Terms of service

Last updated: 29 August 2026

Who you are dealing with

This site and the services described on it are provided by The Business Synthesizer, a sole proprietorship based in Alberta, Canada. Contact: hello@thebusinesssynthesizer.com.

By using this site or engaging me, you agree to these terms. Most of my work is for companies and these terms are written for that. If you are an individual commissioning something for personal or household reasons, the section near the end headed "If you are buying as an individual" applies to you and overrides anything above that conflicts with it.

What I do

Graphic design, motion design and video editing. Post production only. I do not shoot, I do not supply crew or gear, and I do not deal with your client unless you ask me to.

Post production is most of what I do, not all of it. If you need something next to it, ask. Anything outside the list above is agreed in writing first, and email is writing. It is only in scope once I have confirmed it and quoted it, and if it is beyond what I can do properly I will tell you so rather than take it on.

The default is white label. Work is delivered under your name, with no credit to me, and I have no contact with anyone downstream of you.

Work done at no charge

I do not advertise free work and there is no offer of it on this site. Occasionally I offer a first piece at no charge to a business I have approached directly. This section only says what happens if I have done that. It is not an offer, and asking for one does not create it.

Where I do one it is a single contained thing with one round of changes, and I set the scope. I may withdraw it at any time before I start. Nothing exists until I confirm it in writing.

You own it outright on delivery rather than on payment, since there is no payment, and you keep it whether or not anything else comes of it. Because it is free, my liability for it is limited to nothing.

Prices and quotes

Every job is priced individually against what it is for, and quoted in writing before anything starts. Every quote names the currency it is in. Where I can, I quote in your own currency, so you are not doing conversion maths to work out what you are agreeing to. If a quote does not name a currency, it is Canadian dollars.

A quote covers a defined scope. Nothing begins until you confirm it in writing. Where a quote and these terms disagree about what a specific job includes, the quote wins.

There is a minimum engagement, and I will tell you what it is when I quote. Rush work needed inside 24 hours costs more than the same work on a normal timeline, and that is agreed in writing before I start rather than added to the invoice afterwards.

If a price is quoted in obvious error, I may correct it or decline the job rather than proceed at the wrong number. I may decline any work for any lawful reason.

Tax

I am a small supplier under the Excise Tax Act and I am not registered for GST or HST, so no GST or HST is charged on my invoices and none is included in the prices shown. If that changes I will tell you before it affects an invoice.

If you are outside Canada, my work for you is an export of services and no Canadian tax applies to it at all. Any VAT or sales tax owed in your own country is accounted for by you under your local rules, and I will put whatever wording your finance team needs on the invoice. If you are in the UK or the EU that normally means giving me your VAT number and a reverse charge line, and it means I do not need a VAT number of my own.

Payment

Invoicing happens directly, not through this store's checkout. On larger engagements I ask for half up front and half on delivery, and the quote will say so before you agree to it. Otherwise the full amount is invoiced on delivery.

Invoices are due 14 days from the invoice date. Overdue amounts carry interest at 1.5 percent per month, which is 18 percent per year, calculated from the due date until paid.

Currency conversion and any bank or transfer fees on your side are yours. I receive the invoiced amount in full.

Revisions and scope

Every quote includes one round of changes unless it says otherwise. A round means you send me your notes together, once, and I do them together, once. Further rounds, and changes that alter the brief rather than refine the execution, are quoted separately before I do them.

Dates

Turnaround is written into the quote and runs from the point I have everything I need from you. If you are late getting me files, the date moves by at least as much.

If something is going to run late at my end, you will know the day I know, not the day it is due.

Cancelling

You can cancel any job at any time in writing. If I have not started, there is nothing to pay. If I have started, you pay for the work done up to that point, pro rated against the quoted price, and you get everything produced up to that point.

If I have to cancel, you pay nothing, anything already paid is refunded in full, and I will tell you as early as I possibly can.

Who owns what

On payment in full, all rights in the work I produce for you transfer to you outright. No licence terms, no usage windows, no buyout later, no territory restrictions, no expiry. Work done at no charge transfers on delivery instead, as described above.

Until an invoice is paid in full, the work is licensed to you for review and approval only, and not for publication.

What does not transfer: tools, scripts, presets, templates and general techniques I built before your job or that are not specific to it. Those stay mine and I keep using them. You are not buying my toolkit, you are buying the thing I made with it.

Any third party asset in a delivery, such as licensed music, stock or a font, is covered by that supplier's licence and not by this transfer. Where a job needs one, I will tell you what it is and what the licence allows before I use it.

Work that involved AI tools. Where a delivery includes material generated with an AI tool, I assign you every right I hold in it on exactly the same terms as everything else. What I will not claim is that copyright subsists in raw generated material on its own. In the United States it does not, and in Canada the question is still open. What copyright does protect is the human work around it: the source images I build, the direction, the frames I choose, the cut, the grade, the effects and the filters, and the finishing. That is mine and that is what I am assigning to you. In practice the piece is yours to use, sell and change without limit. What neither of us can do is stop someone else who independently generates something similar from the same kind of tool. I will tell you before I use a generative tool on your job.

Work delivered as code. Where a piece is authored as CSS, SVG or similar and delivered as web animation rather than only as a rendered file, the same transfer applies: on payment in full, the source files, markup and stylesheets I wrote for your job are yours outright, to host, modify and maintain without me. You do not need my permission to change it and you are not locked into me for updates.

