Force majeure (terrorist attack/natural disaster)

[likessleep]

I am setting up T&Cs as I am about to embark on working freelance.
Client has approved them all, which is great, but is not prepared to accept liability / costs for the 'force majeure' clause. In the line of work I do, if anything were to happen, I could have to pay fees out, which would run into the thousands.
Naturally, I don't want to lose this client over this. Whilst it is a very unlikely scenario, I would still like the comfort of knowing I am covered.

So my questions are:
Has anyone else been in this situation and it been resolved? If so, how?
Has anyone ever taken out insurance for such situations?

Thanks muchly!

Hmmm.

So... in the event of a disaster you may end up liable yourself (ie your customer wants you to bear this risk as a condition of doing business with you).

One view, I guess, is that bearing an element of risk is in the nature of subcontracting. In principle the greater the risk the higher the price of your services, however - although you and the client would have to broadly agree on the nature of the risk to be able to agree a price.

Rather than a force majeure contractual clause, could you price the job a different way eg:
5 x days Likesleep labour at £1 billion per day
Other costs eg:
£50 photocopying and admin
£1000 venue hire
£200 travel
...with the element that greatest risk attaches to priced either explicitly into your other costs, or as part of of your higher daily fee.

I appreciate you may have done the sums with this particular client already, and agreed a fee for the job ... but this is one way around the problem.

thanks mrsbaldwin. yeah i guess i need to build it in to the costs. The risk is very small anyway, but it is a difficult one, as it could be £1k to £2kish, worst case scenario. i have already agreed costs, but i have included a 'buffer' as i am sure i don't trust myself that i have included everything

i may ask if we can split the risk 50/50 for all fees i would be paying out for (i.e. not my time, but amounts i would be invoiced). they can but say no (it is the legal time who have ok'ed documents, so not my actual client herself).

thanks for posting.

One other thought small thought is that you could build a 'worst case scenario' contingency fund into your business finances ie let's say you put away 10% of the total on each invoice into your accruals pot to pay tax with later ... you could increase that to 15% for a year (although this is easier said than done if you need the cashflow now ). Your contingency fund might fulfil the dual function of being 'upfront' money for jobs where you need to make an initial outlay even if this is going to be reimbursed later.

The other thing to say is that IMO pricing jobs 'correctly' (ie so it's worth your while) is trial and error for the first little while of being freelance. I've made loads of ... well ... not mistakes exactly (if I am being nice to myself), but I could have done it a lot better IYKWIM.

thanks mrsbaldwin, that's a good idea and i definitely need to accrue some money for the pot as my 'regular' client has a 60 day payment term (and i need to pay about half of my job values out in direct costs to other agencies in the meantime).
yeah, the whole costing is quite scary initially, i think i've accounted for everything in the costs, but still i have that niggling doubt.
thank you for posting. next job on the list is changing my car insurance! can't wait until all of these bits and pieces are sorted and i can get on with doing the job i am going to be getting paid for