More work after the project goes live

Going live is a status change, not a goodbye. The project stays in your merchant dashboard as launched. Notes, receipts, the original CAD quote, and the next request live there. We do not ask you to open a new thread with a stranger, create a second login, or paste the brief into a helpdesk that has never seen your Square account. The studio that shipped the French receipt is the studio that changes the tax line.

That record is why post-launch work is cheaper to reason about than a net-new engagement. We already know the processor, the languages you bought, the college rule in the footer, and which environment is production. A new agency would spend the first week rediscovering that. We spend the first hour deciding whether your ask is a reserved care hour or a published add-on. The history is the asset. Do not throw it away by starting a parallel email.

Add-ons attach after the project is live. In our system that means status launched, active, or review — not intake, and not a paused discovery that never shipped. If you are still in intake, you do not need an add-on; you need the quote finished. If you paused before launch, write admin@sycgeeks.ca and we will say whether we reopen the original scope or write a new number. Do not buy an extra page on a product that does not exist yet.

You will see the same workflow when we reopen: intake notes, active build, review, then launched again. Progress moves in the dashboard so you are not guessing the week. If a week slips, we write why — usually content, a legal page, or a price list that still lives in a spreadsheet. Silent calendars are how projects rot the first time. They are also how post-launch work rot if nobody writes the delay.

If two brands share one login, keep the work on the project it belongs to. A landing page for the Vancouver shop is not a note on the Montreal shop. Mixing them is how a GST rule lands on the wrong receipt. We would rather you have two launched records than one confused file. Care can sit on each product. An add-on always names the project you pay against.

Tell us what you want in the project notes, by text, or in a booked session. Notes are for decisions that should survive a staff change. Text is for a short fact — “the Saturday slot is wrong on Square.” A booked Square appointment on Pacific time is for a conversation you cannot reduce to a sentence. Email to admin@sycgeeks.ca is the right door when you want a CAD number and you already have a brief. Call +1 (672) 200-7924 on a weekday if production is down.

A useful ask names the surface, the language, and the outcome. “Can we make it pop” is not a brief. “Add a Services page in English and French, with the same booking button as the home page, by 12 May” is a brief we can match to an extra-page add-on. “The French receipt shows English tax labels after a refund” is a defect. If you have care, the defect comes out of the reserved hour. If you do not, and it is our work, we still fix our defect. We do not pretend a new page is a defect.

Attach what we would otherwise hunt for. Screenshots of the live checkout beat adjectives. The current price list in CAD beats “we’ll send later.” The college PDF that dictates footer language beats a verbal “legal said something.” If Square already has the new service, send the service name exactly as it appears there. We would rather inherit a real system than invent a second one in the notes.

If you have care and the ask fits the reserved hour, we do it there and log it. You will see what changed, in language an operator can read, dated in Pacific time. If the hour is already used this month and the ask is still small, we will say so and either wait for next month or point you to the eight-hour add-on. We will not silently work a second hour and invoice a surprise. Unused hours do not roll into a December bank.

Do not paste a second product into the notes of the first. A mobile app, a wholesale portal, or a store for a province with a different tax story is often a new quote. We can still keep it on the same account. We cannot keep it honest inside “quick question.” If you are unsure which door you are in, ask. The answer is a sentence: reserved hour, published add-on, or new CAD quote. That sentence is the product.

A defect is something we shipped that does not do the job in the quote. New scope is something the quote never promised. The launch window — 30 days in the terms, up to 90 on a denser bilingual or payments build — is for defects. Care’s reserved hour is for later defects and for small copy and dependency work. Everything that changes the product you bought is a published add-on or a new quote on the same project. We do not smuggle scope into care.

Examples that are defects: the French receipt is English with accents; Apple Pay returns a blank error on Safari; GST applies the Ontario rate to a Nova Scotia ship-to; the keyboard cannot leave the cookie banner; a service we listed on the Square appointment page books the wrong duration. Examples that are new scope: a second language you declined at kickoff, a wholesale price list, a new collection, a redesigned checkout, extra product stills, a members area, a second marketplace. Taste (“make it more premium”) is also new scope until you can name the page and the outcome.

The sentence test keeps both sides honest. “Does this restore what we bought, or change what we bought?” Restore: reserved hour or launch window. Change: add-on. If the work starts as restore and becomes change — you asked to fix a label and then asked for a new information architecture — we stop and name the add-on. We do not finish the architecture inside the hour and send a bill you never approved. Silent overages are how trust dies.

