Purpose. This Support Policy describes the standard support framework for the SmartDry Services, including support channels, support hours, severity classification, target initial response times, incident handling, maintenance and escalation. It is intended to create clear operational expectations without converting target response times into guaranteed resolution times.
Important: This Policy is not, by itself, a guaranteed uptime or service-credit SLA. Any contractual uptime commitment, service credit, 24/7 support commitment, recovery objective or enhanced response time applies only where expressly stated in an Order Form or separate SLA.
| Standard support | Business Days, 09:00-17:30 UK time. Critical issues receive the highest priority. Different support hours or enhanced support apply only where expressly purchased or agreed. |
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1. Status and Relationship to the Agreement
This Support Policy forms part of the Agreement where it is identified or incorporated in accordance with the SmartDry Master Software & Services Terms ("Master Terms"). Capitalised terms not defined here have the meanings given in the Master Terms.
If an Order Form or separately agreed SLA expressly provides a different support commitment for the same subject matter, that specific commitment prevails to the extent of the inconsistency. The Master Terms continue to govern all other matters, including liability, exclusions, suspension and termination.
The applicable version of this Policy will be recorded in accordance with the version-identification provisions of the Master Terms.
2. Scope of Standard Support
Standard Support is intended to assist the Customer with the use and operation of the SmartDry Services purchased by the Customer. Subject to this Policy and the Customer's package, Standard Support may include:
- triage of suspected defects or material service incidents;
- reasonable assistance with supported product functionality and configuration;
- guidance concerning documented workflows and supported integrations;
- investigation of account-access or authentication issues affecting the Services;
- reasonable assistance with data export or operational recovery using available product functionality;
- notification and coordination for material incidents affecting the Services; and
- escalation to engineering or infrastructure personnel where SmartDry reasonably determines this is required.
Support is provided for the Services and configurations SmartDry currently supports. It does not include unlimited consulting, bespoke development, migration work, data cleansing, training, hardware repair, on-site attendance or third-party vendor support unless separately agreed.
3. Support Channels
Support requests should be submitted through the support channels SmartDry makes available to the Customer from time to time. These may include:
- an in-product support or help function;
- a SmartDry support portal or ticketing system;
- a designated SmartDry support email address; and
- for an active Critical Incident, another escalation channel expressly provided by SmartDry.
A request sent to a sales, marketing, legal, social-media or individual employee address is not treated as a formal Support Request unless SmartDry confirms that it has been transferred into the support process.
SmartDry may require the Customer to use a designated support channel so that requests can be logged, prioritised, audited and escalated consistently.
4. Support Hours
4.1 Standard Support Hours
Unless the applicable Order Form states otherwise, Standard Support Hours are 09:00 to 17:30 UK time on Business Days.
A Support Request received outside Standard Support Hours is treated as received at the start of the next applicable Standard Support period for purposes of target response timing.
4.2 Enhanced or 24/7 Support
Enhanced, extended-hours or 24/7 support is available only where expressly stated in an Order Form, SLA or other written support entitlement. The existence of monitoring, automated alerts or out-of-hours engineering activity does not itself create a contractual 24/7 support commitment.
5. Severity Classification
SmartDry will assign or confirm a severity based on the actual operational impact of the issue. The Customer may propose a severity when submitting a request, but SmartDry may reasonably reclassify it after triage. Severity is determined by business impact, scope, availability of workarounds and whether core operations can continue.
| Severity | Description | Typical SmartDry example | Priority |
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| P1 - Critical | Production Services are unavailable or a critical function is unusable for a substantial part of the Customer's operation, with no reasonable workaround. | Customer cannot access POS across a location or multiple locations; orders cannot be created or retrieved due to a SmartDry production failure. | Highest |
| P2 - High | Material degradation or failure of important functionality significantly affects operations, but the Services remain partly usable or a workaround exists. | Printing, production workflow or dispatch is materially impaired for a location, but orders can still be processed through another supported workflow. | High |
| P3 - Normal | A non-critical defect or issue affects functionality but does not materially prevent normal business operation. | A report, settings screen or secondary workflow behaves incorrectly while core POS and order processing remain available. | Normal |
| P4 - Low / Request | General question, cosmetic issue, documentation request, feature request or low-impact problem. | How-to question, minor display issue, enhancement suggestion or request for product guidance. | Planned |
6. Target Initial Response Times
For Standard Support, SmartDry targets the following initial response times during Standard Support Hours:
| Severity | Target initial response | What the initial response means |
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| P1 - Critical | 1 business hour | Acknowledgement, confirmation that triage has started, and where reasonably available an initial assessment or next update timing. |
| P2 - High | 4 business hours | Acknowledgement and commencement of appropriate investigation or support action. |
| P3 - Normal | 1 Business Day | Acknowledgement and initial support assessment or request for further information. |
| P4 - Low / Request | 2 Business Days | Acknowledgement and routing to the appropriate product, support or commercial process. |
These are target initial response times, not guaranteed resolution times. Resolution depends on factors including complexity, reproducibility, third-party dependencies, Customer cooperation, data availability, required code changes, security considerations and the need for safe testing or deployment.
