Terms of Use

1. About these terms

Trustrade is operated by TR. Trade Pty Ltd (ABN 14 702 631 472 · ACN 702 631 472). "We", "us" and "our" mean that company. "You" means anyone who uses Trustrade: a client (the person paying for the work), a tradie (the person or business doing it), or someone acting for one of them.

These terms apply whenever you use the Trustrade website or apps. By creating an account, accepting a job invitation or funding a stage you agree to them. If you use Trustrade for a business, you confirm you are allowed to agree on its behalf.

You must be 18 or over and in Australia, and the work must be carried out in Australia.

2. What Trustrade does, and what it does not do

Trustrade is software. It lets a tradie set out a job in stages, lets the client agree to it and fund each stage in advance, keeps a record of what was said and done, and passes release and refund instructions to the payment provider.

• We are not a party to the contract between a client and a tradie. That contract is theirs, including its price, scope, timing, quality and warranties.
• We are not a bank, a trustee or an escrow agent, and we never hold your money. Stage payments are held by the payment provider described in section 5.
• We do not inspect, certify or guarantee anyone's work, licence, insurance or ability to pay, and we do not give legal, financial, tax or building advice.
• We do not decide disagreements between a client and a tradie (section 7).

3. Your account

Give us accurate details and keep them current. Tradies must give their correct legal or business name and ABN, and must hold every licence, registration and insurance the law requires for the work they take on.

The payment provider must verify who you are before it can hold or pay out money for you. It may ask for identity documents and may refuse or delay a payment until it has them. That check is theirs and is required by law.

Sign-in is by a link sent to your email address, so keep that mailbox secure. You are responsible for what is done through your account. Tell us straight away at hello@trustrade.co if you think someone else has access to it.

4. Jobs, stages and the job agreement

A tradie sets up a job: the client, the site address, and each stage with what it includes, its price and its start date. The client is invited to review it. Nothing can be funded until the client has agreed to the job agreement shown in the app.

The job agreement is between the client and the tradie. Trustrade provides the form; it does not check that it is right for your job. The tradie is responsible for meeting the building laws of the state or territory where the work is done, including any rules about written contracts, deposits and progress payments, cooling-off periods, licensing and home warranty or domestic building insurance. Using Trustrade does not replace any of those.

Dates can be moved by the tradie, and the client is told when they are. Moving a date does not change a price.

5. How the money works

Funding. When a client funds a stage, the payment goes to a payment provider that holds an Australian financial services licence (the payment provider). The payment provider holds the money for the client until it is released or refunded. It is not Trustrade's money, it never passes through a Trustrade bank account, and the tradie cannot access it while it is held. We will name the payment provider, and link to its own terms, before you fund anything. Its terms apply to the payment as well as these.

What "held" means. Held money does not earn interest for you. It is not a bank deposit and it is not covered by the Australian Government's Financial Claims Scheme.

Release. A stage is released to the tradie when the first of these happens:

• the client taps Release funds for that stage;
• 7 days pass after the tradie marks the stage complete and asks for release, and in that time the client has neither released it nor placed a hold. We remind the client before this happens;
• the client and the tradie agree, in the app, to release all or part of it (section 7).

A release cannot be undone by Trustrade. Once money has been released, getting any of it back is a matter between the client and the tradie.

Refunds. Held money goes back to the client if the tradie agrees in the app to refund it, if both parties agree to cancel a stage that has not started, or if a court or tribunal orders it. Refunds go back to the account the payment came from.

Failed and reversed payments. If a payment is dishonoured, reversed or charged back, the stage is treated as not funded, and the payment provider's terms decide what happens to any amount already released.

Tax invoices. Invoices for the work are issued by the tradie through Trustrade, in the tradie's name. The tradie is responsible for whether GST applies and for the details on them.

6. Variations

A tradie can price a change to the job in the app: what is changing, the price and any extra days. Nothing changes until the client accepts it. When the client accepts, the variation becomes a new stage that is funded and released like any other, and the remaining dates move out by the extra days. A client can decline a variation, and a tradie can withdraw one that has not been accepted.

Work done on a change that was never accepted in the app is outside Trustrade, and no money is held for it.

