Software projects get a lot of energy around launch day and surprisingly little around every day after. That contrast is decided by the support agreement. Here is the checklist we use when we review support contracts — including our own.

The five things every contract must define

1. Response time vs fix time. "We respond within business hours" is about an email. What matters is the other number: how long until the till works again. Response and fix are different promises — make sure both are written down.

2. Who is in scope and who is not. Bugs in the software you commissioned: covered. The internet provider's outage, the payment provider's delay, the laptop dropped in a drawer of a vehicle: not on the software vendor. Scope fights start where ambiguity lives, so write down both sides.

3. Backups and the two recovery numbers. You need two: how much data can be lost on a bad day (recovery point), and how long the business is offline (recovery time). If the agreement has no numbers for these, the data strategy is hope.

4. Business hours that match your trading hours. "Business hours" maps differently. If the shop is open at 7 am or trades on Saturdays, support must define the same calendar — not the vendor's office hours.

5. Maintenance and versions. Software rots slowly: dependencies age, security patches ship, integrations change. The agreement should say who keeps the system alive — and what the cost of major upgrades is before you need them.

A healthy agreement asks "what happens when"

Read the contract like a drill, not a document:

  • What happens when the till goes down Thursday at 7 pm?
  • What happens when a payment reconciliation doesn't match late Friday?
  • What happens when you ask for a new simple report?

Every "what happens when" deserves a plain answer to the page. The yearly renewal is the right moment to read it again together with the vendor — the contract should be re-checked as the business changes.

How Brysofts runs support

At Brysofts, launch and operations are two agreed contracts, decided together. The team that builds a system is the team that answers the call — no handoff to a stranger — the support hours are the trading hours you choose, and everything, scope and cost, is written down. That is why the question "what do I need after launch?" has a clean answer from day one.

If you want to compare your current setup, start a conversation and we'll help you turn this checklist into your own contract.