Founding Service Agreement — Prelaunch Draft

1. Agreement and business use

When activated for outside customers, the order, this agreement, the service scope, and the privacy notice will form the agreement between the customer and Future Perfect LLC. The customer must be at least 18, use the service for a business rather than personal, family, or household purposes, and have authority to bind that business. Browsing this page or participating in owner-only dogfood does not create a customer contract.

2. Service and eligibility

Sum & Signal is a narrow cash-basis bookkeeping service for an eligible one-person U.S. service business. The founding plan is limited to one business checking account, up to one business credit card, and up to 100 posted transactions per month. After required records and answers are complete, the service reconciles each included account to its official monthly statement and delivers a close package for customer review.

The package includes a profit and loss statement, balance sheet, trial balance, general ledger, reconciliation and exception reports, and portable machine-readable exports. Businesses with payroll, inventory, client or trust funds, multi-currency activity, material loans, complex fixed assets, accrual accounting, job costing, or in-scope sales-tax filing are outside the founding scope.

3. Not tax, legal, audit, or payment advice

Sum & Signal does not provide tax preparation or filing, tax advice, legal advice, audit or assurance, payroll, contractor reporting, bill payment, money movement, lending, credit decisions, investment advice, or government filings. Reports are bookkeeping records, not audited financial statements. The service does not guarantee a tax result, financing decision, fraud detection, or third-party acceptance.

The customer remains responsible for business decisions, tax positions and filings, maintaining legally required records, and choosing qualified legal, tax, and other professional advisers.

4. Customer records, answers, and approvals

The customer must provide complete, accurate, and timely official statements, source records, business facts, and answers; protect account access; review proposed classifications, book-profile facts, the chart of accounts, exceptions, and each close; and promptly report errors. Financial records and credentials must use the secure portal, not email.

Future Perfect may rely on customer-provided facts and approvals, but missing or ambiguous information is not approval. Material unanswered questions, unsupported transactions, or any reconciliation difference block the close. Close acceptance confirms the presented facts and bookkeeping treatment; it does not turn Sum & Signal into a tax or legal adviser or waive correction of a demonstrable bookkeeping error.

5. AI-assisted processing

Automated and AI-assisted systems may help normalize transaction descriptions, propose classifications, identify exceptions, draft questions, and explain reports. Their output can be incomplete or wrong. Deterministic controls govern posting, tenant access, reconciliation, and close completion; ambiguous or material items require an approved rule or customer factual approval.

AI systems do not independently move money, file returns, make legal or tax decisions, waive a reconciliation difference, or accept a close for the customer. Future Perfect remains responsible for delivering the contracted service and will not avoid that responsibility by blaming a model or service provider.

6. Future launch pricing, renewal, and payment

The proposed founding price is a one-time $99 setup fee and $79 per month after activation, plus taxes Future Perfect must collect. The monthly price is proposed to remain fixed for 12 months. Setup covers one historical-month close test. Recurring service activates only after that month reconciles exactly and the customer approves the book profile, chart of accounts, and setup close.

The subscription renews monthly until canceled. Before payment, the future checkout must clearly show the charge, billing interval, renewal, cancellation method, refund policy, and current agreement version and record affirmative acceptance. Stripe processes payment details; Future Perfect does not store a complete payment-card number. A failed payment may pause new work after notice.

7. Future launch refunds and cancellation

If Future Perfect cannot deliver the setup close because the records fall outside the supported workflow after the customer supplied complete, timely records, or because the service failed, the proposed policy is to refund the setup fee and not activate monthly service. The setup fee is not proposed to be refundable where material records were missing, inaccurate, late, or outside the facts disclosed during eligibility review. Counsel must approve that allocation before launch.

A customer may cancel at any time through the secure portal without speaking to a representative and without a cancellation fee. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current paid billing period and stops the next renewal. Service already delivered for a completed or partially completed monthly period is proposed to be nonrefundable except where required by law or the order. Nonwaivable refund or cancellation rights remain intact.

8. Corrections

Book history is append-only and is not silently rewritten. A customer may request correction through the secure portal. Future Perfect preserves the original record, appends the correction, and provides a revised package when the correction changes a delivered close.

