Be Excellent To Each Other

I have managed to blag myself some consultancy work for a former employer (essentially, I'm just going to be maintaining/improving a few Access databases that I wrote while I was still there).
They have asked that I guarantee support of these databases after I've finished working on them, so I'd like to try and word that properly in my "contract" that I'm putting together (I've never done any consultancy work before, so any general advice would also be welcome).

Basically, I'm going to fix, for free, any bugs that crop up in the software and anything that doesn't work as it's supposed to in the agreement we've come up with. What I'd like the contract to say is that I don't want to support them indefinitely (I have no idea what I'll be doing in x years time and I may well not want to try and remember how some databases I wrote many years previously are supposed to work), and I also don't want to have to fix anything that crops up as a result of other software installations. I've already had the pleasure of experiencing Vista manage to break databases that quite happily work in XP, so I don't really want to have to fix anything that suddenly breaks under a new version of windows many years down the line (I guess I'm asking the same thing here).

If you're still reading, then what's a reasonable time period for me to say "I'll fix all your bugs up to this point, but if you happen to find any after that, tough."?

Mate of mine runs a large umbrella company for IT contractors - I'll fire this over to him and see if he has anything reasonably standard you can crib from.

6 months. And any user errors or problems due to systems changes should be chargeable. All IMO.

That said, many contractors I know would just charge. They'd certainly claim expenses!

I just fixed a amssive networking issue my friend's computer. Expect the four horseman to arrive soon.

I'd be inclined to specifically write in something about the free maintenance not including problems caused by changing the operating system or database version, if that's what you're concerned about. (I.e. you'd want to be paid to sort out problems caused by stuff which can't reasonably be forseen). And time-limit free support to a year.

I don't know what the standard practice would be though.

I'd say if you're doing support for free no more than a couple of months. If however they are paying you enough to do the work and do the support, then no more than 6 months. Then after they would be expected to pay for time and materials or some other developer.


*EDIT* Chinny also sounds good

Great, thanks everyone. I'll say 6 months with an exception for anything caused changing software versions.

Trousers, I don't have to get this in until tomorrow, so if you get anything useful off your mate that would be much appreciated.

Which Umbrella company is it, a few of us at our place might be lookign for contract work. i for one don't want a limited comapny again.

Or user error (or maliciousness), or disaster (failed hard disk, theft, backup tapes failing, *not doing* backups).

And you'll only fix for free stuff broken by a critical or security Windows Update (or other vendor package related to your stuff), anything else counts as them upgrading to newer versions deliberately.

And no training.

And the spec has to be fixed up front, no "Oh, we thought it would do this" 3 months into the support period.

Possibly take an image of the hard disk as you leave it (making sure they know and okay that), so when they say nothing's changed, you can boot a VirtualBox with it, point and say "O RLY?" Or when they don't do a backup and set fire to the computer, you can at least offer to restore it to the state they'd paid you to get it to (during the first 6 months).

Cynical, me?

Perhaps, but it's all stuff I need to consider. Thanks.

Parasol. They are the PCG's recognised quality umbrella or somesuch.