Our terms and conditions

We’re delighted you’re thinking of working with us. If you decide to go ahead, we’ll do all we can to help you achieve an excellent product or outcome. Here's what we ask of you in return.
 

1. Charges

1.1 We normally charge a daily or hourly rate for our services. We will give you an estimate or quotation for the work you ask us to do, based on the amount of time we think it will take.

1.2 The exception is translation, which is charged per thousand words, counted in the source language. Unless specified otherwise, our quotation for translation will exclude revision, copy-editing and proofreading, which will be costed separately.

1.3 When we travel to you or to subcontractors, we charge at our normal daily rate for the time spent travelling.

1.4 In addition to our fees, we charge you at cost for the following items: 

• Travel and accommodation when away from home
• Major communication costs, such as courier services or phone-calls to mobiles
• Subcontracted services, such as picture hire, photocopying, printing and binding, air-freight and so on.

1.5 When we travel overseas, we may apply a small additional charge to cover the cost of travel insurance.

1.6 When we quote for printing and delivery, we do not allow for any charges levied by Customs in the destination country, nor do we accept responsibility for paying such charges.

1.7 Our charges are exclusive of VAT, which will be shown as an additional item on our invoices where chargeable. Most overseas clients are exempt.

1.8 Our minimum charge for any piece of work is GBP 75.
 

2. Payment

2.1 Because we're a small business, prompt payment from our clients is vital to our survival. We ask that you pay us within 7 days of receipt of our invoice; we require you to pay us within 30 days of the date given at the top of our invoice.

2.2 We cannot accept payment by a third party to you as a pre-condition for your payment to us.  

2.3 We do not consider you to have paid us until the money reaches our bank account. Please therefore ensure that you allow sufficient time for the transfer of funds.

2.4 Please instruct your bank to transfer the full sum invoiced, debiting any transfer charges to your account. We will ask for a further transfer if your first one falls short of our invoice total. 

2.5 We reserve the right to add interest to your bill at the rate of 2 per cent per month in the event of late payment.

2.6 Except in the case of very short contracts (4 days or less), we will invoice you in advance for 30 per cent of the agreed price. We will issue further interim invoices at agreed project milestones, such as completion of first draft or edit, completion of layout, or delivery of print-ready files. We will send a final invoice on completion of all the work.

2.7 When a project extends beyond its estimated completion date for reasons beyond our control, we reserve the right to send you an interim invoice for the work done up to that date. 

2.8 If you abort a project before completion, we will normally charge you for the time we have put in up to that point.
 

3. Additional work

3.1 When we make a quotation, we will specify (a) the tasks to be completed and (b) the products to be delivered. We reserve the right to make additional charges if you add further tasks or products in the course of the project. 

3.2 For work that is not yet clearly defined or which we have not yet seen in its entirety, we are willing to provide estimates, not quotations. We will ‘firm up’ an estimate into a quotation once the nature of the work to be done becomes clear. 

3.3 If we spend time developing the concept of a communications product with you or negotiating with a co-publisher on your behalf, we reserve the right to charge for that time at cost, provided we have notified you in advance of our intention to do so.

3.4 If we spend time ‘pitching’ for work with you by creating a trial design or mock-up, we reserve the right to charge you for that time if the job in question does not come to us.

3.5 When we design and lay out products for you, we will normally show you a few sample pages for your approval before proceeding with the rest of the layout. We ask you to review the design carefully and to suggest any changes to it before giving us the go-ahead. We will charge you additional time if you require us to alter the basic concept of a design after the layout has been completed.

3.6 We can normally accept and incorporate, without additional charge, all changes to a product proposed by you up until second page proofs have been prepared. We provide second page proofs to enable you to check that the changes you asked for on first page proofs have been executed as you wished. If you introduce extensive further changes on second page proofs, we will charge for the extra time required to make a third set of proofs.

3.7 If you need to make further changes after your work has been sent to the printer, we will ask you to pay for the time we invest in addition to any extra charges made by the printer. If work signed off by you as ready for press has to be reprinted, you will pay the costs of this.

3.8 We undertake to keep all additional charges to the minimum required to cover our own time and costs in addition to any charges made by subcontractors.
 

4. Deadlines

4.1 We will do our best to meet agreed deadlines. However, it may be that you, or a third party, may not be able to provide necessary inputs or respond to questions from us within the required time. Or an unforeseen event such as a power cut, a server failure or a strike may prevent our delivering on schedule. If problems of this kind arise, we will try to advise you of any likely delay but will not be held responsible for it.

4.2 If a deadline is missed because of delays on your side, we will continue to do all we can to deliver your product as quickly as possible. However, we will not be able to give work for you priority over work for our other clients if, in so doing, we risk missing deadlines that they require us to meet.

4.3 We do not accept responsibility for deadlines missed on account of the unexpected seizure of printed or electronic goods by Customs officials. It is up to you to allow adequate time for Customs clearance when you ask us to organize the despatch of goods to third countries.

4.4 The fees we quote are based on work performed during normal working hours (37.5-hour working week, Monday to Friday). Overtime, rush, holiday or weekend work necessitated by your deadlines or delays will be charged extra, either hourly at a minimum of time-and-a-half (when unexpected delays on your side require rush work to meet an unmovable deadline) or for a mutually agreed fee (if known from the outset of the project that the schedule will require such work).
 

5. Publishing arrangements

5.1 When we are to write or edit for you, we ask you to state clearly in advance whom you propose to be the author(s), editor(s) and publisher(s) of the resulting work. Once negotiated, these publishing arrangements should be specified in the contract between us and should be adhered to by both sides unless subsequently agreed otherwise in writing.

5.2 When we provide an author or technical editor for a non-corporate work (e.g. a book or conference proceedings, as opposed to an annual report), we ask that he or she should be named on the front cover or title page. However, we do not insist on this arrangement, provided appropriate credit is given elsewhere in the work.

5.3 In works for corporate publication, such as annual reports, or in other works where Green Ink writers/editors are not named on the cover or title page, we ask that you give appropriate credit for our contribution. Credits may appear either on the inside back cover  (this is where we prefer them to be) or, if that is not possible, in the Acknowledgements. 

5.4 It is your responsibility to seek and obtain any necessary permissions to reproduce already published material in the work we are developing. We will not be held responsible for copyright infringement on any material originating from your side. This includes material you post to a website that we have developed for you.
 

6. Websites

6.1 Coding, software, fonts, photographs and other materials used on your website remain the property of the original creator or supplier. We will, at your request, undertake to obtain or confer any necessary licenses or permissions to use such materials. You may not appropriate these materials for your own use unless such permissions or licenses have been obtained.

6.2 Ownership of draft materials supplied by you for posting to your site remains yours. However, the site itself remains Green Ink’s property until you have paid for it.
 

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These terms and conditions are not intended to replace or over-ride those in any contract or letter of agreement provided by you. If any of them conflict with your requirements or procedures, please let us know so that we can discuss ways of resolving the difference.

If we do not hear from you to the contrary, we will assume that you accept these terms and conditions, and you will be deemed to have done so if you send us work to do. We ask you to attach these terms and conditions as an annex to any contract or letter of agreement you require us to sign.