What stays mine is the same as above: the general build methods, helper scripts and capture pipeline I use across jobs. You own the animation. You are not buying the machine that made it.

What you are promising me

When you send me footage, images, audio, fonts, logos or anything else, you are confirming that you have the right to send it to me and the right for me to use it in the work you have commissioned. That includes permission from anyone identifiable in it.

If that turns out not to be true and someone comes after me for it, you cover me for the resulting claims and costs. I am one person and I have no way to audit the provenance of a folder of footage, so this one matters. This paragraph does not apply if you are buying as an individual.

Confidentiality

Anything you send me, and the fact that you sent it, is confidential. I will not disclose it, and I will not use it for anything except your job.

Send me your NDA and I will sign it before you send me anything. If you do not have one, this clause applies by default and runs both ways.

I will not show work I did for you in my portfolio, on this site, or anywhere else, and I will not name you as a client, without your written permission. White label means white label. If you are happy for me to show something, tell me in writing and I will.

How I use AI

I use AI tools in my process, mostly to generate options quickly and throw nearly all of them away. What I deliver is the version I chose and finished by hand.

Nothing generated goes into a final file without me telling you first. If your contract or your client requires a specific AI position, tell me and I will work to it, including not using it at all on your job. I do not feed your confidential files into public AI tools.

Where generated material does end up in a delivery, what that means for ownership is set out under "Who owns what" above. I keep the prompts, the source stills and the project files for every job. If you or your client ever need to show the human authorship behind a piece, the record exists and I will hand it over.

Spec work shown on this site

The pieces in the portfolio on this site are spec work. They were made unasked, to show craft. They were not commissioned by, affiliated with, or endorsed by any company, the companies depicted in them are fictional, and any figures shown in them are illustrative sample data rather than real numbers. Source photographs and footage used in them are credited to their authors.

Some pieces in the portfolio are original short films rather than spec work for a fictional company. Where one was made with an AI video model, the tile beside it says so. In those, the source still was built first, and the cut, the grade, the effects and the filters were done by hand afterwards.

What is not promised

No result is guaranteed. I can promise the work is done properly and on the date agreed. I cannot promise what it does to your views, your conversions or your revenue, and nobody honestly can.

Nothing on this site or in my delivery is legal, financial, accounting or tax advice.

Your conduct

Do not try to break, scrape, overload or gain unauthorised access to this site. Do not use anything you receive from me for anything unlawful.

You need to be the age of majority where you live to engage me. If you are not, a parent or guardian has to agree to these terms on your behalf.

Limits on liability

To the extent the law allows, my total liability for anything arising out of a job is limited to the amount you paid me for that job. For work done at no charge, which you paid nothing for, it is limited to nothing.

Neither of us is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss, including lost profit, lost business or lost data.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot be limited by law, including for fraud.

Refunds

Refunds and cancellations are covered by the refund policy, which forms part of these terms.

Privacy

Personal information is handled as described in the privacy policy.

Changes

These terms may change. The version that applies is the one published when you accepted a quote.

About this site

I keep this site accurate, but I do not warrant that everything on it is current or free of errors, and nothing on it is an offer capable of acceptance. A description or a figure here does not bind me. What binds me is the written quote you accept.

Any link out to another website is not an endorsement of it, and what happens on it is not mine to answer for.

This store is hosted by Shopify. Shopify serves the pages and processes some information about visitors, as set out in the privacy policy.

Working for other people

I work for more than one client and ideas are not exclusive. Nothing here stops me taking work from other businesses, including ones that compete with you.

What I will not do is reuse your files, your confidential information, or the specific work I made for you. Techniques, methods and visual conventions that are common to the craft are not yours and are not mine.

If you send me a concept or a brief I did not ask for, and I have already made or later make something similar without using what you sent, I owe you nothing for it. Tell me before you send anything you consider proprietary and I will sign your NDA first.

The rest of the agreement

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, that part is cut out and everything else still stands.

These terms, the quote you accepted, and the policies linked from this site are the whole agreement between us. Anything said before that is not written into them binds neither of us. If I do not enforce something straight away, I have not given up the right to enforce it later.

Cancelling or finishing a job does not undo what was already owed. Payment for work already done, the confidentiality clause, the ownership clause, what you promised me about the files you sent, and the limits on liability all carry on after a job ends.

If something outside my reasonable control stops me working, such as illness, or a power, network or hardware failure, I will tell you as soon as I can and we will agree a new date or cancel under the terms above. I am not liable for the delay itself.

If you are buying as an individual

This section applies if you are an individual commissioning work for personal, family or household reasons rather than for a business. It overrides anything above that conflicts with it.

You have rights under Alberta's Consumer Protection Act, and under the consumer law of the province you live in. Nothing in these terms removes those rights, and nothing in them is meant to suggest otherwise. Where a term above sits badly with a right you have by law, your right wins.

In particular: the limit on liability above does not cut down any remedy those Acts give you, you are not being asked to cover my claims or costs, and I will not bill you a dollar over the quoted price without asking you first and getting your agreement in writing.

Before you commit to anything, I will send you in writing my name and business address, a description of the work, the full price including any tax and extra charges, when payment is due, when I start and when you get it, and the cancellation and refund terms. Nothing begins until you reply to accept it, and you get a copy of what we agreed within fifteen days. If you spot a mistake in the figures, tell me before you accept and I will correct it.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the Province of Alberta and the federal laws of Canada that apply in it. The courts of Alberta have jurisdiction, and we both agree to that.