Edwards & Edwards Consulting, LLC
Business Policies
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As part of our general sales approach, we make time
available to conduct conference calls and help the client decide
which particular course best suits their needs. We do not
try to sell a longer duration class simply to get a larger revenue!
Our clients trust us to give them the facts straight-up, and we attempt
to tailor our course materials to their needs whenever
practical, and to inform the client up front when this won't be possible
or practical.
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References are available from prior students, managers, and training
coordinators who are familiar with our courseware and teaching skills.
Contact us for details.
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Our policy is NET 30 DAYS. Failure to make timely
payment may result in postponement or cancellation of future business and
suspension of material licensing privileges.
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Invoices will be dated 2 or 3 business days after the end of the class, in
most cases.
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We do not provide originals for receipts -- only copies -- unless
those expenses are being reimbursed and they DO NOT APPEAR ON THE
1099-MISC sent to the IRS. If they're on the 1099, then they're
income to us and we have to put the expenses on our tax return, which
means we need the originals, if the IRS should ever decide to conduct
a tax audit. (We generally scan all paperwork into PDFs and we are
comfortable providing electronic copies of invoices, expenses, receipts,
rosters, evaluation forms, and certificate requests.)
If the vendor is deducting them also as expenses, they're going
to pay a penalty if we ever get audited, and the IRS comes to question
them. The vendor should be deducting the total invoice as a consulting
expense in the case that the expense amounts DO show up on the
1099-MISC that we receive. Vendors that require receipts for proof of
expense will receive copies [except for the meal per diem as noted
below].
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There will be no licensing fee for materials if Edwards & Edwards
Consulting provides the instructor and we use our materials.
Otherwise, the licensing fee depends upon the topic and duration of the
course. In general, introductory courses have one licensing fee and all
other courses have a slightly higher fee. Contact us for details.
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We typically provide two PDFs for reproduction work. The first is
a black-and-white student guide which uses grayscale images and
looks great when printed with a black-and-white printer. We can
also provide the same book in a five color format for use by the
instructor. The colors are black plus four other contrasting colors
chosen for their vivid detail on projection units and the ability
to be distinguishable by most colorblind students (roughly 8% of men
and 0.5% of women are red-green colorblind based on data from a
2001 publication).
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We also have an instructor guide for most courses which is the same as
the color version above, but includes chapter endnotes which provide
additional detail on the course content and are useful for instructors
who want to prepare in more depth. Also included are footnotes for the
hands-on exercises which include common problems that the students are
likely to encounter and techniques for solving those problems in the lab.
Due to the significant value-add of these notes they are provided
directly to the instructor and with watermarks embedded in the
PDF. There is no additional charge for this version of the document,
but we will need contact information for the instructor as it will
only be sent directly to the individual.
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Per diem for meals is $40/day, regardless of client or location.
In Tulsa, Oklahoma, we're likely to make money and in New York City we'll
probably lose money. We do more training in large metropolitan
areas than in small towns, so this practice seems reasonable and it
significantly reduces paperwork.
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If you are a vendor and your client requires receipts for meals, our
practice is to increase our daily rate appropriately and not to put meals
on the expense report at all. (Note that to cover a $40/day per diem,
our daily rate must increase by $100/day, since only 50% of the meal
expense is deductible by us and we'll have additional paperwork
requirements.)
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Hotel, airport, and car rental agency is based first on client
preference, and if that choice is not available for some reason,
we will choose the lowest available rate. In some cases, the recommended
hotel or car rental agency is significantly higher priced compared to other
options and we may contact the client and verify their preference.
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Rental cars, if needed, are always returned full of fuel, so the
prepaid gasoline option is never used. Some clients have corporate
rates which are not as low as certain walk-up or other discounted
rates. It is always presumed that the client wants the least expensive
option, unless they state otherwise.
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Committing to a particular date by a client simply means being
responsible for partial payment should the client later find it
necessary to break the scheduled class. This prevents frivolous
bookings on the part of the client. No penalty will be assessed for
events outside the control of the client's corporation.
