Creating policy and meeting refund obligations in times of disruption.

A lot of people have been asking themselves, their teams and their suppliers, what’s the cancellation policy?  In this turmoil that is the threat of an infectious disease, event and conference producers, owners of these assets, and venue operators and suppliers are reading their contracts word for word, both incoming and outgoing.

So do you even have a contract?  Chances are that if you’re a micro business or sole trader like me, you may not even have a contract in place, it might just be an email agreement that forms a memorandum of understanding.  So where does that leave you when a client calls you and says, “I think we have to cancel/postpone/move” our event or conference?  Some of what I’ve seen recently is suppliers reading over their contracts, now trying to understand them themselves.  Are we covered for this?  Does our “force majeure” clause come into effect here?  Are we obligated to give back deposits and if all of it or just some?

So what should you do to cover yourself?

• Read your own outgoing contract and make sure you understand it, and it is enforceable.  If my good friend John Kenny taught me anything, was to make sure whatever conditions I was putting down, it was clear instruction.  There’s no “may”, “might” or “could” in my contract.
• With your own outgoing contract, actually understand what you are asking people to sign so that you can (a) answer their questions and (b) be clear if you have the wherewithal to follow through if you need to invoke a clause.
• Read all incoming contracts very carefully, highlighting clauses that you really need to keep top of mind.  Things like cancellation conditions, deposit, payment and refund conditions, and of course the force majeure clause that we all often skip over – because hey, what’s the likelihood of something like this happening right?
• Diarise any dates in the contract so you are prompted to re-visit your situation and make sure you’re prepared to go to the next phase.  For example, if the cancellation policy is full refund outside of 90 days and you booked the service a year ago, make a calendar entry to look at the contract 100 days out to make sure you’re still on track and no changes are required.  This is particularly important with large venue contracts with high minimum spends.  If you inflated or enhanced your expected numbers at the booking stage, you may   need to revise your room choice and therefore reduce your minimum spend.
• If you don’t understand something in the incoming contract, ask!  You have every right to understand what you are signing before you sign it, and you also have every right to negotiate terms and conditions of contracts.  If you don’t agree, talk about it.

Take extra cover with a policy

Contracts are one thing and organisational policy is another.  Do you have policies in your organisation?  Now is an excellent time to either write or review your policies, particularly around times like this where perhaps a contract needs to be a bit more flexible.

We often think that policies are just for big companies, they’re rules for staff to follow, boundaries that they can or can’t cross.  However, in micro, small or solopreneur businesses like mine, policies can help me put boundaries around my offerings, my solutions and ultimately my business. 

What’s your refund policy?  Is it firm, no correspondence entered into type of policy?  These are excellent times to be reviewing policies and contracts to see if they stand up when tested.  Like the good old faithful insurance policy, you might have one, thought you were covered, but alas when the unthinkable happened, you learned that you weren’t. 

Contracts and organisational policies go hand in hand.  They can be simple one-page documents that with the contract, sets out clearly the “what if” consequences and the policy, what’s our flexibility in certain situations.

Most importantly, this give you an anchor or a lifeline when the unthinkable, unimaginable and pandemic occurs.

I go through contracts, policies and procedures in the event planning workshop.  Head over to the workshops page to find out when and where the next one is.