Failure to meet a target response time does not automatically create a service credit, refund or termination right unless an applicable Order Form or SLA expressly provides that remedy.
7. Customer Responsibilities for Support
To allow SmartDry to investigate efficiently, the Customer should provide information reasonably available to it, which may include:
- Customer and location identifier;
- affected users, devices, modules or workflows;
- time and date the issue started and whether it is ongoing;
- steps to reproduce the problem where known;
- screenshots, error messages, order identifiers or logs that do not expose unnecessary sensitive information;
- recent Customer-side configuration, network, device or integration changes;
- the operational impact and any available workaround; and
- a suitable contact who can assist with testing or confirmation of recovery.
The Customer must not send passwords, authentication secrets, payment-card security codes or other unnecessary high-risk credentials in support tickets or free-text fields.
If SmartDry cannot reasonably investigate because required information or Customer cooperation is unavailable, applicable target times may be paused until sufficient information is provided.
8. Incident Handling and Communications
8.1 Investigation and prioritisation
SmartDry may reproduce, investigate, mitigate, correct, route or escalate a Support Request according to its severity and technical nature. SmartDry may address a Critical Incident through workaround, rollback, failover, configuration change, feature isolation or other reasonable mitigation before implementing a permanent correction.
8.2 Status updates
For an active P1 Critical Incident, SmartDry will use reasonable efforts during applicable support coverage to provide meaningful updates as material information becomes available. Update frequency may vary according to the nature of the incident and the availability of new information.
For lower-severity matters, updates may be provided when material progress occurs, further information is required, a workaround is available, or a release containing a fix is scheduled or deployed.
8.3 Closure
SmartDry may close a Support Request when the issue has been resolved, a reasonable workaround has been provided, the request is determined not to be a SmartDry defect, required Customer information remains unavailable after reasonable follow-up, or the matter is transferred to another appropriate process such as professional services or a feature request.
9. Escalation
A Customer may request escalation where it reasonably believes that:
- the assigned severity does not reflect the actual business impact;
- a material issue is not progressing appropriately;
- multiple related incidents indicate a broader service problem; or
- management attention is reasonably required because of sustained operational impact.
SmartDry may escalate a request internally to senior support, engineering, infrastructure, security, product or management personnel as appropriate. Escalation does not itself change contractual severity, response targets or remedies unless SmartDry confirms otherwise.
10. Availability, Maintenance and Releases
10.1 Availability
SmartDry aims to maintain reliable commercial availability. Unless the applicable Order Form or separate SLA expressly states a numerical uptime commitment, this Policy does not guarantee a particular monthly or annual uptime percentage.
10.2 Planned maintenance
SmartDry may perform planned maintenance, infrastructure work, deployments or upgrades. Where planned work is reasonably expected to cause material customer-facing interruption, SmartDry will use reasonable efforts to schedule it to reduce operational impact and provide advance notice where practicable.
10.3 Emergency maintenance
SmartDry may perform emergency maintenance without advance notice where reasonably necessary to address security risk, material defects, infrastructure failure, data integrity, legal requirements or platform stability. SmartDry will use reasonable efforts to minimise disruption and restore normal service promptly.
10.4 Product releases
Routine product releases, patches and improvements may be deployed without individual notice where SmartDry does not reasonably expect material service interruption. Release timing and deployment method remain subject to SmartDry's operational and security judgement.
