myself have experienced over the past year, can only be enforced if you have a lawyer on retainer. Little business owners are often afraid to hire a lawyer because they could be scared of what it costs. Yet I promise you that it is a more expensive problem not to have a very lawyer than to have one particular one.