PIPEDA and WCAG defects are still defects when we shipped the gap. A form without a label, a contrast failure on the primary button, a chatbot that collects emails the privacy page never mentions — if that shipped in our build, it is on us inside the window and on care’s hour afterward. Adding a chatbot you did not buy, or a new analytics vendor, is new scope and a privacy-page change. Do not hide a tracker in “small copy.” Chat and analytics are personal information under Canadian law.

If you are unsure, write the URL and the outcome you want. We will answer with the bucket and, if it is an add-on, the published CAD number and whether your care rate applies. That reply should take less than a business day on Pacific time when the ask is clear. A muddy ask takes longer because we are not pricing fog. A messy brief is fine. An invisible one is not.

Published add-ons are the menu for work that is bigger than the reserved hour and smaller than a new product. They are attached to the live project, priced in CAD, and shown with two numbers: standard and care. Care members pay about 25 percent less. That discount is the reason many clients keep the $450 CAD month or the $4,500 CAD year after launch. It is not a coupon we invent on the phone. It is the number on the care page.

You buy the add-on from the launched project in the dashboard. Checkout shows the rate that matches your care status. If you are on care, you see the care number. If you are not, you see the standard number and a line that says care members pay less. We do not hide the comparison. After you pay, we write the add-on into that project, set status back to active, and keep every old receipt. You are not starting over. You are reopening.

The number you approve is the number you pay. Processor fees — Square, Stripe, PayPal — stay with the processor. We do not convert the add-on to USD on the receipt. We do not add a silent buffer “in case it runs long.” If the work grows past the add-on, we stop and write the next number. Eight reserved hours exist for the in-between cases: more than one hour, less than a full page or checkout change, still on this project.

Durations are honest ranges, not theatre. An extra page is usually one to two weeks if copy arrives. An extra language pass is one to two weeks because legal and checkout labels are the slow part. A checkout change is two to three weeks because money is involved. Product stills are about a week. A new collection is two to four weeks because inventory and tax have to be true. Hours are used as booked. Content delay still moves the calendar more than code.

If you want care only to unlock the discount, say that out loud. It is a legitimate reason to buy the $450 CAD month when you already know a checkout change is coming. It is not a legitimate reason to demand we treat a marketplace as an extra page. We will tell you which add-on we would buy for ourselves. We will not upsell a custom rebuild because it is interesting.

Extra page — $2,400 CAD standard, $1,800 CAD on care — is one new page on the live site: copy, layout, and bilingual routes if the project already is bilingual. It is the right add-on for a real offer you can name: a service, a location, a campaign with a date. It is the wrong add-on for “refresh the whole site.” If the new page needs a form that collects personal information, the privacy page must say so. That sentence is part of the page, not a later surprise.

Extra language pass — $1,800 / $1,350 — is a full language you did not buy at launch: navigation, legal, checkout labels, receipts, and error states. French is not a thinner English. Buttons that fit “Book” may not fit “Prendre rendez-vous.” We rewrite, we do not squeeze, and we test forms in that language before we call it shipped. A flag icon that swaps strings is not this add-on. Official-language work is architecture.

Checkout change — $3,200 / $2,400 — is a scoped change to the live checkout: a method, a tax rule, or a step that is hurting conversion. It is two to three weeks because we will place a real CAD order, refund it, and read the receipt again. Adding Apple Pay beside a card processor can belong here. Inventing a marketplace does not. If the change touches PIPEDA purpose — a new field, a new vendor — the privacy page updates in the same sprint.

Product stills — $1,200 / $900 — are a set of studio-look images generated for your catalogue, not stock people shaking hands. Use them when the live product has no honest photo and you would rather not wait on a photographer. They are not a replacement for regulated claims: if your college or Health Canada rules restrict how a product may look, send the rule in the brief. We would rather decline a picture than ship a claim you cannot defend.

New collection — $2,800 / $2,100 — is a category on the live store wired to inventory and tax. If you sell in person, Square POS and the site must share a truth or you will sell the same jacket twice on a Saturday. Eight reserved hours — $1,600 / $1,200 — are for work that is bigger than the monthly hour and smaller than the items above, used as booked on this same project. If none of these fit, we write a quote. We do not invent a sixth SKU on the phone.

After you pay the published add-on, status moves from launched to active. The workflow you already know comes back. Review still means you look at the thing in both languages if you bought both. Launch still means we place a test where money or personal information is involved. Then status returns to launched. Receipts for the original build, for care, and for the add-on sit on the same project so your bookkeeper is not reconstructing a year from Gmail.

