Billing Info

There are 4 normal ways we provide our software:

• Outright purchase with annual SMA. Running on your server.
• Outright purchase with annual SMA. Running on one of our cloud servers.
• Subscription/Rental, monthly or otherwise, SMA included running on your server.
• Subscription/Rental, monthly or otherwise, SMA included, running on one of our cloud servers.

SMA is 'Support and Maintenance Agreement'

SMA is an annual fee for continuing to get support and upgrades.

If you are on our standard (included in the price of SMA) upgrade method, you will receive upgrades automatically* as they are available. The frequency varies from product to product and from time to time depending on many factors.

There are options if you have a test server/system to have the test upgraded first, then when you approve, have the live system upgraded. There are also options where you can decide when to ‘allow’ the update to occur.

• If you have adopted for an alternative manual upgrade process, the upgrades themselves are included in the SMA, but the time spent doing the upgrades (typically an hour or two per upgrade if your system is reasonably accessible) are charged as professional services.

If our standard automatic process is not able to handle a specific upgrade (this is very rare, actually as of writing, it has never happened) then any such time spent by us upgrading you is included in SMA, on a manual process, you will only be changed for the hours that were because of the manual process.

Reasons for upgrades:

• New features
• Improved UI and UX
• Bug fixes
• Changes to work with the most recent browsers

That last item, changes to work with the most recent browsers has the past few years been the most critical. As an example, in December 2019 Google Chrome announced a change that would break 30% of our users starting Feb 4th 2020. After Microsoft made their fixes to match the new Google rules, we created our upgrade in December - finishing just before New Years, notified customers when we were close to completing testing, and started upgrading customers on Jan 10th 2020. Browsers make breaking changes that affect us significantly about once or twice a year. Usually we don't have to wait for someone else, like Microsoft in the above case, in which case we get the change out earlier.

Q&A:

1. Can I pay for SMA on 4 MRO licenses when I own 5?

   Essentially - no unless you are making a 'permanent' decision. If you did this we would have to change your system to a 4 user system. We do not run some that receive upgrades and support and some that don't on the same server nor can we run and older and a newer versions of the software on the same system.

2. Can I stop paying for SMA?

   Yes. But all upgrades and support will be a chargeable service. The rules for what charges apply vary from time to time and no guarantee is made that the rules today will apply when you choose to upgrade. Also you will be charged professional services to be 'brought up' to the latest version before you will able to have SMA going forward. Note: If you stopped paying (reduced the number of users) then there would be minimal (likely 1 hour) professional services to be 'brought up'