7. Holds, and what happens if you disagree

At any time before a stage is released, the client can place it on hold and say why. A hold stops the automatic release. The money stays held; it does not go back to the client and it does not go to the tradie.

A hold ends when:

• the tradie fixes the issue and marks it Rectified, and the client confirms it is resolved. The tradie's original request for release then carries on, with a fresh 7-day period;
• the client withdraws the hold;
• the client and the tradie agree in the app to release it, refund it, or split it between them; or
• we are given a binding decision of a court or tribunal, or a settlement signed by both of you, that says where the money goes. We will pass that instruction to the payment provider.

We do not take sides. We do not decide who is right, we do not assess the work, and we cannot move held money on one party's say-so. You should use the job chat to sort it out. You may agree between yourselves to get an independent inspection at your own cost, and you each keep every right you have to go to your state or territory's building dispute service, a tribunal or a court.

The job chat, the stage history and the documents on the job are a record both of you can rely on. Messages cannot be edited or deleted.

8. Fees

Trustrade charges a platform fee on each stage that is released. The rate, and whether it is paid by the tradie, by the client or shared, is shown before a stage is funded. The fee for a stage is fixed when that stage is funded and does not change afterwards, even if our pricing does.

There is no platform fee on money that is refunded. If a stage is split, the fee applies only to the part that is released. The payment provider may charge its own fees for some payment methods; those are shown before you pay.

We issue our own invoice for each fee. Unless it says otherwise, fees are in Australian dollars. GST is shown on our invoices once we are registered for it.

9. Messages and records

Each job has one chat, shared by the client, the tradie and Trustrade support. What happens to the money (funded, release requested, released, refunded, placed on hold, hold lifted) is recorded in it automatically. We keep the chat and the job history with the job so that there is one record of what was agreed. We may read a job's chat to provide support, to investigate a complaint or misuse, or where the law requires it.

10. Using Trustrade fairly

• Do not mark a stage complete unless the work in that stage has been done.
• Do not use Trustrade for anything unlawful, to move money that is not for a genuine job, or to get around the payment provider's checks.
• Do not pressure, threaten or mislead the other party, in the chat or anywhere else, to get a release or a refund.
• Do not upload anything you have no right to share, and do not interfere with the service or try to access other people's jobs.

We may suspend or close an account that breaks these rules or puts other users at risk. Suspending an account never changes who held money belongs to: it is still released or refunded under sections 5 and 7.

11. The app, and your content

We own Trustrade: the software, the design and the brand. You may use it for your own jobs. You own what you put into it. You give us permission to store it, show it to the other party on your job, and use it to run and support the service.

12. Our responsibility to you

Nothing in these terms takes away rights you have under the Australian Consumer Law, including the guarantee that our service will be provided with due care and skill. Where the law lets us limit what we owe you for failing to meet a consumer guarantee, our liability is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

Otherwise, and as far as the law allows: we are not responsible for the building work, for whether it is done properly or at all, for a tradie's licence or insurance, for a client's ability to pay, or for anything the payment provider does or fails to do under its own terms; and our total liability to you in connection with a job is limited to the platform fees paid on that job. Neither of us is liable to the other for loss that could not reasonably have been expected.

We aim to keep Trustrade available and accurate but do not promise it will never be interrupted. If the app is unavailable when an automatic release is due, the release happens when it is back, and no one loses a right to place a hold because of our outage.

13. Changes to these terms

We will give you at least 14 days' notice by email and in the app before a change that affects your rights takes effect. A change never alters the fee or the release rules for a stage that is already funded. If you do not accept a change you can stop using Trustrade; anything already held is still released or refunded under the terms that applied when it was funded.

14. Complaints

Tell us at hello@trustrade.co. We will acknowledge it within 2 business days and give you an answer within 10 business days. If your complaint is about the payment service itself, the payment provider has its own complaints process and is a member of the Australian Financial Complaints Authority; we will tell you how to reach both. A disagreement with the other party about the work is covered by section 7.

15. General

These terms are governed by the law of Victoria, Australia. If part of them cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. We may transfer our rights under these terms to a company that takes over the service, provided your rights are not reduced. You can contact us at hello@trustrade.co.