Terms of service

These terms are an agreement between Next Layer AI LLC (“Next Layer”, “we”, “us”), a company based in Michigan, USA, and the business that opens a Next Layer Works account (“you”). Below, Next Layer Works is called “Works”.

They cover this website, the Works app in a web browser and on a phone, and what Works does for your business.

By creating an account or using Works, you agree to these terms for your business, and you confirm that you’re allowed to agree for it. If you don’t agree, don’t use Works.

The managers and workers you invite use Works as part of your business’s account. Your customers stay your customers: when they open an invoice, a quote or another page you send them, they’re dealing with your business, not with us.

Our privacy policy says what information Works keeps and who else handles it.

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Works helps a business that works at its customers’ places run its week:

• customers, their agreements and their prices;
• the schedule, visits and crews, who mark jobs done on their phones;
• quotes, invoices and statements;
• recorded payments, reminders and late fees;
• worker pay and reports;
• your own sign-up page for new customers;
• bookings from services you connect.

Some parts aren’t switched on yet: card payments, text messages, and the apps for iPhone and Android. This website marks them “coming soon” until they are. “Coming soon” isn’t a promise of a date.

Works is a tool. It doesn’t give legal, tax, accounting or employment advice. You decide your prices, invoices, late fees and worker pay, and how you work with your workers.

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• Works is for businesses. The person who opens the account does it for their business and must be at least 18 years old. Works isn’t meant for personal or household use.
• Works is run from the United States, for businesses that work there. Its amounts are in US dollars.
• Keep your password safe. You can turn on two-step sign-in for extra protection.
• Keep your email address up to date. We send notices about your account, your plan and these terms to the email addresses of your business’s owners.
• You’re responsible for your account and your people: what happens under your account, the managers and workers you invite and what they do in Works, and removing people who should no longer have access.
• If you think someone else got into your account, tell us right away at support@nextlayer.works.

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We haven’t started charging yet. This section describes how paying works once we do. Before we start, we’ll email the owners of every business at least 30 days ahead. No business is asked for a card before the day that email names, or before its own 30 free days are over.

• One plan per business, with everything included. There is no limit on workers or customers.
• The price is the one on our Pricing page on the day your plan starts, for paying each month or each year, unless we agreed a different price with your business. Prices are in US dollars.
• Free time first. A new business gets 30 days free, with no card. Works reminds the owner on screen before they end. After that, it asks for a card to keep going.
• Paying. You pay by card, for a month or a year ahead. The first payment is taken on the day your free time ends, or right away if it has already ended. Stripe takes the payment on its own page and emails your receipts. Works never receives your full card number. Of the card, it keeps the brand and the last four digits.
• Your plan renews by itself each month or each year until you stop it. Each time, the card you gave is charged the price of your plan.
• Stopping. The owner can stop the plan at any time, in Settings under Your plan (“Stop my plan”). The plan then ends when the time you already paid for runs out, and until then you can change your mind (“Keep my plan”). We don’t refund the rest of a month or a year that is already paid for, unless the law requires it.
• If your card doesn’t go through, Stripe tries it again over the following days. Works keeps working meanwhile and tells the owner on screen. If the payment still fails after those tries, your business becomes read-only until a card pays what is open.
• Read-only is what a business becomes when its free time or its pilot ends without a card, when its plan has ended, or when a payment keeps failing. While a business is read-only:
  • its owner, managers and workers can still sign in and see what they could see before, and an owner can still download the records;
  • they can’t record new work or change anything, except to switch off access (a person, a key, a link) or to start a plan;
  • crews see their visits but can’t mark them done;
  • reminders and other messages that go out by themselves are paused;
  • your customers can still open the invoices and links they were sent;
  • after 30 days, your sign-up page and bookings from services you connected stop taking new customers.

  Nothing is deleted. Starting a plan again, at the price on that day, turns everything back on.

• Your price while your plan stays on. If we change our prices, a business that is already paying keeps its price for as long as its plan stays on. A plan that ended and is started again gets the price on that day.
• Pilots. Works is free during a pilot that Next Layer sets up with a business. Only Next Layer starts and ends a pilot. When a pilot ends, the business stays free up to a date we set. After that date Works asks for a card, as it does for any business.

