Before we start…..
A brief note for new Clients,
On Communications, Terms, Guarantees, Liability, Payments and Trust
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Quick Links
Thank you for selecting me for your project. My assistants and me will try to give you our very best, in terms of dedication, skill, extra hours, availability and prompt communication.
Before we embark upon our brief journey, I have made a few points which shall make our association smoother.
1. Working Hours :
- I work in India time zone.
- We work 11 am to 7 pm in office which is
USA EST midnight to 8 am.or,
USA PST 9 pm to 5 am.
- I am available for calls from my home office as well, 8 am to 10am EST and 7 pm to 9 pm EST.
- If needed as a special case, I can be available in your suited time every once in a while for a call.
2. Communication :
- I would prefer zoom calls thru upwork platform.
- For direct calls, or short messaging or to setup a call, I prefer whatsapp software.
- My email is also at bottom for long communications.
- My contact details are in bottom of this.
- I am also comfortable to communicate using MS Teams, Google Chat or Slack.
3. Specific requirements :
- I request you to be very specific and clear in your requirements.
- You can give your input data files, column names of output fields requested, calculations and report details.
- This saves our time and your cost
- We build your project correctly as you imagined without many revisions.
4. Shared Folder :
- I would prefer to start a shared cloud folder for all our work.
- This can be either in Google Drive or MS One Drive.
- We place your data files and our app files here for you to see and access the latest versions of our work.
5. Type of Contracts :
- I prefer to work on hourly contracts.
- We can do a fixed rate contract, as per upwork options, loosely based on estimated hours.
- My past experience shows, that sometimes alterations and additions are made in the project, thereby lengthening the scope. If the project is more than 20 hours, we can log our hours on a common Google sheet for you.
- For long-term contracts we can work on a Monthly billing cycle.
6. Software Used
- We do a lot of work on Microsoft technology products on the Windows platform.
- We use MS Excel and Power queries within it to make better, flexible and outstanding spreadsheets for data analysis.
- We also share them on MS-One Drive or Google Drive.
- Due to nature of these proprietary software, some feature may not work very well on Apple or Macbooks.
- It is the clients responsibility to have legal and latest windows and MS-office products.
7. Transparency :
- Our work is open and transparent.
- We never password-protect or lock our work.
- So in short it is your IP
- You are free to work, modify or take it elsewhere if you wish to any time.
8. Privacy :
- You can be rest assured, we don’t sell /share your data, or misuse it in any malicious way.
- You data stays within our office computers, which is shared by my 4 employees.
- However, we do take screenshots of all our projects and use them in our promotions. If you have any sensitive data, please inform me.
9. Billing and hours :
- I usually start a shared Google sheet where I log in my hours for you to see.
- You may check it at regular intervals and let me know, if it exceeds your budget or expectations.
- We may invoice biweekly, monthly or end of project as contracted between us.
- We often end up putting in a lot more hours in the project than what we may be contracted for.
- Our work is not easily quantifiable, due to nature of this work.
- We sometimes lose our work as software hangs up.
- Coding has its own challenges too, each problem and project is unique and sometimes we end up studying specific coding techniques for your project for hours.
- A reasonable pay rate according to me based upon above and our talents would be min $40 to $50 per hour. However, to be competitive and in hope of landing long term clients I may sometimes bid lower than this.
- We can only request you to be fair & punctual in paying up for what is contracted between us and trust the hours logged in by us in our shared time sheets.
10. Our Overheads & Earnings :
- Contrary to what many people think, this is not a high-profit business.
- The aggregator platform Upwork charges us fees under 6 different ways and deducts approx. 40-60% of our earnings.
- The Upwork platform charges us extensively for bidding on projects in terms of points, which end up being approx. $150 to $300 between landing a project.
- Besides this to stay on the platform, we spend $20 a month on fixed membership fees, $30-80 a month in advertising charges for making our bids visible to prospective clients among many.
- After we land a project, the platform deducts a 10% flat commission on revenue, 4% in taxes, 3 % bank Charges as a direct cost of revenue.
- Lastly the site prefers we keep our money earned on their platform only, and penalize us by charging a $30 withdrawal fee for withdrawing funds.
- Not to mention we have overheads of 4 employees, office rent, internet, equipment and other charges.
- We also pay 25% income tax on net profit.
- Point being, after taxes we hardly get about 30to 40% what you pay to the platform. So please don’t negotiate or make deductions
11. Glitches and Guaranty
- We provide you with intermediate versions of our work for comments and improvements.
- We try our best to test out our software before finally sending it out.
- However, it may still have some minor errors.
- We will be glad to fix any minor fixes, errors, colors or formatting upto a period of 60 days after delivering our product.
- We guaranty our projects to be error free and will fix any minor bugs or do changes.
- We also offer 7 day full refund Guaranty
- And 30 day 50% refund guaranty.
12. Legal Liability :
- We guarantee our work and would be glad to do some rework if there are problems.
- We are in no way liable for any loss or harm caused to you due to errors, malfunction or non-performance of our software and apps as per your expectations.
13. Other Tasks :
- We are also available to do other tasks in the realm of spreadsheets, analytics, accounting, payroll, data entry or regular reports, downloads, reports, audits, filings, email responses etc. from our in-house full-time team.
- We can also act as a conduit to manage & develop other tasks for you, from other freelancers / employees in areas of Graphic design, video editing, websites, high-end accounting, coding, apps, documentation, tax prep files, editing legal documents etc.
- My biggest client from US, provides me 300 hours a month of regular and innovative work, and has been with me since March 2022. He is very satisfied by offloading their regular work of accounting , Payroll and some admin reporting tasks to to me.
14. Trust :
- I work on basis of trust & honesty.
- We mantain transparency in development and processes.
- Our working Hours are logged in by us in our shared time sheets.
- After the platform fees and Income Tax, We hardly get to keep about 30% of what you may pay to the platform. This is used to pay rent, salaries and overheads.
- Past experience shows, that several clients either negotiate after building the project or have not paid for their services in part or full. Please don’t do this.
- I request you to be fair and punctual in making our payments.
- Any references and positive feedback on upwork are welcome.
- I believe in building long-term relationships.
About me
- Born 1970 , Lived in India
- 1986-1991– College in Texas A & M University, USA
- Engineering Technology and minor in Business Finance.
- 1992-2005 : Handled family business in space of metals manufacturing in India.
- 2006-2017: Owned and operated an independent business in metals manufacturing of
Brass-Copper Strips and Coils. It was a fairly mid sized company having Capex of
USD 2.4 million, annual revenues of 13 M USD and about 180 employees.
In 2017, I sold for 1.4 M USD.
- 2017-2021 : I pursued several Legal cases to recover bad debts in business.
- 2014 to Present: Investments in stock markets, mutual funds.
- 2021 onwards: Data analytics and outsourced software
- Also I am an partner in family business in a real estate project, presently on hold.
- Married, in 1994. 2 daughters
- My elder daughter graduated from Yale University, USA and is a Senior Analyst at Blackrock Corp, New York. My younger daughter is a Junior doing ECON at Yale University, USA.
- Skillsets / domains include : Manufacturing, metals, computers, software, real estate business, Law, accounting, taxes, stock markets, investments, and management.
Looking forward to a smooth and long-term relationship.
Thanks
Manish Aggarwal
Founder
Most Technologies
New Delhi, India
www.mosttechnologies.in
Email : manishaggindia@gmail.com
Whatsapp / Tel : +91-9811050224