General Terms & Conditions (CGV/CGU) for Consultants
As of 2026-08-16
Your CGV are the only document standing between you and unlimited liability, unpaid change requests, and 60-plus-day payment delays — the client's own purchase terms are drafted to protect them, not you. French law requires every B2B services provider to have CGV and produce them on request (Code de commerce, Art. L441-1); staying silent costs you the liability cap, the moyens-not-résultat framing, and the €40 statutory late-payment indemnity you are otherwise owed automatically. A consultant who references signed CGV in every proposal converts open-ended exposure into a capped, priced risk — typically 2x the invoiced amount instead of unlimited — and turns scope drift into billable change requests instead of unpaid overtime. This module gives you the clause structure a procurement team will actually respect, and the points worth defending when they push back.
What you will learn
- Structure a consultant-specific CGV covering scope, payment, liability, IP, and termination
- Apply mandatory French legal provisions (Article L441-10, late payment indemnity of €40 per invoice)
- Distinguish obligations de moyens from obligations de résultat and protect your position in each
- Negotiate CGV versus client CGA and identify the non-negotiable clauses worth defending
Not professional advice. CGV law in France is governed by the Code de commerce and Code civil; specific clauses may require drafting by a qualified attorney. This module provides the structural framework, not a verbatim template.
Why your CGV exist and why they are not optional
A consultant's Conditions Générales de Vente are not bureaucratic boilerplate — they are the legal instrument that fills every gap a client contract leaves open. Most SAP consulting engagements are governed by the client's own purchase order or framework agreement, drafted by their legal department to protect the client, not you. Your CGV, properly referenced and accepted, become the contractual baseline that applies wherever the client's document is silent. In French law (Articles L441-1 et seq. of the Code de commerce), any professional selling goods or services to another professional must have CGV and must communicate them on request. Non-communication is a civil offense. Communicating them after the fact gives them no legal force for the current transaction.
Prerequisites
- Review core concepts first: C061, C068, C064
Outcomes
- Draft consultant-specific CGV covering 12 critical areas
- Include French legal mandatory clauses (L.441-10, late payment €40)
- Explain the core architecture and decision points for General Terms & Conditions (CGV/CGU) for Consultants
- Apply a repeatable implementation pattern in a 15-minute lab format
Full module available to members. The full module adds: the decision framework · the end-to-end scenario walkthrough · the KPI scorecard · the anti-patterns · the knowledge check · the diagrams.