This is deliberate product design. Canadian operators change staff. The person who approved the first quote may be gone. The dashboard has to explain the product without a phone call to Vancouver. That is why we refuse to run post-launch work as a Slack vibe. If your team wants a weekly call, book it, pay for it with the reserved hour or the eight-hour block, and we will still write the decision in the notes afterward. The call is optional. The note is not.

We do not assign you a new “success manager” who has to be briefed. You get the studio. If a student logs hours on the add-on, those hours are a general description of what they built, reviewed, or unblocked — not “worked on stuff.” You may never see the student dashboard. You should still see the result in the project notes. Orientation exists so those hours are readable. Your file should be readable too.

If you need a net-new product — a first mobile app, an API for a warehouse, a second store with a different processor — we will still keep the conversation on your account. We will open a new project record when the work would corrupt the history of the first. Two clean files beat one file that claims to be both a marketing site and a marketplace. Ask us which. We will tell you which one we would buy for ourselves.

Toronto, Montreal, and Halifax clients use the same doors. Appointments stay on Pacific time; the overlap is the only constraint. If the thing is on fire, call on a weekday. If you have a brief we can price, write. If you want to talk before you write, book. Geography is not a reason to start a second thread. The project is in the dashboard whether you are on Granville or on Sainte-Catherine.

We will not silently fold extra weeks into care. We will not finish a new collection and then mention it was “a bit more than an hour.” We will not keep coding after the published add-on is done and hope you like the surprise. If the work is going to run past the thing you bought, we stop, write the next CAD number, and wait. Handshake scope is how studios disappear and invoices go strange. Written scope is how a Vancouver studio stays in business in both official languages.

This rule protects you as much as it protects us. A silent overage today becomes a disputed receipt tomorrow, often in the month your board is already staring at processor fees. The quote number is the pay number. If GST or HST applies to our fees, it is on the invoice, not hidden in a USD sticker. If the processor takes a Canadian fee, it is theirs. If you see a line you did not approve, write admin@sycgeeks.ca the same day.

Stopping mid-work is uncomfortable and correct. You may have a campaign Monday. We may have already opened the branch. We still stop if the ask left the add-on. A store that ships a half-finished tax rule to make a date is worse than a store that ships next Wednesday with a written change. We would rather decline a fantasy timeline than miss a real one, including after launch.

If you are on yearly care and feel you already “paid for flexibility,” read the care guide again. The $4,500 CAD year buys watch, small updates, a reserved hour each month, priority scheduling, and the 25 percent add-on rate. It does not buy a floating week of new pages. Flexibility is the published menu plus a sentence about the bucket. Flexibility is not an informal tab.

When you are unsure which bucket you are in, ask. We would rather spend ten minutes on a weekday call than spend ten hours on work nobody agreed to. The companion guides on care, accessibility and PIPEDA, and invoices in CAD exist so that conversation is shorter. Use them. Then put the decision in the notes so the next person does not have the same argument in March.

Some post-launch asks are not add-ons. A first mobile app, a custom API, a headless storefront on a catalogue that outgrew the theme, a second property with its own tax and processor — those need a scoped quote in CAD before anyone writes production code. We will still talk to you as the people who launched the first thing. We will not pretend an app is “eight hours” because you are on care.

The brief for a new product is the same as the first brief. Who is this for in Canada? What do they buy or book? What should they do in the first visit? Which languages must be correct on day one? Which systems do you already pay for — Square, Shopify, a warehouse feed? Hard dates belong in writing. We would rather decline a fantasy than miss a market, a fiscal year, or a lease.

A typical new build still invoices 20 percent to start, 30 percent at design, 30 percent when core function works, and 20 percent at launch, all in CAD. Care can attach at that checkout the same way it did the first time. Launch still includes a defect window. The new project gets its own dashboard record so the first product’s history stays clean. You should be able to open either file and know what is true this week.

If the “new product” is actually a compliance problem — a college audit, a PIPEDA complaint, a checkout that never should have collected a health answer — start with the accessibility and PIPEDA guide and book a compliance consult if you want a structured review. Do not bury that in an extra-page add-on. Professional rules change IA, legal copy, and how we test. Retrofitting in week nine of a quiet marketing page is how those projects go bad.

Write admin@sycgeeks.ca with the conversion, the deadline, and the systems you already pay for. Book if you want to speak first. Call if the live product is the thing on fire and the new idea can wait until Wednesday. We are a Vancouver studio. We work in English and French. We invoice in Canadian dollars. More work after launch is normal. Invisible work is not. Keep it on the same project until it honestly is not the same project.