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• Your business’s records belong to you. You let us store them, work with them and show them only to provide Works to you, to keep it secure and fix problems, and to do what the law requires.
• Take your records with you, any time. An owner can download the business’s records as spreadsheet files, in Settings under “Download all business data”: customers, service locations, agreements, visits, invoices and their lines, payments, workers, crews, hours and worker pay.
• Your customers’ and workers’ details are your responsibility. You’re responsible for having the right to record and use them, for telling your customers how you use their details where the law requires it, and for answering their requests to see, correct or delete them. We’ll help you do this.
• How we handle those details. We work with them only to provide Works to your business, as these terms and our privacy policy describe. We don’t sell them, and we don’t use them for advertising. The other companies that handle them for us are named in the privacy policy.
• If something goes wrong. If we learn that someone got to your business’s records who shouldn’t have, we’ll tell your business’s owners without unreasonable delay and share what we know, so you can tell the people affected where the law requires it.

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• Works is ours. The software, its design and the name Next Layer Works belong to Next Layer. These terms let your business use Works while its account is open. They don’t hand over any part of it.
• Your records are yours (see Your records).
• Your ideas. If you send us ideas for Works or tell us what should be better, we may use that freely, without owing you anything.

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• What Works sends for you: the emails you send, and the ones you set to go out by themselves, such as reminders. Text messages aren’t switched on yet.
• How they look. Emails show your business’s name and come from Works’s sending address. Replies come to you.
• Who gets them. Works sends a customer’s messages only in the ways you recorded that the customer agreed to. You’re responsible for getting that agreement honestly and recording it correctly, for what your messages say, and for following the laws on business messages.
• No spam. Don’t use Works to send messages people didn’t ask for.

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• Your deals are yours. Agreements, quotes, invoices and the work itself are between your business and your customers. We aren’t a party to them. We aren’t responsible for the work, for what you charge, or for whether a customer pays.
• Your wording is yours. Works gives you places for your own terms, prices and late fees. We don’t check that they’re right, or that they hold up where you work. You’re responsible for your late fees and other charges being allowed there.
• Approvals online. A customer can approve a quote or sign up on your page, and Works keeps a record of it. We don’t promise that this record is enough for every legal purpose.
• A disagreement with a customer or a worker is for you to settle with them.

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Your customers can’t pay you by card through Works yet. When card payments are switched on:

• They go through your own Stripe account. Stripe’s terms are between you and Stripe, and Stripe charges you its fees for each card payment.
• Who pays the card fee is your choice: your business, or your customers. If your customers pay it, Works adds it for credit cards only and shows it to them before they pay. You’re responsible for that being allowed where you work, and Works asks you to confirm it first.
• Works never receives or stores full card numbers. It keeps the amount, whether the payment went through, the card’s brand and last four digits, and Stripe’s reference for it.

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Works adds up what your workers earned from the pay terms you set. It keeps the count. It does not:

• pay your workers or move money;
• withhold or file taxes;
• decide whether a worker is an employee or a contractor.

You’re responsible for paying your workers and for following employment and tax law.

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Works doesn’t work out sales tax. You’re responsible for your prices, your invoices, and any taxes that apply to them.

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Don’t:

• break the law, or help anyone else break it, using Works;
• send spam or harmful content;
• put in anything you have no right to use, such as someone else’s logo;
• try to get into another business’s records or into our systems;
• overload Works, or try to take apart or copy its software;
• resell or share access to Works without our written OK;
• use someone else’s account.

To keep Works running for everyone, we limit how often some things can be done.

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You can let another service, for example a booking service, work with your Works account, in Settings under Connected services. That service can then:

• add booked jobs and look them up;
• see how many visits each day has, but never who they are for or where.

You can turn a connected service off at any time. The other service’s own terms apply to what it does, and we aren’t responsible for it.

