Exit clause

The clause worth having names four things: notice, what is handed over, in what form, and by when. Handed over means accounts transferred into the company's name, source in a repository the company owns, data exported in a format that opens without the supplier's tooling, and documentation sufficient for a competent third party to continue.

The last part is the one that decides whether the rest works. “All materials will be provided on request” is satisfied by a zip file nobody can use. A clause that specifies the format and a deadline is satisfiable or breached, and the difference matters exactly once.

It is also worth writing what happens on non-payment, because that is the dispute in which the clause is actually invoked. Withholding work you have no lien over is not a strong position under UAE law — the civil code treats it as liability rather than leverage — and both sides are better served by a written sequence than by discovering that at the worst moment.

Signing without one because the relationship is new and good

It is written at the start or not at all: after a dispute begins, neither side will agree to terms that constrain them, and the party holding the accounts has no reason to. Ten lines at signature, and they are only ever read on the one day they are worth everything.

A definition sits still. This does not.

The term is a reading taken at a point in a sequence that is already running. These are the sequences, with the place each of them jams.

From a brief to work somebody has accepted

A piece of paid work, travelling from the sentence that started it to the moment the buyer agrees it is finished and can carry it without the supplier. 6 steps, acceptance by demonstration is the arrangement that fails while looking reasonable.

Somebody will quote this number at you.

Knowing the definition is not the same as being able to check the figure. These are the procedures that do the second thing.

Reading a quotation for technical work

“The whole project comes to AED 45,000, four to six weeks.” · 30 minutes, 5 questions.

Somebody is accountable for this number.

A definition is free. Being answerable for the figure it produces is the part that is bought, and this term is a working part of the engagements below.

Private consulting

Advice you cannot act on without us is not advice.

---

M&A audit and deal review

Price the system you are buying, not the one in the data room.

Vendor lock-in

What it would cost to leave — and it is a design property of the arrangement rather than a personality trait of the supplier.

---

Source code escrow

Source and build instructions held by a third party, released on stated events — insurance against a supplier that stops existing rather than one that stops replying.

---

Offboarding

The sequence that removes a departing person's access to everything, in an order that does not lock the company out of its own systems on the way.

---

Handover

The point at which a vendor's work becomes the company's property — defined by what is transferred, not by the project being finished.

---

Digital asset register

A written list of every account, domain and system the business depends on, recording who owns it, who administers it, what it costs and how it is recovered.

All ninety-six termsWhat this is regulated by in the UAE

Is this one right in your own numbers?

The definitions are the easy part. Whether the figure on your dashboard was computed this way is a different question, and usually the more expensive one.