Agreements

I’ve opened an online business and want to start receiving clients/players/income.

• How do I ensure that I’ll be paid, and on time?
• What happens if my client doesn’t pay?
• What happens if an unavoidable event harms my business?
  
  

These are some of the questions that every online business owner should seriously consider. Owners must examine how to best protect themselves in order to get ahead of potential problems and create assurance for themselves and their business.

Things get thornier from here. Don’t believe us? Add another layer to the above questions: what happens if my business is in Israel and my client is overseas, or vice versa? Things get complicated. How do we solve this?     

In the case of an international venture, we must ask:

• How do you transfer payments efficiently when it comes to suppliers, customers, and other parties in different locations?
• If there are additional costs for international payment transfers, who bears them?
• If there is another company in the chain (B2B), what internal agreement will I need?
• What is the actual service?
• What licenses will the venture have and why do you need to grant licenses from it?
• How long is the agreement for? What are the payment terms?
• Are our companies partners in a profit-sharing venture? Are payments back-to-back or without postponement? Who takes the venture’s risks upon themselves? And what if, heaven forbid, one of the parties tries to compete with me directly, appropriate connections made through me and steal my employees or customers?
  
  

All of these questions require both addressing and a clear answer. At Tal Ron, Drihem & Co., we handle these matters as part of the agreements we provide. On occasion the client will choose to refer to one point and not another, and we will be by their side to advise at every opportunity.

And that’s not all, because (almost) every business also has partners, service providers and employees. Thus, there are additional questions:

• Do these partners partake in making critical company decisions, or are they partners only in profits? How are expenses calculated? What is the difference between a joint venture (JV) and a partnership (registered or unregistered)? And between a JV and a company? Does the place of registration matter?
• What does each partner bring to the table? How are profits distributed within the company and when? How do you define the expenses and how do you “load” them in a fair and equitable way? Should you have a separate company for the venture or begin with a separate P&L at one of the parties?
• If there is a dispute, or one of the partners has decided to leave the company, what is the law and practice?
• External service providers: are they really and truly defined as such, or is there a chance that they will be recognized as employees of my company? Does this vary from country to country? What are the consequences of classifying them as workers retroactively? And, of course, the employees, the heart of every business – how can I provide them with everything that is important in a way that will also protect and provide me with certainty?
  
  

Our agreements, which are tailored specifically to the client’s needs and are based on 20 years of legal experience and 25 years of business experience, are not built from templates. They are comprehensive, clear, concise and elegant, and provide assurance and peace of mind to our clients