Accountant Partner Programme Commercial Terms

Transcription

1 Accountant Partner Programme Commercial Terms These are the Commercial Terms which govern your Membership of the Sage Accountant Partner Programme in the Republic of Ireland. These terms, together with the attached standard terms and conditions, form the agreement between you and us for your Membership of the Accountant Partner Programme (the Agreement ). All capitalised terms used in these Commercial Terms have the same meaning as they are given in the attached standard terms and conditions. 1. Acceptance of the Agreement and these Accountant Partner Terms These Accountant Partner Commercial Terms shall be deemed to be accepted by you when you pay any applicable Annual Membership Fee relating to the Sage Accountant Partner Programme. 2. Commencement Date The Agreement shall commence on and be effective from the date you accept these Commercial Terms as detailed at 1 above. 3. Products These Commercial Terms apply to certain Sage products and services in the Sage 50 and Instant product portfolio, which will be notified to you by Sage from time, including: Sage Instant Accounts and Payroll Sage 50 Accounts Sage 50 Financial Forecasting Sage 50 HR Sage 50 JobCosting Micropay Sage Stationery Sage Training Essential Cover Extra Essential Cover Plus & Essential Cover Expert Sage HR Advice Online, Sage Health & Safety Advice Online, Credit Control Advice Online First Books Tasbooks Sage may remove products and services from these Commercial Terms. Sage may also add existing (or newly launched) products and services to these Commercial Terms from time to time, and. such products and services will also be covered by the terms and conditions of this Agreement. 1

2 4. Requirements & benefits Requirements As a minimum requirement you must have an active subscription to Sage s Client Manager programme and agree to pay the Annual Membership Fee (which we will notify to you). There must be at least one accredited person per site (please see section 5 of these Commercial Terms for more detail on accreditation). Your use of the Sage brand is governed by our Brand Guidelines (available on request) and your ability to market and publish details of your status and Membership of the Accountant Partner Programme must be undertaken in accordance with good industry practice. You agree you shall not make any announcement to any third party about your status as a Member of the Accountant Partner Programme, including without limitation any advertisement, press release, promotional documentation, sales presentation, marketing material(s) or any other such publication, (whether oral, written or electronic) without first receiving Sage s prior written approval. Benefits For the duration of this Agreement you will have access to various benefits, as notified by us to you from time to time and subject to availability, including:- ongoing marketing and business development support; access to R&D programmes; access to bespoke education and training courses; access to sales and operational support; attendance at Focus Groups; involvement in product beta testing, product evaluation and piloting; and the option of paying for products by direct debit provided you offer equivalent direct debit options to your Clients. 5. Accreditation The training and accreditation programme manual which is applicable to you as a Member of the Accountant Partner Programme, as published by us from time to time, is available on request. The programme contains the transparent and objective qualitative criteria which you must meet and maintain in order to achieve and maintain the necessary accreditation. Accreditation must be gained within 6 months of the Commencement Date and thereafter must be maintained on an annual basis. You must have a minimum of one accredited person within your 2