[This does not include reorganizations, transfers, vacation time,
etc. All of those are foreseeable by management and should be considered
when the training is initially scheduled.]
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Likewise, if Edwards & Edwards Consulting neglects to have
an instructor available for the class, the client will not be obligated to
pay for that session, of course, and a rescheduled session will be made
available at ½ of the original instructor rate, resulting in a net
savings to the client.
[This does not include events beyond our control, such as
transportation strikes or cancelled flights (although the instructor will
appear as soon as feasible, even under these conditions), unusually severe
weather, a last minute injury or death in the family of the instructor,
etc.]
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If a client has requested a particular date, but not yet committed to it,
it is considered pencilled-in. Such scheduling is tentative
and may be broken.
Edwards & Edwards Consulting will provide
the client with 2 business days' notice should a pencil-in need to be
changed or cancelled, during which time the client
may decide to commit to the date or not (see the definition of
commitment, above). This can also be called 48
hour first-right-of-refusal.
[This generally makes it a good idea for the client to pencil-in a
variety of dates, then commit to a single one when the final word is given
on their end. In the meantime, should another client be willing to commit
to a pencilled-in date, the first client will receive 2 business days
before the date is released.]
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Non-refundable travel arrangements will not be made until the client has
committed to a particular teach date. Breaking such a committed date
entails reimbursement for any non-refundable travel arrangements plus a
penalty fee which is based on a percentage of the originally contracted
rate and the amount of lead-time before the start-date of the class.
Effective April 1st of 2008, the penalty ranges from 50% for 11-15 days
lead time to 100% for 1-5 days lead time. Contact us for details.
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First time clients will be asked to provide 100% of estimated expenses
and 50% of the instructor fee two weeks in advance of any training
class. Instructors will not be committed to any given date until this
payment has been received (this means sooner is better than later).
This will apply to the first two teach dates for a particular
client regardless of the duration between those dates. Once a payment
history has been established this will no longer be necessary.
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A roster will be completed which lists the
following information for each student (at a minimum):
- First and last name,
- Company and department,
- Mailing address,
- Contact phone number, and
- Email address, if applicable.
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Each student is expected to complete an evaluation form prior to
the end of the class. If the client has an evaluation form that
they prefer to use, that form may be used as long as the instructor
provides a copy of each evaluation to the Tampa office at the
conclusion of the class. Often it is easiest to scan these documents
and send electronic copies (PDF is our preferred format).
[Clients who use electronic evaluation forms may forward an electronic
copy to our office by emailing to
admin-at-eec.com.
The student names need
not be divulged, but if a question should arise concerning the content of
an evaluation form, it would be convenient if the student could be
contacted by your organization.]
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Edwards & Edwards Consulting will provide a
completion certificate
to all students which, in the opinion of the instructor, have
attended enough of the class to gain some practical benefit from the
training session.
[Typically, this is all of the students, but there've been cases of
students that show up for an hour or two on the first day and then
disappear...]
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If our services are already included on a bid for a particular class with
a particular client and another vendor makes a bid on the same class using
our services also, we refuse to become caught in the middle. We
will not reduce our rates for either vendor, and our
clients confidentiality will remain secure. We will continue to
adhere to our pencil-in and commitment policy.
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Expenses for reproduction of materials will be billed on the expense
report when those expenses are incurred by
Edwards & Edwards Consulting.
The expense amount varies widely, depending on the number of pages
in the material, whether the customer chooses black-and-white or
color repro, and the number of students. When we are handling repro
we always choose to print student guides in color using an in-house
process unless there is a specific request to do otherwise. Some
clients prefer to do their own reproduction and we can assist by
sending electronic files of the courseware. Appropriate non-disclosure
agreements will be required beforehand.
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Our instructors don't use transparencies except in very rare cases.
However, projecting a laptop display is very beneficial in most
training situations and should be considered a prerequisite for
classroom setup.
