We make a point of speaking plainly and letting you know what’s happening—and why—throughout the project process. In the spirit of full disclosure, here are answers to questions and summaries of how we work with clients.

If you’re doing early-stage research, or if you still have questions about our software and services, you’ll probably find your answer here. But if you still don’t learn what you need to know, contact us at info@softwareonvinyl.com. We’ll fill in the blanks right away.

Q: How do clients start working with us?
After you contact us by phone, email message or online contact form, we invite you to a no-cost, no-obligation consultation. It requires only about 30 minutes of your time. Then, if we can help you, and you want to engage us further, we’ll set up a kickoff meeting.

Q: What services do you provide?
We create customized solutions for our clients and manage these solutions after projects are complete. Specifically, we:

• Create customized software products and tools. And, we deploy, adjust and thoroughly test our work before we are done.
• Manage the applications and tools we create after the project is complete. This service includes managing cloud servers on a third-party hosted site. Because this service is not part of the project, it requires an additional fee.
• Handle out-of-warranty software maintenance, upgrades and other changes. Because this service is not part of the project, it requires an additional fee.

Q: Do you charge hourly or fixed fees?
We prefer hourly contracts because they are the most fair, flexible and cost-effective option for everyone involved. Hourly billing works better with Agile programming and management methods. It enables us to design the project in stages and respond to your feedback without having to renegotiate the agreement every time we make a change.

Q: How do you bill for projects?
We usually invoice monthly with net-30 terms. If the project is fixed-fee, criteria for acceptance are clearly called out in the contract, as well as details regarding software maintenance periods, what is covered under warranty and for how long the warranty lasts.

Q: How do you charge for management, update and maintenance services that occur after the software development project is finished?
Our project managers often continue to manage the operational infrastructure of applications on an ongoing basis. And, sometimes, clients want our IT administrators to maintain and update software we create for them. We are glad to provide these services.

We usually charge hourly fees for these after-project services. However, for ongoing support, it sometimes makes more sense to charge a fixed, monthly fee. This is something we can discuss during the kickoff meeting.

Q: What happens in the kickoff meeting?
Quite a bit, really. First, we get to know more about your business and what it does. Then we discuss:

• Your goals, that is, what you want our software or services to accomplish.
• In business terms, how you would define success.
• Define scope of services. We work with you to decide whether you need only programming help or additional skills, such as graphic layout and design or production services for print, video or multimedia deliverables.
• Discuss resources. We identify any source materials you will provide, schedule interviews with specialists and decide what, if any, additional resources you’ll provide before and during the project. If the project requires that you deliver source materials or information before work begins, a timeline and specific requirements are spelled out in the project agreement.
• Discuss start and end dates. If you really need a rush job, we need to talk about adjustments to the calendar and fee schedule.
• How and how often we’ll report project status. We encourage clients to get a complete update at any time. But, for longer or more complex projects, it’s good to decide who gets status reports and what’s in each report.

Q: How do you define when the project is done?
The project agreement will list the conditions and deliverable, which must be met before the project is considered complete. If a transition plan would help, we’ll be glad to work with you to define it.