Project Pricing, Version and Licensing

ajish.raju

Coming from a programming services background, i am interested in the views of the forum in terms of

1. Do you offer free upgrades to clients since residential projects are constantly being upgraded based on the client's desires.

2. Since there have been instances where clients have paid after a year after the project is handed over. Do you offer a limited version on site and after full payment, activation is done like other premium softwares on the net or a trial period of three months.

3. What are the best ways to do a trial period or a project activation. It's easy to delete project files after a trial period but to activate a project is it better via a touch panel or a file uploaded to the file server of the controller.

John Nagy

This is discussed at length in another thread, although it's not simple to find using the search tools in this forum.

Your local laws prevent some actions, for example you can't put a time-bomb in the code nearly anywhere. Similarly, you can't typically take an action to disable a running system "in retaliation" for non-payment without a court order.

On the other hand, a temporary, expiring license used during the build (that is hardly different than a bomb) is generally legal.

Overall, complete disclosure of terms including consequences of non-payment is best, whatever mechanism you choose.

ajish.raju

Thank you for your comments. Clients usually put pressure to reduce deadlines but payments has never come early. I was thinking about the best way to motivate clients to pay on time

the8thst

Early pay discount is probably the only way to get them to pay earlier than they absolutely have to.

I have started putting in a timer that will activate a popup message that reads,"Please Contact Our Billing Department at xxx-xxx-xxxx" and it simply has a "Close" button on the bottom.

I set the timer to expire 30-60 days after the final payment is due because we do residential projects and the home owners are always making changes up to the final day. When the timer runs out the popup starts to show up when they turn a zone on/off or change sources. The popup has a 20 second timeout as well. This way we add an inconvenience to the system, but don't hinder it's operation or break any existing features.

To this day I have only had the popup show up on one job, and we got a phone call the very next day from a very upset non-paying customer. Tempers can run hot when money is involved, so you have to be prepared with a good response when those phone calls come in, and it doesn't always yield a happy ending.

ajish.raju

Thank you all for your posts. I know the customer is always king but sometimes a very few of them are a little difficult.

mpullin

the8thst wrote: »

I have started putting in a timer that will activate a popup message that reads,"Please Contact Our Billing Department at xxx-xxx-xxxx" and it simply has a "Close" button on the bottom.

Even that could be dangerous. http://www.amxforums.com/showthread.php?2304-Software-Licensing

DHawthorne

We generally offer free updates and program touch ups for about a year after the sale is final. I say "about" because we will often extend it if the update is quick and simple to implement; it makes for better customer relations and helps future sales. We'll often leave firmware updates and the like as an open issue for much longer if it's they address ongoing problem that was present when the system was installed. For example, I just updated a couple R4's for free even though the job is two years old, because the client had an ongoing issue where the back light wouldn't turn off in his bedroom, and the latest hotfix is supposed to deal with that.