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• Changes to Works. We keep improving Works, and may change or remove features.
• Changes to these terms. We’ll post the new version on this page with a new date. If a change takes away a right of yours or adds a duty, we’ll also email the owners of every business at least 30 days before it applies.
• If you don’t agree with a change, you can stop your plan and leave before it applies (see Ending). Using Works after that day means you agree to the new terms.

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We work to keep Works running and your records backed up. We can’t promise it will always be available or free of errors. It may be unavailable for a short time now and then, for example while we update it.

Questions and problems go to support@nextlayer.works. We answer as soon as we can.

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Works is provided “as is” and “as available”. As far as the law allows, we make no warranties about it, stated or implied. That includes the implied warranties of merchantability, of fitness for a particular purpose and of non-infringement.

In plain words, we don’t promise that:

• Works will always be available, or free of errors;
• it fits a particular purpose of yours, or the rules of your trade or your state;
• the amounts it adds up are right for your taxes, your payroll or your books. Check them, as you would with any tool;
• records can never be lost. Keep your own copy of what your business can’t do without: you can download your records at any time (see Your records).

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These limits apply whatever the claim is based on: a contract, negligence or anything else. We couldn’t offer Works at its price without them.

Some states don’t allow some of these limits. Where that is so, they apply only as far as the law allows. Nothing in these terms limits what the law says can’t be limited.

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If someone else brings a claim against us because of something your business did, your business will cover what that claim costs us, including reasonable lawyers’ fees. That means a claim about:

• your records, or the messages, quotes and invoices you send;
• your prices, late fees, card fees or worker pay;
• the work you do for your customers, or how you treat your workers;
• your business breaking these terms or the law.

We’ll tell you about such a claim promptly and work with you on answering it. This doesn’t cover the part of a claim that we caused ourselves.

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• You can leave at any time. Stop your plan (see The plan, its price and paying), or delete your account on the Your account page. If your business would close with your account, Works asks you to stop its plan first.
• Download your records before you go. The records of a business that closes are kept, but nobody can open them any more.
• We may suspend or close an account that breaks these terms, that puts other people or Works at risk, or that the law requires us to close. Where we can, we tell the owners first and give them time to put it right. A plan that ends this way isn’t refunded, unless the law requires it.
• If we ever stop offering Works, we’ll email the owners of every business at least 30 days ahead, so you can download your records, and we’ll refund the part of a paid plan that falls after the last day.
• What stays in force. Some parts of these terms still apply after the end: what your business owes, who owns what, what we don’t promise, the limits on our liability, claims caused by your business, and which law applies.
• What is erased and what stays is in our privacy policy, under Download your data, or delete your account.

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• Talk to us first. If something is wrong, write to support@nextlayer.works. Most things can be settled that way, and we’ll try to.
• Michigan law. The laws of the State of Michigan apply to these terms and to any dispute about them or about Works, wherever your business is. Another state’s rules for choosing which law applies don’t change that.
• Michigan courts. A lawsuit about these terms or about Works can be brought only in the state or federal courts in Michigan. Each of us agrees to those courts.

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• The whole agreement. These terms, together with anything we agreed with your business in writing, such as a different price or a pilot, are the whole agreement between your business and us about Works. They replace anything said or written before.
• If a part can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t insist on a part of these terms at some time, we can still insist on it later.
• Passing them on. Your business can’t hand these terms or its account to someone else without our written OK. We may hand them to a company that takes over Works, for example in a sale or a merger. That company has to keep to them.
• Things outside our control. Neither of us is responsible for a delay or a failure caused by something outside our reasonable control, such as a power or internet outage, a failure at a company we depend on, a storm or a government order. This doesn’t excuse paying what is owed.
• Notices. We send notices to the email addresses of your business’s owners. You send notices to support@nextlayer.works. Agreeing to these terms online counts the same as signing them on paper.
• Separate businesses. These terms don’t make us partners, and neither of us is the other’s employee or agent.
• Only the two of us. These terms give rights to your business and to us, not to your customers, your workers or anyone else.

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Next Layer AI LLC, Michigan, USA. Email: support@nextlayer.works.

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