Terms and conditions

These terms apply between Tihomir Hrvacevic, trading as Balkaris, 8305 Dietlikon, Switzerland, and the client named in a proposal or order. Where a signed agreement says something different, that agreement wins.

We provide digital product and software work, growth and performance marketing, and brand and content production — including photography, video and motion — in the combinations set out in each proposal. Nothing on this website is an offer in itself; it describes what we can be engaged to do.

We describe the scope, the timeline and the price in a proposal. A proposal is valid for thirty days unless it says otherwise. An engagement begins when the proposal is accepted in writing — an email is enough. Until then there is no contract and neither side owes the other anything.

What the proposal does not name is not included. If something you expected is missing, say so before accepting, and we will add it or tell you what it would cost.

Fees, the payment schedule and any retainer are set out in the proposal. Prices are in Swiss francs and exclude VAT unless the proposal says otherwise. Expenses agreed in advance are charged at cost.

Larger projects are invoiced in stages: a deposit on confirmation and the balance at the milestones in the proposal. Production days are invoiced with a deposit for the day and the balance on delivery. Invoices are payable within the period stated on them, thirty days where none is stated.

If an invoice is overdue we may pause the work and the delivery of files until the account is settled, and charge the default interest Swiss law provides. We tell you before we pause anything.

Timelines in a proposal are estimates made in good faith with the information we had at the time. They depend on the material, decisions and approvals in clause 6 arriving when agreed, and on third parties we do not control. We tell you as soon as a date moves, and why.

Where a fixed date is essential — a launch, an event, a campaign start — it is written into the order together with what it depends on, and we plan the work back from it.

Delivery depends on access, decisions and material arriving when agreed: brand assets, accounts, systems, content, approvals within the agreed review periods, and a named person who can decide. Where those are late, timelines move by at least the same amount.

You confirm that material you give us is yours to give, and that we may use it for the purpose of the work. Where the work involves people, places or products, you obtain the permissions that are yours to obtain unless the proposal says we do.

A change to the agreed scope — a new page, another cut, a different direction after approval, more images than were counted — is a change request. We tell you what it means for the price and the timeline before we do it, and we do it once you have agreed in writing. Work outside an agreed scope is never invoiced without that agreement.

Small adjustments within the agreed scope, and the rounds of revision the proposal names, are part of the work and are not charged separately.

For a shoot, the dates, locations, the people involved and the deliverables are fixed in the proposal or the shoot plan. You arrange access to your premises and the availability of your people and products; permits, location fees and permissions from people who appear in the material are yours to obtain unless the proposal says we do.

We select and edit from what was shot. The number of edited photographs, or the length and number of finished films, is the number in the proposal; further selections and further cuts are additional work under clause 7. A finished film or photograph is approved when you say so in writing, and changes after approval are additional work.

A shoot, a workshop or a booked production day can be moved once, free of charge, with at least five working days’ notice. Moved or cancelled with fewer than five working days’ notice it is charged at half its day rate; with fewer than two working days’ notice, in full — in each case together with costs already committed that cannot be recovered, such as locations, travel or people booked for the day.

Where we have to move a date, we propose new dates at once and you owe nothing for the delay. Weather, illness and a location falling through are handled the same way, for whichever side they affect.

Costs paid to others for your project — stock material, fonts, licences, models, locations, travel, printing, software seats, hosting — are listed in the proposal or agreed in writing before they are incurred, and are charged at cost or paid by you directly. We do not add a margin to them unless the proposal says so.

Advertising budgets are always yours: they are paid by you directly to the platform, and our fee for running campaigns is separate from the budget spent on them.

We work with a network of independent specialists — photographers, videographers, developers, designers, writers — and may bring them into a project. They work under our direction and under confidentiality terms at least as strict as these, and we remain responsible to you for their work as if it were our own.

Where you engage a specialist directly, that is a contract between you and them, and these terms do not cover it.

Deliverables produced for you become yours once they are paid for in full. That includes the final designs, code, copy, films and images made specifically for the engagement.

