Website Terms and Conditions: What Your Small Business Needs

If you sell, book or sign people up through your website, you need terms and conditions that set out payment, delivery, refunds, who owns what and how disputes get handled, written so they don't cut across the Australian Consumer Law. A plain brochure site can get by with a short terms-of-use page, but the moment money or customer accounts are involved, the default rules that apply without written terms are rarely in your favour. Here's what to include, what you're not allowed to say, and when a template is enough.

T&Cs, privacy policy, refund policy: three documents, three jobs

People use the names interchangeably, which is how businesses end up with a "privacy policy" that talks about shipping. They're separate documents doing separate jobs.

Document	What it does	Who requires it
Website terms and conditions	The contract between you and the customer, or the rules for visitors: payment, delivery, refunds, IP, liability, disputes	No specific law makes it compulsory, but without one the default rules of contract and consumer law fill the gaps
Privacy policy	Explains what personal information you collect, why, how you store it and who you share it with	The Privacy Act, if your turnover is over $3 million or you're a covered small business (health service providers, anyone trading in personal information, and several other categories)
Refund or returns policy	Tells customers how returns work in practice: timeframes, change-of-mind rules, how to make a claim	Not compulsory as a standalone document, but whatever you publish must match the Australian Consumer Law (ACL)

The privacy question has its own guide: Do you need a privacy policy?. Short version: many small businesses sit under the $3 million threshold, but plenty of website builders, payment platforms and ad networks require a policy anyway, and if you handle health information or sell customer data you're covered regardless of size. So are AML/CTF reporting entities, which from 1 July 2026 include real estate professionals, conveyancers, accountants and lawyers.

The refund policy usually lives inside your T&Cs as a clause, then gets repeated on a customer-friendly returns page. Both versions need to say the same thing.

Do you actually need website T&Cs?

Legally, no law says every website must have terms. Practically, yes, for three reasons.

First, a contract forms whether you write one or not. When someone pays through your site, you've made a deal; the only question is whether the terms are yours or the ones a court infers later. Second, the ACL gives customers rights you can't remove, but it leaves a lot to you: deposits, cancellation notice, delivery windows, late fees, who owns the design files. If you don't say, you don't get to decide. Third, terms are where you set expectations, and clear expectations are the cheapest dispute prevention there is.

A brochure site with no payments or accounts still benefits from a terms-of-use page covering copyright in your content, a note that general information isn't advice, and a statement that you're not responsible for third-party links. That's a one-page job.

What to include: service business vs online store

The core clauses overlap, but the emphasis differs.

Clause	Service business (trades, consultants, agencies, allied health)	Online store
Who's contracting	Your legal entity, ABN and trading name	Same, plus the store's URL
What you supply	Scope, inclusions and exclusions, how variations are approved and priced	Product descriptions, how orders are accepted, what happens with pricing errors or out-of-stock items
Price and payment	Quote validity, deposits, progress payments, payment terms, late-payment fees	Total price including GST, accepted payment methods, when the card is charged
Timing	Estimated timeframes and which delays you're not responsible for	Dispatch and delivery estimates, what happens if a parcel is lost
Cancellation	Notice required, what's refundable, what you keep	Whether orders can be cancelled before dispatch
Refunds and faults	ACL guarantees for services: due care and skill, fit for purpose, reasonable time	ACL guarantees for goods, plus any change-of-mind returns you choose to offer
Intellectual property	Who owns the deliverables and when ownership passes (often on final payment)	Copyright in product photos, descriptions and the site itself
Liability	Limits within what the ACL allows	Same
Governing law and disputes	Your state or territory, and a step-by-step dispute process	Same

If you're still choosing a platform, How to start an online store covers the setup side; the rest of this section is about what the terms behind the checkout should say.

Payment terms

Say when payment is due, how much deposit you take, and what happens if an invoice is late. Late fees and interest are fine when they reflect your genuine costs rather than punishing the customer; a disproportionate fee is exactly the sort of term the unfair contract terms law targets. If you take deposits, say plainly which parts are non-refundable and why (materials ordered, time blocked out).