9. Data ownership, export, and deletion

The customer retains ownership of business records, source documents, answers, and other content provided to the service. The customer grants Future Perfect and its listed service providers a limited license to process that content only as needed to provide, secure, support, and lawfully operate the service.

Future Perfect retains its software, service design, generic workflows, templates, controls, and know-how. It may use aggregated or de-identified operational information to improve generic workflows only when it cannot reasonably identify the customer, business, account, or transaction. It does not claim ownership of the customer's ledger or source records.

A customer may download a complete portable export while service is active and for 30 days after termination. Deletion may be requested after a current complete export and is subject to the published retention schedule, backup expiry, legal holds, security and fraud needs, billing records, disputes, and legally required retention. Future Perfect will not hold customer data hostage to prevent cancellation.

10. Acceptable use

The service may not be used to violate law or another person's rights; submit records without authority; process out-of-scope personal, household, trust, medical, or payroll data; introduce malware; bypass access controls; access another customer's data; or misrepresent an output as audited, assured, tax advice, legal advice, or a government filing.

Future Perfect may restrict activity reasonably necessary to contain abuse or protect customers. This restriction does not prevent ordinary export, migration, criticism, lawful interoperability, or use of a customer's own records.

11. Service providers, security, and incidents

Future Perfect may use the providers identified in the current privacy notice and subprocessor register and remains responsible for its agreement obligations when a provider performs work for it. Future Perfect maintains reasonable safeguards appropriate to the records in scope, but no system can be guaranteed completely secure. It will investigate confirmed incidents and provide notices required by applicable law.

12. Changes and availability

This is an early, capacity-limited service. Future Perfect may improve or change features, workflows, providers, and eligibility boundaries. Planned features and delivery dates are not promises. It will not materially reduce the core paid service during a billing period without reasonable notice and an export, cancellation, or transition path.

The service may be temporarily unavailable for maintenance, provider failure, or circumstances outside Future Perfect's reasonable control. Recovery objectives are not guarantees unless an order expressly says so.

13. Communications

Operational and transactional communications may cover records, questions, closes, billing, security, and term changes. Customers must keep contact details current. Do not email statements, account numbers, tax identifiers, credentials, or other financial records. Use the authenticated portal. Proposed support and legal-notice email: kyle@futureperfect.work. Counsel must approve the formal notice method and verified business address.

14. Suspension and termination

A customer may terminate by canceling as described above. Future Perfect may suspend or terminate for material breach, nonpayment, abuse, security risk, legal requirement, or because the records no longer fit the service boundary. When practical, it will give notice and a reasonable opportunity to cure. If Future Perfect discontinues the service for reasons unrelated to customer breach, it will provide reasonable notice, a portable export opportunity, and any refund the final approved policy requires.

15. Counsel-review placeholders — not operative

1. Warranty disclaimer: express warranty, implied-warranty treatment, and a remedy consistent with the setup-refund promise.
2. Limitation of liability: excluded damages, an appropriate and insurable cap, carve-outs, customer-supplied facts, confidentiality, security, gross negligence, willful misconduct, and nonwaivable liability.
3. Indemnity: whether either party indemnifies, covered claims, defense control, notice, consent, and insurance fit.
4. Disputes: escalation, small-claims access, arbitration or court, any jury or class waiver, costs, opt-out, and conspicuous assent.
5. Governing law and venue: chosen law and forum, conflicts rules, and treatment of customers outside Washington.
6. Confidentiality and remedies: mutual duties, exclusions, compelled disclosure, injunctive relief, and open-source license interaction.

Until counsel approves the agreement, no unpublished disclaimer, liability cap, indemnity, arbitration requirement, class waiver, governing-law clause, or venue clause applies.

16. Versioning and remaining boilerplate

Material changes to a future accepted agreement will apply prospectively after reasonable notice unless law requires otherwise. A reduction in customer rights during a paid period will wait until renewal unless the customer affirmatively accepts it or law requires the change. Counsel must finish assignment, waiver, severability, force majeure, third-party beneficiary, interpretation, order-of-precedence, and entire-agreement language.