3 organisation. Updates to training, and additional training required (if your accredited status is removed by us, for example in accordance with section 14 of these Commercial Terms, or if an accredited person leaves your organisation), must be attained within 3 months of the date that: (i) we notify you in writing of the required update or that your accredited status has been removed; or (ii) the accredited person leaves your organisation (as applicable). 6. Accountant Partner Copies Use of Accountant Partner Copies We will supply you with an Accountant Partner Copy of a limited number of Sage products. These Accountant Partner Copies are to be used and installed in accordance with the relevant Software Licence Agreement, except that you may also use them for the following purposes only: Demonstrations: to give demonstrations to potential and existing Clients from the computer upon which the Accountant Partner Copy is installed. You must own that computer. Training: to give training to existing Clients from the computer upon which the Accountant Partner Copy is installed. You must own that computer. In-house use: Accountant Partner Copies can be used only by you, to run your own company accounts, business processes and payroll etc, dependant upon each product s functionality. This benefit may only be exercised by you and, for the avoidance of doubt, not any related entities. In addition, this does not permit you to use the Accountant Partner Copy in any way to provide or run any accounts, payroll or other business services or processes for any third parties whatsoever. Product entitlement As an accredited Member of the Sage Accountant Partner Programme you are entitled to request Accountant Partner Copies of certain products, for example: Sage 50 Accounts Professional (1 Company, 1 User) Sage 50 JobCosting (Single User 1 Company) Sage 50 HR (Single User 1 Company) Instant Accounts (Single User 1 Company) MicroPay Tasbooks The current list of products, for which you may request Accountant Partner Copies, is available on request. Replacement disks and manuals Sage has a set policy dealing with requests for replacement disks. If you lose, misplace or damage your Accountant Partner Copy disks and/or manuals you should contact Accountant Partner sales and services telephone support line on and request a replacement. These will be supplied to you at our discretion, and a charge may apply. 3

4 Upgrading Accountant Partner Copies of software Under no circumstances will Accountant Partner Copies be upgraded. They are to be used solely as supplied to you by us. Should you require additional functionality for any purpose other than those described in the Use of Accountant Partner Copies section above, you must purchase these products and register them with us independently of your Accountant Partner Copies. Loading Accountant Partner Copies of software on customer sites Under no circumstances should you load your Accountant Partner Copies onto any computer which you do not own and/or other than in line with the terms set out in this Agreement, without the prior written consent of Sage. 7. Price List The Price List is the price list and Accountant Partner Programme discount policy (which we sometimes call tiers and margins ) published by us from time to time. Our Price List as at the date of this Agreement is available from us on request. From time to time we may offer special promotions, incentives and discount rates (including different discount rates for new releases). How we may vary our Price List We may vary our Price List at any time, without notice. However, we will endeavour to give you as much advance notice as we are reasonably able, should we decide to do so. If we do give you advance notice, we will provide this in writing, by sending you an to your nominated contact and/or by publishing a notice on our website and/or in one of our standard monthly communications. Additional information relating to Clients with Essential Cover - Essential Cover pricing when a Client upgrades during the Essential Cover term Mid term Essential Cover applies to upgrades to ALL registrations of Sage software, which are supported under an Essential Cover contract. Mid term Essential Cover is the payment of the difference between the Essential Cover contact on the previous package and the package to which the Client is upgrading. For example: Sage 50 Accounts Essential Cover (12 Months) 514 Sage 50 Accounts Plus Essential Cover (12 Months) 891 If a Client upgrades from Sage 50 Accounts to Sage 50 Accounts Plus, after 6 months of their Essential Cover contract, they will pay the difference between the two contract prices, as follows: Sage 50 Accounts 514 paid = 514 Sage 50 Accounts Plus ( ) / 12 = x months remaining (6) = ) It is your responsibility to ensure that the relevant cost is quoted to the Client and to inform the Client of its calculations and origins as requested. 4

5 Concessionary pricing Sage in its sole discretion may introduce and remove concessionary pricing. Further details of any current concessionary pricing are available on request. Our other fees and charges Our fees and other charges for training and accreditation are as published by us from time to time in the relevant training and accreditation programme manual, which is available on request. Our fees and charges for other services, not included in the Price List (for example for bespoke on site training), are as published by us from time to time in the relevant publication (also available on request). 8. Direct debit option A direct debit option is available to you if you agree: (i) to sign a direct debit mandate to allow the cost of a product to be debited directly from your bank account (in accordance with the BACS scheme and Sage direct debit policy); (ii) to keep such mandate in place until termination of the arrangement and all monies due to us have been paid; and (iii) that you will offer equivalent direct debit options to the Client you are buying the product for. 9. Delivery and delivery charges We reserve the right to deliver products to you in any way we deem appropriate, including for example courier, post, ftp site. Delivery of box products (which excludes stationery) by post will be charged and invoiced to you at the price notified to you by us after we accept your order. 10. Ordering procedure Orders can be placed by calling or alternatively by contacting your account manager (by or phone) and quoting your account details. As a minimum, you must provide us with the following information for each order: Client s business name or name of licensee; Client s address; Client s telephone number; Product details (names, versions, type etc); Number and type of licences/number of users; and Contact address (if available and you notify the Client that we will communicate with them via ). 11. Support and maintenance Support Subject to our standard terms, during the Term of your Membership, we will provide you with marketing and business development support, and sales and operational support. Maintenance Updates to and new versions of Accountant Partner Copies will be provided to you as described in section 6 above, under Use of Accountant Partner Copies. 5

