Terms of engagement

Proposals and scope

Every engagement starts from a written proposal that sets out the scope, deliverables, assumptions, timeline and fixed price. A proposal is valid for 30 days. Work is limited to what the accepted proposal describes; anything not listed is out of scope until it is agreed in writing.

Where a proposal and this page disagree, the proposal applies. These terms cover everything the proposal does not.

Starting a project

A project is booked into the schedule when the proposal is accepted in writing and the deposit is paid. We hold a start date for 14 days from acceptance; after that, the next available slot applies. Before the first working session we will tell you exactly what we need from you and by when.

Fees and payment

• Projects are fixed price. Prices are quoted in Australian dollars and exclude GST unless the proposal states otherwise.
• A 50% deposit is payable on acceptance and secures the schedule slot. It is non-refundable once work has commenced.
• The remaining 50% is invoiced on completion and is payable before handover of accounts, domains and source code.
• Larger engagements may be split into additional milestones. Where they are, the milestones and their amounts are set out in the proposal.
• Invoices are due 7 days from issue. Retainers and ongoing improvement work are invoiced monthly in advance.

Late payment

If an invoice is more than 7 days overdue we will contact you before doing anything else. If it remains unpaid, we may pause work and hold delivery of outstanding items until the account is settled; a paused project resumes at the next available slot rather than where it left off. Ownership of deliverables transfers on final payment, so material that has not been paid for is not licensed for use.

What we need from you

Projects move at the speed of the slower party. We ask that you:

• nominate one decision-maker who can give approvals on the business’s behalf;
• supply content, imagery, brand assets and access to existing accounts by the dates set out at kick-off;
• consolidate feedback into a single response per review round; and
• respond to approval requests within five business days.

Timelines and delays

Timelines in a proposal assume the inputs above arrive on schedule. Where they do not, the delivery date moves by at least the length of the delay, because the schedule is booked around other work. If a project is inactive on your side for more than 30 days, we may invoice the work completed to date and re-book the remainder into the next available slot. Neither party is liable for delays caused by events outside their reasonable control.

Revisions and change requests

Each proposal includes 2 rounds of consolidated revisions at the design stage and 2 at the build stage. That is enough for the projects we take on, and it exists so the scope stays honest rather than to catch you out.

A request that changes agreed direction, adds pages or features, or arrives after a stage has been signed off is a change request. We will quote it as a fixed price and its effect on the timeline before doing the work — nothing chargeable is ever built without your written agreement first.

Content you supply

You confirm that you own, or hold the rights to use, everything you give us — copy, images, logos, video, data and trade marks — and that publishing it will not infringe anyone else’s rights or breach Australian consumer law. We rely on that confirmation and are not responsible for reviewing it. If you ask us to publish a claim we believe is misleading, we will raise it with you and may decline to publish it.

Third-party services, hosting and subscriptions

Projects commonly rely on services we do not control — hosting, domains, email delivery, booking systems, payment providers, CRMs, mapping and AI platforms. Those services are governed by their own terms, and their availability, pricing and behaviour are outside our control.

Unless the proposal says otherwise, subscription and usage charges for third-party services are yours and are billed to your own accounts, in your name. We will tell you during scoping what a project is expected to need and what it will roughly cost to run.

Intellectual property and ownership

On final payment, ownership of the delivered work transfers to you: the source code written for your project, the design work produced for it, the content we prepared for it, and the domain, hosting and analytics accounts set up in your name. There is no proprietary content management system to keep paying for and no lock-in.

Two things sit outside that transfer, and neither restricts what you can do with your site: the open-source libraries and third-party services it is built on, which stay under their own licences; and the general tooling, patterns and know-how we bring to every project, which remain ours to reuse. You keep your own pre-existing intellectual property throughout, and licence it to us only for as long as we need it to deliver the work.

Portfolio and publicity

We would like to show the work. We will ask before publishing anything about your project, and we will not publish commercial figures, internal documents or anything you have told us in confidence without your written agreement. You can decline, or ask us to remove previously published material, at any time by emailing studio@engis.au. A link in a project list is the most we will ever publish without asking.

Warranty and support

For 30 days after launch we will fix, at no charge, any defect where the delivered work does not do what the proposal said it would. That covers faults in what we built. It does not cover new features, content changes, third-party services breaking or changing their terms, or issues caused by changes someone else makes after handover.

Beyond the first 30 days, support is available as an ongoing improvement engagement or quoted per request. Nothing in these terms excludes rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Confidentiality

Documents, data and commercial information you share with us are used only to deliver your project, are shared only with the people working on it, and are not disclosed to anyone else except where the law requires it. The same obligation applies to anything we share with you about how our systems are built.

Limitation of liability

To the extent the law allows, neither party is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profits, lost revenue, lost data or loss of business opportunity. Our total liability arising from an engagement is limited to the fees you have paid us for that engagement. Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including under the Australian Consumer Law, or liability for fraud.

Ending an engagement

Either party may end an engagement with 14 days’ written notice. If you end it, work completed to the termination date is invoiced and payable, and the deposit is not refunded. If we end it other than for non-payment or breach, we will invoice only the work completed and hand over what has been paid for. Either party may end it immediately if the other materially breaches these terms and does not fix the breach within 14 days of being told. The confidentiality, ownership and liability sections survive termination.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia, and both parties submit to the courts of that state. Before starting proceedings, both parties agree to raise the issue directly and attempt to resolve it in good faith.