Photographs and films are granted for the uses, media, territories and period named in the proposal. Where none is named, you may use them for your own business communication, in any medium, worldwide and without time limit. Uses beyond that — resale, sublicensing, use by or for a third party, use in a way that suggests an endorsement by the people in them — are agreed separately. The photographer’s and filmmaker’s right to be named remains.

What stays ours is what existed before the engagement or is used across clients: our tooling, internal systems, frameworks, component libraries and methods. You get a permanent licence to use these as part of the deliverable, but not to resell them on their own.

Third-party material such as licensed fonts, stock or software keeps its own licence, and we tell you which those are.

Final files are delivered in the formats, resolutions and versions named in the proposal, through a download link or a shared folder, once the invoice for them has been paid. Delivery is complete when the files are made available to you; tell us within ten working days if something is missing or damaged and we replace it.

We keep a copy of delivered files for twelve months after delivery. After that we may delete them, so please keep your own archive.

Raw photographs, unedited footage, source files, working files and project files are not deliverables. They remain ours unless the proposal says otherwise, and we use them to produce and, on request, to re-edit the work.

They can be licensed or handed over on request at a price agreed separately. Handed-over raw material is provided as it is, without the selection and finishing that make the deliverables.

Unless you ask us not to, we may show finished work publicly as a reference — on this website, in proposals and on our own channels — and name you as the client. We never publish anything you have told us is confidential, and we do not publish results or figures without your written agreement.

Tell us in writing, at any time, if you would rather we did not, and we take the work down within ten working days.

We use AI systems as part of delivery, and we would rather say so plainly than have you discover it. They are used to draft and classify written correspondence, to transcribe calls and meetings, to generate speech, and to generate images from prompts.

Your data reaches those services. Correspondence, recordings and project material are processed by third-party AI providers to do that work. Which providers, what each is used for, and the country the processing happens in are listed on the subprocessors page.

Nothing is used to train models. We do not train or fine-tune any model on your data, and the providers we use exclude data sent through their business interfaces from their own training.

A person is always accountable. No decision with a legal or similarly significant effect is made about anyone by a machine. Every message, price and commitment that reaches you or your customers is approved by a person before it is sent.

What AI output is and is not. AI-assisted material is reviewed by us before delivery, but these systems can be confidently wrong. We do not warrant that AI-generated text, images or transcripts are free of error, and anything that carries legal, financial, medical or regulatory weight must be checked by a qualified person on your side before you rely on it.

Recording. Calls on our business line may be recorded and transcribed. You are told at the start of the call, before anything else, and you can decline.

If you would rather we did not use AI services on your material, say so before the engagement starts. Some services can be delivered without them; others cannot, and we will tell you honestly which is which rather than quietly agreeing.

Each side keeps the other’s confidential information confidential, during the engagement and afterwards. Access inside our team is limited to the people doing the work, and the independent specialists in clause 11 are bound the same way.

Where we process personal data on your behalf we do so as your processor, under a separate order-processing agreement that names the subprocessors involved. How we handle personal data generally is in the privacy policy.

We promise the work will be performed with the care and skill of a competent professional in our field, and that we will tell you early when something is not going to work.

We do not promise a particular commercial outcome. Marketing and product results depend on your pricing, your market, your sales capability and decisions outside our control. Where a specific, measurable target is agreed, it is written into the signed order together with how it is measured, the baseline it is measured against, and what happens if it is missed. Nothing said in a proposal, a meeting or on this website creates such a target on its own.

Our liability is limited to the fees paid for the engagement in which the loss arose, and we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss including lost profit. Nothing here excludes liability that cannot be excluded by law, including for intent or gross negligence.

Either side may end an engagement in writing with the notice period in the proposal, thirty days where none is stated. Work completed and expenses committed up to that point are payable. On request we hand over the material you have paid for in a usable form.

Swiss law applies, without its conflict-of-laws rules. The courts at the seat of the business, Dietlikon in the canton of Zürich, have jurisdiction. We would always rather resolve something in a conversation first, and we will make that attempt before anything else.

Questions about these terms: tihomir@balkaris.ch.