How does Halt Designs structure payments?

Halt Designs invoices thirty percent to begin, staged payments against agreed deliverables, and the balance on handover. Retainers are billed monthly in advance. Invoices are issued in USD, GBP or AUD and are due within fourteen days.

When does the client own the intellectual property?

All code, designs, content and assets transfer to the client on receipt of final payment, including the source repository. Halt Designs retains no license and no ongoing claim, and retains only the right to describe the work publicly unless an NDA says otherwise.

What law governs a Halt Designs contract?

The agreement can be governed by the law of the client's own jurisdiction — a US state, England and Wales, or an Australian state — rather than Pakistani law. Disputes are handled first by direct negotiation, then by mediation before any legal proceedings.

What happens if a project is cancelled partway through?

Either party may terminate at the end of any completed phase with fourteen days written notice. The client keeps everything produced and paid for to that point, including the code and specification, with intellectual property assigned for completed phases. No termination penalty applies.

Terms of engagement

The deal, in plain English.

This is the readable version of our contract. Published because you should be able to read the terms before you speak to anyone.

Halt Designs works at a fixed price against a written scope, invoices thirty percent to begin with staged payments against deliverables, assigns all intellectual property to the client on final payment, and can contract under the law of the client's own jurisdiction rather than Pakistani law.

This page summarizes our standard agreement. The signed contract governs, and we will send it in full before you commit to anything. Where the two differ, the contract wins — tell us and we will fix this page.

Scope and price

Every project begins with a written specification describing what will be built, what will not, and what we need from you. We quote a fixed price against that document. The number does not move unless the scope does, and a scope change is agreed in writing with its own price before work on it starts.

Discovery can be commissioned on its own. You pay for it, you own the specification it produces, and you are free to take that document to another studio. We would rather lose a build than have someone commit to one they do not yet understand.

Payment

Thirty percent to begin. Not fifty, not the full amount up front.
Staged payments against deliverables — each tied to something you can see and sign off, not to a calendar date.
Balance on handover, due within fourteen days of the final delivery.
Invoiced in USD, GBP or AUD by bank transfer or Wise. Bank charges are ours, not yours.
Retainers billed monthly in advance, cancellable with thirty days notice.

The structure matters more than the percentages: you should never be more than one phase exposed. If we disappear tomorrow, the most you can lose is the phase currently in progress.

Intellectual property

All code, designs, content and assets we produce transfer to you on receipt of final payment. That includes the source repository. We keep no license, no ongoing claim, and no ability to reuse your work for another client.

Third-party components — open source libraries, licensed fonts, stock photography — remain under their own licenses, and we tell you which ones a project depends on before you approve it. We do not build anything that leaves you with a license you have to keep paying us to renew.

The one thing we retain is the right to describe the work publicly and show it in our portfolio. If you would rather we did not, say so and we will not.

Jurisdiction

The agreement can be governed by the law of your own jurisdiction — your US state, England and Wales, or your Australian state. You are not agreeing to litigate in Sindh, and we do not ask you to.

Disputes go to direct negotiation first, then to mediation, before anyone involves a court. In twelve years it has not gone past the first step, and the terms are written so that it does not need to.

Confidentiality and data

Mutual NDA available before the first detailed conversation. Send yours or use ours.
A data processing agreement where we handle personal data, covering GDPR for UK and EU clients and the Australian Privacy Act where it applies.
Client credentials stored in a password manager, access limited to the engineers on your project, revoked at handover.
We do not train anything on your data or use your codebase as a template for another client.

Changes and disagreement

Change requests are quoted before they are built. Small things inside an agreed phase are usually absorbed without a charge; anything that shifts the scope gets a written price and a revised date, and you decide.

If you are unhappy with something we have delivered against the specification, we fix it at no charge. If you want something different from what the specification says, that is a change request. The specification exists precisely so that this distinction is never a matter of opinion.

Ending the engagement

Either of us can stop at the end of any completed phase with fourteen days written notice. You keep everything produced and paid for to that point — code, designs, specification — with intellectual property assigned for the completed phases. There is no termination penalty and no clause designed to make leaving expensive.

If we are hosting for you and you leave, we hand over a full export and help your new provider migrate. That is not a paid service.

Warranty

Ninety days from launch, we fix any defect against the specification at no charge. That covers things that do not work as specified. It does not cover new features, changes of mind, or breakage caused by someone else editing the code — but we will always tell you honestly which of those it is.

Want the full agreement before you talk to us?

Ask and we will send it. No form gate, no call required first.

Request the contract