Service agreement

1. What Settles is, and what it is not

Settles is software for running a field-service business: scheduling, job tracking, time, invoicing and reporting. It is provided by Settles ("we", "us").

Settles is not a bank, a payment processor, a money services business, or a payroll provider. We do not hold, transmit, or take custody of your money at any point. Card payments are processed by Stripe, and payroll figures in the app are estimates for your own use.

2. Who may use it

You must be at least 18 years old, operating a business in Canada, and authorised to enter this agreement on that business's behalf. If you accept on behalf of a company, you confirm you have the authority to bind it.

We review every new account before switching it on, and we may approve or decline an application at our discretion. We may also suspend or close an account that we believe is being used unlawfully, fraudulently, or in breach of this agreement.

3. Your account and your people

You are responsible for everything done under your account, including by your employees and managers. Keep credentials secure and remove people who leave.

You are responsible for the accuracy of what you put in: client details, job records, hours worked, prices and tax settings.

4. What you pay us

Settles has three plans: Base at $79.00 per month, Pro at $129.00 per month and Elite at $179.00 per month. Every plan is plus $4.95 per month for each active employee on your account. Owners are not counted. The employee charge follows your roster: add someone and it goes up, remove them and it goes down, and it applies whether or not they receive phone notifications.

What each plan includes is listed on our pricing page and in Settings. You can move between plans at any time; the difference is prorated. Features of a higher plan stop when you move to a lower one, and nothing you entered is deleted.

There are no optional add-ons. Emailing invoices and payment reminders to your clients is included in every plan. Each plan includes a number of text messages to your clients a month (shown in Settings); Elite's are unlimited.

If you subscribed before these prices took effect, you keep the prices you signed up at for as long as your subscription continues.

Fees are billed monthly in advance and are exclusive of GST/HST. Subscription fees are non-refundable, including for partial months. You can cancel at any time and your access continues to the end of the period you have paid for.

If a payment to us fails, we may suspend the account until it is settled. Prices may change with at least 30 days' notice.

5. How you get paid, and who you are contracting with

Card payments run through Stripe. When you switch card payments on, you create your own Stripe account and enter into a separate agreement directly with Stripe. Stripe's terms and their decisions about your account are between you and Stripe.

For every card payment your client makes, YOU are the merchant of record. The money goes to your Stripe account and is paid out to your bank on Stripe's schedule. It never passes through us, and we currently take no percentage of it.

Interac e-transfers do not involve us or Stripe at all. Your client sends money straight to your bank and you mark the invoice paid.

6. Stripe's fees

Stripe charges you, not us, for processing. At the time of writing Stripe's published Canadian rates are 2.9% + C$0.30 for a domestic card, an additional 0.8% to 2% for international cards, and an additional 2% where currency conversion is involved. A disputed payment carries a C$15 dispute fee.

These are Stripe's prices and Stripe can change them. Always check https://stripe.com/en-ca/pricing for the current rates. We show them here so you can price your work, not as a guarantee.

7. Chargebacks and disputes - read this one

A cardholder can dispute a payment long after you have been paid out, in many cases up to 120 days after the charge, and sometimes longer where the claim is that a service was never provided.

When that happens, Stripe takes the disputed amount back out of your Stripe balance and charges a dispute fee. The dispute fee applies whether you win or lose. If your balance does not cover it, your balance goes negative and Stripe may recover it from your bank account.

You are responsible for responding to disputes with evidence. Settles helps by recording job photos, timestamps, checklists and completion records, but the response is yours to make and the outcome is decided by the cardholder's bank, not by us or by Stripe.

You are responsible for chargebacks, refunds and negative balances arising from your own sales. We are not liable for them, and you will reimburse us for any amount we are required to pay because of them.

8. Refunds to your clients

Refunds are your decision and your responsibility. Processing fees already charged on a payment are generally not returned when you refund it, so a refunded job can cost you the fee even though you keep none of the money.

9. Tax

You are responsible for registering for, charging, collecting and remitting GST, HST, PST or QST as your business requires. The tax settings in Settles are a calculator that applies the rates you enter. They are not tax advice, and we do not file or remit anything on your behalf.

10. Your clients and your work

Your agreements with your clients are yours. We are not a party to them. Quality of work, scheduling, warranties, damage, and any dispute about the job itself are between you and your client.

11. Employees, hours and pay

Pay figures in Settles are estimates calculated from the time entries recorded in the app. They are not a payroll service and they are not payroll advice.

You remain responsible for complying with employment standards, minimum wage, overtime, holiday pay, record keeping, source deductions and remittances in your province.

12. Your data

Your business data is yours. We store and process it to provide the service, as described in our privacy policy.

You confirm that you have the right to give us the client and employee information you enter, including any consent needed to contact those people or to record their location while working.

You can export your data at any time. If your account closes, we may delete it after a reasonable period.

13. Acceptable use

Do not use Settles to break the law, to process payments for a business Stripe prohibits, to run payments that are not for your own genuine services, or to defraud anyone.

• No processing on behalf of another business, and no card testing.
• No attempt to access another company's data, or to interfere with the service.
• No uploading of malicious code, and no scraping of the service in bulk.

14. Availability

We work to keep Settles available and we monitor it, but we do not promise uninterrupted service. Maintenance, outages at our suppliers, and faults happen. We are not liable for losses caused by downtime.

15. No warranty

Settles is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we exclude all warranties, express or implied, including fitness for a particular purpose and that the service will be error free.

16. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect, incidental, special or consequential loss, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business or lost data.

Our total liability to you for any claim connected with the service is limited to the subscription fees you paid us in the twelve months before the claim arose.

Nothing in this agreement excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded.

17. You indemnify us

You will defend, indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, loss, cost or penalty arising out of your use of the service, including claims by your clients or employees, chargebacks and refunds on your sales, unpaid taxes, and any breach of this agreement.

18. Changes

We may update this agreement. If a change materially affects you, we will give reasonable notice and ask you to accept the new version. Continuing to use the service after that means you accept it.

19. Ending the agreement

You can cancel at any time. We can suspend or end the service for breach of this agreement, for unlawful or fraudulent use, or on reasonable notice.

Sections that by their nature should survive termination do so, including fees owed, indemnities, limitation of liability, and governing law.

20. Governing law

This agreement is governed by the laws of the Province of Alberta and the federal laws of Canada that apply there. The courts of Alberta have exclusive jurisdiction.

21. How this fits with our published terms

Settles also publishes Terms of Service, a Privacy Policy and a Text Messaging Policy on its website. Together with this agreement they form the whole agreement between us.

This is the document you accepted, at a version we recorded along with the date and the exact wording you were shown. If it ever conflicts with the published terms, this agreement governs.

22. Contact

Questions about this agreement: support@settles.ca.