Delivery, risk and title

Online stores should say when risk in the goods passes to the customer (usually on delivery) and when ownership passes (usually on payment). Give realistic delivery estimates. The ACL treats what you say about delivery as a representation, so "ships in 24 hours" that routinely takes a week is a misleading-conduct problem, not just a customer-service one. The misleading advertising guide covers how that plays out.

Refunds: consistent with the consumer guarantees

This is where most DIY terms go wrong. Under the ACL, goods and services costing up to $100,000, or more if they're the kind normally bought for personal, domestic or household use, come with guarantees you cannot exclude. Goods must be of acceptable quality, match their description and be fit for purpose; services must be delivered with due care and skill, be fit for the purpose you were told about, and be completed in a reasonable time. Those guarantees apply to business customers too, so "we only sell B2B" isn't an escape hatch.

What that means for your T&Cs:

• A "no refunds" clause is unlawful. The ACCC's position is that it's illegal to rely on store policies or terms that deny consumer guarantee rights. Say instead that nothing in your terms excludes the guarantees, then set out your process.
• You don't have to refund for change of mind. You can choose to (store credit, 14 days, unopened), but be explicit that it's a voluntary policy sitting alongside the customer's ACL rights.
• Don't reverse the customer's choices. For a major failure the customer picks refund or replacement; for a minor one you can choose to repair within a reasonable time. Terms that flip those roles won't hold.
• Any warranty against defects needs the mandatory wording. If you offer your own warranty, the document must include the prescribed ACL statement beginning "Our goods come with guarantees that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law", plus your business details, how to claim, the warranty period and who pays claim costs. Miss that text and the warranty itself breaches the law.

The full rules, including how "reasonable time" and "major failure" are judged, are in Refunds and consumer guarantees.

Intellectual property

For service businesses, say who owns the work. The common position is that you own everything until final payment, then the client gets ownership (or a licence) of the deliverables while you keep your templates, methods and pre-existing material. For online stores, assert copyright in your photos and copy and prohibit scraping or reproduction. If you publish customer content such as reviews or photos, take a licence to use it.

Limiting your liability, within the law

You can limit liability for things the ACL doesn't guarantee: consequential loss, delays caused by third parties, misuse of the product. You can't limit liability for the guarantees themselves. A workable structure is a clause that (1) acknowledges the ACL guarantees apply and nothing excludes them, (2) says that to the extent the law allows, your liability for other claims is capped at the amount paid for the goods or services, and (3) excludes indirect and consequential loss. A blanket "we accept no liability whatsoever" is both unenforceable and a red flag under the unfair terms law.

Governing law and disputes

Nominate the state or territory whose law applies (normally where you're based) and a dispute pathway: talk first, then mediation, then courts or the relevant tribunal. For consumers, state tribunals such as NCAT, VCAT and QCAT are where disputes usually land, and your governing-law clause can't stop a customer using them.

Unfair contract terms: the law that applies to your T&Cs

Since 9 November 2023, proposing, using or relying on an unfair term in a standard form contract has been banned, with penalties attached. Your website T&Cs are the textbook standard form contract: pre-written, take-it-or-leave-it, no negotiation. The protection covers consumer contracts and small business contracts, where a small business is one with fewer than 100 employees or annual turnover under $10 million. The old contract-value caps were removed at the same time, so the size of the transaction doesn't matter.

That cuts both ways. Your customers, including business customers, are protected from unfair terms in your T&Cs. You're also protected from unfair terms in the standard-form contracts you sign as a small business: software subscriptions, platform terms, supplier agreements. If a term in someone else's contract fits the list below, you have grounds to push back.

