Revision of B2B Professional and Trade Terms and Conditions

Using standard terms of trading when offering professional or trade services

When offering services to customers, a sole trader or company will be well served by using a standard set of terms and conditions of trading (also known as “terms of business”). 

Such terms of business are designed to be used by suppliers to establish a comprehensive and unambiguous set of legal and commercial terms which will govern the legal relationship between suppliers of services and their customers. 

Updated Professional and Trade Terms and Conditions (Business to Business) 

Each of the Business to Business (B2B) Professional and Trade Terms and Conditions contain such terms of business and between them they cover a very wide range of types of services. 

The changes now made to these templates will ensure that they are as clear and comprehensive as possible and that they continue to conform to current law and practice. In particular, the clauses that deal with the process of issue and revision of Orders and Quotations and entering into a formal agreement have been revised. Further, the liability clause in each case now includes an optional cap on the total amount of liability that the trader accepts. 

As in all of the previous versions of these templates, a schedule to each set of terms contains a form of "Service Agreement" expressly incorporating the terms which the supplier can give to customers. Alternatively, the supplier, if it prefers, can give them its own form of service agreement.

You can continue to use the previous versions of all of these templates if you wish because they still accord with the current law, but you might wish to use these new versions going forward as they fully reflect up to date best practice.

The Business to Consumer (B2C) templates that accompany these B2B documents, will be updated shortly and customers will be advised when this has been completed.