The specific deliverables and expectations for each project or retainer are defined within our executed client proposals and approved SOWs. Please read them carefully as your use of Meticulosity’s services indicates acceptance of all our terms and conditions, including our Agency Service Level Agreement (SLA). Meticulosity's Agency SLA is meant to define and provide clarity on our hours of availability, expected response times, billing rates, payment details and more.
These terms and conditions are subject to change without prior written notice at any time, at Meticulosity’s sole discretion.
NOTE: In case of emergency, please contact 911@meticulosity.com - this is the only way to ensure everyone on our team is aware of your issue. Before submitting such a request, please review the “Emergency or Rush Requests” section of Meticulosity’s SLA below.
Core Company Office Hours
Our general working hours are from 8 AM EST to 6 PM EST, Monday to Friday, excluding holidays (as per USA federal holidays) or official office closures.
Anticipated Response Times Within Core Hours
Standard [Non-Emergency]
For all Standard (non-emergency) issues, please email requests@meticulosity.com. Our goal is to respond to all standard customer requests within 8 business hours. For small tasks which are anticipated to take one billable hour or less, we will acknowledge these requests, but may not respond with a formal estimate unless you specify one is required.
All standard tasks will be placed into our working queue for completion. If additional information is required, your account manager will respond with an outline of missing deliverables or information which will be required before providing an estimate or completing the task. To ensure timely execution of your work, please include as many pertinent details as possible in all requests.
For tasks which are anticipated to take more than one hour but require less than 20 billable hours, we will respond with a formal estimate. This estimate will include the approximate number of hours required and a timeline for completion. If additional information is required, your account manager will respond with an outline of missing deliverables or information which will be required before providing an estimate or completing the task. To ensure timely execution of your work, please include as many pertinent details as possible in all requests.
For larger project requests (estimated to require over 20 billable hours), clients will be contacted by your account manager within 1-2 business days to schedule a time to discuss the full scope of the project. This step allows us to gather all crucial information related to the project, enabling us to create the most accurate estimate possible for you.
We endeavour to maintain a Standard (non-emergency) support development queue of 7-10 business days.
Our response and development queue may change due to unforeseen circumstances. In order to best serve any request, please include a proposed timeline when submitting and we will do our best to accommodate.
Estimates are not a guaranteed of final hours and are provided based on what we feel the work will entail based on past experiences. Should we encounter unforeseen variables while executing the work that will require additional time over the estimated hours, we will contact you for approval to before we continue past the approved time allotted for the task. We will endeavour to contact you as soon as we recognize additional time will be required. Time spent on the task up to that point is still considered billable.
Please note, no non-emergency project or task can commence without official approval from a Meticulosity employee.
Emergency or Rush Requests
Before initiating an emergency or rush request, please note the initiation of emergency or rush support is billed from the onset of the request - regardless of the cause.
Billing for emergency or rush requests begins with a minimum of one hour of billable time. Emergency Requests are defined as any related issue that has an immediate negative financial impact to your business. The definition of "immediate negative financial impact" is up to you; you should not trigger an emergency request unless you deem it so and are willing to work under our billing terms.
If you are on a development or marketing retainer with Meticulosity, emergency requests are billed at your regular retainer rate. Hourly and/or Pay-As-You-Go clients must pay the full Emergency Rush Service Fee rate.
Rush Requests are defined as issues your business wishes to have expedited through our queue but that do not have an immediate negative financial impact on your business. Rush requests are billed at our Rush Service Fee rate. Retainer clients may use their retainer Hourly, Pay-As-You-Go clients will be required to pre-pay for rush requests.
Billable time commences the moment the emergency or rush support request is responded to. To ensure we receive your emergency or rush request, please use the 911@meticulosity.com email. Any emergency or rush request submitted by other means will not be viewed as an emergency or rush by our team.
It is our intent to respond to all emergency or rush requests within 4 business hours.
Projects/Custom Features
When a large project is requested that exceeds a client’s monthly retainer hours, the project will be:
a) broken into multiple, smaller projects, that can be quoted and scheduled to individually fit within your monthly retainer hours.
- OR -
b) additional retainer hours will need to be purchased to accommodate this large project being scheduled and completed within the period. *Please note; breaking a large project into multiple, smaller projects can lead to inefficiencies and larger total costs.
Retainer Hour Expiry
All monthly retainer hours expire at the end of each month and cannot be accumulated or saved for future use.
Project/account managers can be contacted for an update on how many support hours your company has used in the current month.
What's In a Meticulosity Hour?
We charge the same hourly rate for all our services.
Our service is the output of time from our subject matter "experts," be them social media managers, graphic design, strategic planning, video production, DevOps, development, fixing broken servers - our service is any number of people's time and expertise in solving their problems and facilitation of achieving business goals.
Our billable hour is a flat rate and includes project management (both internal and client-facing), research and testing, and some overhead for admin and meetings, etc. We don't typically charge for any of these things as the hour we sell includes time allocation for it - but in some cases, even our PM skills may be sold as an expert service.
A Meticulosity billable hour breaks down into:
75% - Expert Time | 10% - Internal PM
5% - External PM | 5% - QA/Research/Testing
5% - Admin/General Overhead
You’re not paying separately on a line item for project management. Instead, it is rolled into the block of time contracted by the client. When a client pays for 1 hour, they get one hour of work- be it from multiple team members or admins.
For example, assume you have a 10-hour development retainer. Your time would roughly equate to:
Rates & Packages
$175.00 USD per hour – Standard Hourly Rate
$250.00 USD per hour – Emergency Rush Rate
We have various service packages and retainer options available offering discounted rates. Please contact an account manager for further information.
If you are at a legacy hourly rate lower than the above, please be prepared for the increase on January 1, 2020.
Payment
Payment may be made by ACH, e-check, or credit card. Payment is due immediately upon receipt of an invoice. Meticulosity does not offer any form of credit terms at this time.
Billing
The engagement of a Meticulosity team member commences billable time, whether it be for support, project, training, or discovery requests. This includes all email, meeting, phone, and support time for any staff, excluding sales staff.
Monthly Retainer Clients
All retainer time, excluding rush work, is billed in 15-minute increments.
Pay-As-You-Go Hourly Clients
The minimum billing period for pay-as-you-go clients is one hour, with billing increments of 15 minutes thereafter.
Customer Responsibilities
By entering into a working agreement with Meticulosity, all customers agree to:
- Ensuring their staff members have sufficient training to attain and maintain competence in the operation of the Products.
- Providing clear information and instructions when requesting a quotation or estimate.
- Providing the assets required to facilitate the completion of work logins, files, content, and images prior to the commencement of work.
- Providing approval/feedback regarding work within two business days.
- Being aware of the perimeters, expectations, and associated fees of Rush service.
Additional Notes
Delays caused by client input or approval will delay delivery timelines but will not delay billing dates. Clients will be billed as per the original agreement in these cases, even if additional modifications are required after this agreed-upon date.
Meticulosity operates in a development server environment only. Our team does not perform changes for customers directly on their live sites. Charges apply for the initial creation of a development server environment. Should you require our development team to complete changes to your live site instead, you agree to assume all risk and liability for such changes.
This SLA is meant to be a guide that provides clarity and streamlines the workflow between Meticulosity and the client. If you are a client and have a question or concern that is not addressed in this document, please outline your question in an email addressed to requests@meticulosity.com.