11. Support Exclusions
Unless separately agreed, Standard Support does not include investigation or remediation of issues materially caused by:
- Customer equipment, local network, internet connectivity or power supply outside SmartDry's control;
- unsupported browsers, operating systems, devices, printers, scanners, payment terminals or other Hardware;
- Customer misuse, unauthorised modifications or use contrary to the Agreement or Documentation;
- Customer Data, configuration or instructions that are inaccurate or incomplete;
- a Third-Party Service selected or contracted for independently by the Customer;
- changes made by the Customer or a third party to integrations, credentials, DNS, networking or device configuration;
- beta, preview, experimental or pilot functionality to the extent reduced support is stated for that functionality;
- force majeure circumstances governed by the Master Terms; or
- professional-services work, custom development or data remediation not included in the Customer's subscription.
SmartDry may nevertheless provide reasonable assistance with excluded matters and may offer additional services or chargeable work where appropriate.
12. Third-Party Services and Hardware
Where an incident appears to involve a Third-Party Service, SmartDry will reasonably assist with diagnosis to the extent the issue affects a supported SmartDry integration. SmartDry is not responsible for a third party's independent support response, outage, product change or contractual commitments.
Support for SmartDry-supplied Hardware is subject to any applicable Hardware Terms, manufacturer warranty or Order Form. Standard software support does not itself include on-site hardware replacement, courier services, consumables, accidental-damage cover or manufacturer warranty obligations.
13. Security and Data-Protection Incidents
A suspected security incident, compromised credential or Personal Data breach should be reported through the designated SmartDry security or support channel as soon as reasonably practicable.
Security incidents involving Customer Personal Data are handled in accordance with the DPA and Security Schedule. Where those documents impose a specific notification or cooperation requirement, they prevail over this general Support Policy for that subject matter.
SmartDry may restrict information disclosed during an active investigation where reasonably necessary to protect security, other customers, confidential information, legal privilege, law-enforcement activity or incident containment.
14. Service Credits and Remedies
Standard Support targets in this Policy do not create service credits or liquidated damages.
A service credit, refund, extended termination right or other service-level remedy applies only if expressly stated in an applicable Order Form or SLA, and is subject to the eligibility conditions, exclusions, claim process and caps stated there.
Where an applicable SLA states that a service credit is the exclusive remedy for a specified service-level failure, that provision applies subject to rights and liabilities that cannot lawfully be excluded.
15. Fair Use and Abusive Support Behaviour
The Customer must use support channels reasonably and in good faith. SmartDry may manage, defer, consolidate or restrict Support Requests that are duplicative, abusive, fraudulent, intentionally misleading or submitted at a volume that materially interferes with support for other customers.
Nothing in this Section permits SmartDry to disregard a genuine Critical Incident merely because the Customer has raised other support requests.
16. Changes to this Policy
SmartDry may update this Policy in accordance with the change-control provisions of the Master Terms, including to reflect changes in support tooling, operating model, products, security requirements or service packages.
SmartDry will maintain version identification and reasonable historical records of published versions. A material reduction in support commitments for an existing committed Subscription Term will be handled in accordance with the Master Terms unless required sooner by law, security or circumstances beyond SmartDry's reasonable control.
17. Support Contact and Administration
The Customer should use the current support channel displayed in the SmartDry Services, Customer onboarding materials, Order Form or SmartDry Legal Centre. SmartDry may update operational support contact details without amending this Policy, provided an effective support route remains available.
Formal legal notices must be sent in accordance with the notices provision of the Master Terms and should not be submitted through ordinary support channels.
Appendix A - Severity Decision Guide
The following factors may be considered together when determining severity:
| Factor | Higher severity indicator | Lower severity indicator |
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| Scope | Multiple sites, many users or a core production workflow affected | Single user, device or non-core workflow |
| Business continuity | Orders or collections cannot reasonably continue | Operations can continue with limited inconvenience |
| Workaround | No reasonable supported workaround | Documented or practical workaround exists |
| Data / security | Potential material integrity or security impact | No material data or security impact identified |
| Time sensitivity | Immediate operational or customer-service impact | Can reasonably wait for normal product/support cycle |
Appendix B - Standard Support Summary
| Support hours | 09:00-17:30 UK time on Business Days, unless otherwise agreed |
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| P1 target initial response | 1 business hour |
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| P2 target initial response | 4 business hours |
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| P3 target initial response | 1 Business Day |
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| P4 target initial response | 2 Business Days |
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| Guaranteed resolution time | None under Standard Support unless expressly agreed in an Order Form or SLA |
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