Retainer agreements and the cannabis industry

Looking for some guidance on retainer agreements, I have a general understanding of how they work but haven’t personally done one yet.

FWIW, I’m not a “consultant” per se, I have a machine/welding shop and a lot of experience with industrial maintenance and troubleshooting, and own part of an ethanol extraction lab with my partners. I get my hands dirty with extraction, distillation and maintenance.

Without getting into too much detail, I have relationships with several labs proximal to where I live and work, most of what I’ve been doing has been cleaning up after poor Chinese QC on machined pieces like pumps, modifying fittings, and troubleshooting and replacing cheap electrical components that failed. So I’m less worried about NDA’s, as much of my work has been directly involved with the equipment, my work and skillset is difficult to carbon copy to other facilities as seems to be a prevailing theme/concern with other cannabis consultants.

I already have relationships with these companies and my billable rate and quality of work are known to them.

Recently I’ve had two clients that have asked about the possibility of putting me on retainer for when the inevitable problems arise running their equipment and needing troubleshooting or repair, and I’m curious how those agreements are structured and written. Is this something worth paying a lawyer to draft up, or are these agreements somewhat generic and the blanks filled in?

Beyond that, I’m curious what those of you who work on retainers do to track paid in amounts versus billed against, and billing? Is this something that is usually done with a program like Quickbooks or am I overthinking it and people are just using Excel or numbers and whatever they use to send invoices to clients?

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Call up lawyers. Pretend you want to hire one. Have them send you their retainer agreement.

That or Google: Retainer agreement template.

You can do monthly. Down payment to start. On call.

  • Parts and labor. Priority. Whatever you’re trying to do. I’d just get what they want in writing and then add what you think it’s worth your time for.

I think you’re overthinking it. If someone wants your priority on call. Put $ up front / renewed annually and expect still parts and labor.

Just consider it a membership / service. Retainer just means you’re their go-to and ready when time is needed.

Also: let me know when you need a website to get that reoccurring payment processing :slight_smile:

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It sounds like a pay for access advisory retainer. I found a sample on template.net with google, but the link doesn’t want to post.

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Your client is telling you they value your services so much they are going to pay you for stuff you haven’t even done yet. Either you delivered far beyond their expectations or you are charging too little. Just curious where are you located?

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Northern colorado, I split my time between Denver and Greeley areas. I try my best to treat people fairly and be honest about expectations and timeframes. I’d much rather be making money than excuses

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