Managing Project Pauses, Delays, and Terminations: Authentic’s Approach to Seamless Collaboration

We always do our best to manage delays the best we can and remain as flexible as possible with our clients. Even when everything is going right, timelines can take longer than anticipated, and that's not necessarily a bad thing! Great work takes time, and we're here to do the best work possible.

To ensure transparency and fairness, here’s how we manage project pauses, ghosting, extended timelines, and termination scenarios.

Managing Pauses: Flexibility with a Plan

We understand that clients may need to temporarily halt a project. Especially in the real estate industry, delays can happen and can be caused by things outside of your control. Trust us, we get it. If you need to pause work, simply notify us in writing with the intended length of the pause. While we will do our best to resume work quickly, some delays may occur depending on team availability. Both parties will agree on a new project timeline and revised terms.

As a service provider, delays that cause our team to sit idle have a direct impact on our bottom line. When we commit to a project, we're committing a very specific and finite set of our time to you, and when that time isn't used, it's gone forever. So is any value we can generate from it. With that in mind, we have a few ways we operate to best account for delays that are important to highlight:

Fixed Invoicing

• We bill our projects using fixed invoicing, where we take the total cost of the project and divide it over the total number of months we're engaged. This makes invoicing simple for both you and us and also puts a focus on ensuring progress keeps pace with the payment schedule.

Incremental Deliverables

• We execute work incrementally, getting your approval each step of the way. This ensures that you're aligned with the direction we're moving in and that you're never caught off guard with the work we're delivering.

Feedback Flexibility

• We understand that a few extra days are often needed to get approval on big deliverables like visual identity and websites. We have built our process in a way that can accommodate this reality to make sure you feel like you're putting the needed time into the feedback you're giving us.

Beyond these parts of our process, we also have several parts of our creative service agreement to handle extended delays and even terminations.

Ghosting Fee: Encouraging Timely Feedback

The delay we try to avoid most is ghosting. You likely already know what this means without any explanation, but ghosting is when communication suddenly stops entirely or is limited to insignificant updates that do not establish any clear dates for re-starting an effort. Ghosting is by far one of the most challenging delays we can experience because it directly impacts our bottom line, disrupts your project process, and prevents us from shifting our resources to other projects.

Delivering high-quality work requires timely communication. When we share deliverables with you, we’ll clearly note the day feedback and/or approval is due. If we do not receive feedback or approval on deliverables within three (3) weeks of the feedback/approval due date, we will issue a formal warning at the two-week mark. If no response is provided by the end of the third week, a ghosting fee of $1,000 will be applied and billed bi-weekly until feedback or approval is received. We may pause work during this time, and if the delay extends beyond six (6) weeks, we reserve the right to terminate or renegotiate the contract.

Extended Timelines: Management Fee for Projects Extending Beyond the Original Term

One fairly common occurrence is a project whose timeline ends up being much slower than anticipated but not suffering from any particular major delay. In cases where a project continues beyond the original agreed-upon completion date, we will charge a management fee of $1,000 per month until the project is finalized. As a part of this clause, we provide an additional 4 weeks beyond the end date of the project specified in our contract to give you some wiggle room. This management fee ensures that the time and resources required to manage an extended timeline are accounted for.

Termination Policy: Trust and Fairness Above All

We never want to do a full stop on a project we're working on, but we also realize that circumstances arise where you need to do this. In the event you need to terminate, all we ask is a formal written request to terminate the project. If an issue arises that we cannot resolve, we aim to treat each other fairly through the following process:

Notice: Either party may terminate the agreement for cause by providing written notice of a material breach of contract. The breaching party will have 30 days to remedy the issue, if curable.

Material Breach Definition: A breach includes, but is not limited to:

• Failure to deliver services or deliverables according to the agreed timeline and scope.
• Violation of confidentiality, proprietary rights, or non-disclosure terms.
• Failure to make timely payments.

Handoff: If termination occurs, we will deliver any completed deliverables. You will be responsible for paying the portion of the fee corresponding to the work completed, plus 10% of the remaining project fee to cover administrative handoff efforts.

Our Approach to Delivering Successful Projects

Managing projects requires collaboration, communication, and flexibility. Whether it’s a temporary pause, the need to extend a timeline, or handling unforeseen challenges, our goal is to keep everything running as smoothly as possible. These policies aren’t just about setting rules—they help ensure that every project stays on track and every partnership remains productive, even when things don’t go exactly as planned. With clear expectations and mutual trust, our primary focus is to ensure that every client experience and project we work on is successful from start to finish.