Peter Skouhus

Personally I hate contracts, they’re annoying, they eat your time because you need to review every single sentence in the contract to make sure that you agree to what’s written in the contract. Once you sign the contract, whatever you signed has to be kept, also if that was not what you meant at the time when you sign the contract

In my company we have resolved to recording all our Skype conversations and making the recording the basis for the agreement/contract.  While it may sound low tech, and I’m not hundred percent sure if this stand up in court it does work. This how we do it:

Whenever we take on a new project we discussed the scope of the customer. This is usually done through Skype in Three, four, five, six or more meetings whatever it takes to find out what needs to be done in a particular project. During the meetings everyone take notes, exchange e-mails and so on. Once everyone I in agreement of the scope, what needs to be done, desired deadlines then we take a meeting where we review everything. This meeting is done through Skype and the entire Skype session is records as an MP3. The MP3 file is our agreement, and everyone receives a copy of this file. If there are problems/disagreements then we ahave to do is to review the MP3 file to find out what was agreed, or find out that nothing was agreed concerning a particular issue.

Is this legal?

I’m not sure that our approach is legally binding or that it would hold up in court. However over the last 3 to 4 years we have been doing this, we have almost never had a problem, and we never had anything that potentially could develop into a court case. One time we had to transcribe all the meetings done in period to resolve some differences.

What software do you use?

There are several software programs available that will interface Skype and do the recording automatically for you. We primarily use an application called Pamala (www.Pamala.com) but I’m also aware of another application called skylook (www.skylook.com). I’m not sure which one of the best, but you can download demo version and try them out.

Do you tell that the conversation is being recorded?

Absolutely, we not only tell it we also write in our Skype status message to make sure that everyone understands that the conversation is being recorded. You can also have Pamala informing the other party that the conversation is being recorded, but it gives a delay of 2 to 3 seconds which can be quite annoying/and may even confuse the other party. A message in the Skype status is more subtle, and people will see it.

But at the end of the day doing business is all about trust, and I believe you can have contract from here to the North Pole and back again, if the other party does not want to keep then the deal, or are hell-bent on creating trouble, then they can create trouble. Therefore choose your customers with care just like you choose your partner, your employees and anything else in life.

Good luck!