6 12. Revenue target 3,000 per 12 month period, starting on the Commencement Date and rolling over in subsequent periods of 12 months. We may change the revenue target from time to time by giving you prior written notice of at least thirty days. Failure to meet the revenue target in any one 12 month period may result in the termination of your Accountant Partner Programme Membership and you may be required to repay to us the difference in the sales margins you actually received and those lesser sums you would have received had you not be eligible to join the Accountant Partner Programme. 13. Essential Cover renewals For many years we have operated an auto-renewal policy for Essential Cover customers. The system works much in the same way as car insurance. About two weeks prior to the renewal date, Clients with Essential Cover will receive a renewal invoice directly from us. This process was introduced to ensure that customers were not left without Essential Cover for any period of time. There are a number of policies which support this process: 50 restart fee for lapsed customers If a Client cancels an Essential Cover contract but then wishes to receive it again, they will be subject to a re-start fee. This fee is to cover the cost of associated administration. Re-invoicing for Essential Cover after customer cancellation Members are not permitted to re-invoice for Essential Cover on a Client s account within 60 days of the cancellation of the contract. Members cannot cancel Clients Essential Cover contracts Under no circumstances are Members permitted to cancel Essential Cover contracts on behalf of a Client. 14. Secondary distribution It is our strategy to have a fully accredited accountant partner channel. It is important that all Members, regardless of size, provide the same levels of service to our mutual customers. The Sage training and accreditation scheme is designed to ensure our Members deliver an excellent level of customer satisfaction and reduce the level of customer complaint to Sage regarding poor consultation, recommendation, deployment, support and ongoing service relating to Sage s products. In view of this, accredited Members of the Accountant Partner Programme may only re-distribute products to other accredited Members. They must NOT redistribute to any other source including, non-accredited Members or other entities who intend to resell the product. 6

7 If we find instances of unauthorised distribution through Sage s monthly business audits, we will discuss the matter with you prior to considering what action we should take or require. These actions may include but are not limited to: removing accredited status or withholding your incentive scheme bonuses and account closure. You may from time to time establish business relationships with third parties who are not Members of the Sage Accountant Partner Programme, whereby a finders fee arrangement is in place (e.g. the non-member finds a potential customer but is not authorised by us to provide them with software, so they refer the potential customer to you and you pay them a finders fee). If this is the case we would ask that all customer evaluations and pre sales consultations are done by you as an accredited Member. 15. Contact and account details Sage is consistently improving communication to Members of the Accountant Partner Programme and it is important to ensure that contact data is accurate and maintained. In order to do this we request that you keep us informed of any changes to the following: business name (and trading name, if different) and type (for example limited company, sole trader, partnership, LLP, unincorporated association); business address (and registered office address, if different); telephone, mobile and fax numbers; primary and secondary contact names (with job title); website addresses; and addresses. Company name change You can inform us of any name changes by calling , contacting your account manger. Should you wish to change your own company name you should take the following steps: 1. Call the Accountant Partner sales support telephone line on to inform Sage of the requirements. We will send you the necessary documentation. 2. Complete the standard request form. 3. Fax or post copies of the Certificate of Company Name Change issued to you by the Companies Registration Office. This should be accompanied by written confirmation of the request and/or the completed form. Upon receipt of these documents Sage will amend the company name in accordance with your request. Sage (UK) Limited