A term is unfair when it causes a significant imbalance, isn't reasonably necessary to protect the business's legitimate interests, and would cause detriment if relied on. The terms most likely to fail are ones that let you, but not the customer:

• vary the price or the terms unilaterally without letting them exit penalty-free
• terminate the contract while they stay locked in
• charge disproportionate cancellation or late fees
• avoid or limit your obligations while they carry all of theirs
• automatically renew without clear notice and an easy way out

Only a court can declare a term unfair, but you don't want to be the test case. Penalties (as at September 2026) mirror the rest of the ACL:

Who	Maximum penalty per contravention
Company (conduct on or after 28 March 2026)	Greater of $100 million, 3x the benefit obtained, or 30% of adjusted turnover during the breach period
Company (conduct before 28 March 2026)	Greater of $50 million, 3x the benefit, or 30% of adjusted turnover
Individual, including sole traders	$2.5 million

Courts scale penalties to the business and the harm, so a sole trader with a clumsy auto-renewal clause isn't facing eight figures. But ACCC investigations typically end with the business publicly rewriting its contracts, which is disruptive enough on its own. Balance is the test: if you can vary prices, the customer can leave; if you can terminate, so can they; if you charge a cancellation fee, it reflects real costs.

Making your terms binding

Terms nobody agreed to are hard to enforce. Two habits fix that:

• Clickwrap over browsewrap. A tick-box at checkout or sign-up ("I agree to the Terms and Conditions", with the link) is far stronger than a footer link nobody opens. Most e-commerce platforms let you make this compulsory.
• Version and notify. Date your terms, keep old versions, and tell existing customers when material terms change. "We can change these terms at any time without notice" is a classic unfair term; "we'll give 30 days' notice of material changes and you can cancel if you don't accept them" is not.

Keep the terms readable. Headings, short paragraphs and plain English aren't just good manners; transparency is one of the things a court weighs when assessing whether a term is unfair.

Templates or a lawyer?

A template is reasonable when you're a straightforward service business or store, you sell within Australia, and nothing you do is high-risk. Lawpath sells website terms on a subscription (one free legal document on sign-up, then $67 a month, or $540 a year paid upfront, as at September 2026); LegalVision runs a membership model with access to lawyers; Sprintlaw and others publish templates and guides; and your industry association may have sector-specific terms. Whatever the source, read every clause and delete the ones you can't actually honour, then check it hasn't smuggled in a "no refunds" or "we may vary anything at any time" clause.

Get a lawyer when any of these apply:

• you take significant deposits, sell subscriptions or run auto-renewals
• you handle health, financial or children's information
• your work carries real liability if it goes wrong (building, engineering, allied health, financial services)
• you sell overseas or into a regulated industry
• you're combining website terms with a full service agreement clients will sign

A fixed-fee review of a template you've already adapted is often the most cost-effective middle ground, so ask for exactly that. For the wider set of agreements a small business needs, see Business contracts explained.

What's coming

Two things to watch (as at September 2026). A bill introduced to Parliament in April 2026 would add a general ban on unfair trading practices to the ACL, aimed at conduct like subscription traps and manipulative design, with a proposed start of 1 July 2027; check its progress before you build renewal flows around it. Separately, the ACCC has been pushing for penalties to attach directly to failing to honour consumer guarantees, which isn't a penalty provision in its own right today. Neither changes what good T&Cs look like: fair renewal terms and honest refund handling are already the standard.

Key takeaways

• Your T&Cs, privacy policy and refund policy are three separate documents; the T&Cs are the contract, and the refund policy must match the ACL.
• Consumer guarantees can't be excluded, "no refunds" clauses are unlawful, and any warranty against defects needs the mandatory ACL wording.
• Since November 2023, unfair terms in standard form contracts with consumers or small businesses (fewer than 100 employees or under $10 million turnover) are banned, with maximum penalties of $100 million for companies and $2.5 million for individuals (as at September 2026).
• Balance is the test: every right you give yourself (vary, terminate, charge fees) needs a matching right for the customer.
• Get agreement with a tick-box at checkout, date your terms, and give notice of changes.
• Templates work for simple businesses; get a lawyer if you take large deposits, sell subscriptions or carry real liability.

Where to get help

• ACCC (accc.gov.au): guidance on unfair contract terms, consumer guarantees and warranties against defects, including the mandatory warranty wording.
• business.gov.au: Australian Consumer Law and your business.
• OAIC (oaic.gov.au): whether the Privacy Act covers your business.
• Your state or territory fair trading or consumer affairs office: local complaint processes and tribunals.
• A commercial lawyer for anything beyond a standard template, and your accountant for payment-term and GST pricing questions.