Standard Terms and Conditions are the contract terms between a business and its customers. Sometimes they are located on the back of a proposal, sometimes on an invoice and sometimes they are their own document. In some respects Standard Terms are just like any contract, but they receive special attention because of their importance to most businesses. Most businesses benefit from having written Standard Terms and Conditions with their customers, and that is especially true because they usually come into play in a transaction gone bad.

Most businesses need Standard terms, and if they allow customers to defer payment, there should be an additional document pertaining to the credit relationship.  It may also be important for your lawyer to review the Standard Terms of another business before you agree to a deal and find yourself without the ability to get paid or efficiently resolve a dispute. Standard Terms need not be lengthy, aggressive or unfair, but they should address the basic needs of a business. The absence of terms allows for too many multiple options and interpretations, and creates unpredictable and sometime unmanageable conditions.

Obviously, you would not expect a restaurant to require their patrons to sign an agreement before serving them dinner. Yet, the tiny print on the back of movie, sports or parking validation ticket is actually terms and conditions creating obligations and limiting liability between a business and its customers. While, this may be a weakness in our legal system, the outcome of a commercial dispute is often more dependent on the existence and application of Terms than what actually happened.

For example, if you are owed $5,000.00, but don’t have an agreement awarding you legal fees, you may decide that it is not worth pursuing the claim. Standard Terms by the other side of a local business may require you to go to Wisconsin, the home of the head office, in order to right a wrong. On a small transaction you may be liable for large consequential damages all because of the presence or absence of a few seemingly unimportant words in the Terms.