Privacy Policy

1. Introduction

SMG Tools is a product of MECCSoft LLC ("we", "us", "our", or "Company"). We operate the SMG Tools platform, a job-centric service management solution for contractors and field service businesses of every size. This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, and safeguard your information when you use our Service.

By using SMG Tools, you agree to the collection and use of information in accordance with this policy. If you do not agree with this policy, please do not use our Service.

2. Information We Collect

We collect different types of information to provide and improve our Service:

2.1 Information You Provide

• Account Information: Name, email address, business name, and profile details when you create an account
• Business Data: Organization details, client information, job records, proposals — and, when a client signs one, their signature, the time, the IP address and browser they signed from, the code check that confirmed them, and the option and extras they chose — milestones, a job’s visits and where each got to (with the reason, where one was missed) — and where each is done, at the client’s or at the business’s own place and the space it holds there, and, for an item a client leaves with the business, when it is to be dropped off, when it will be ready, and when it was dropped off, marked ready and picked up — a change order a client declines, with the reason they gave, a job’s plan — the tasks of each stage, who is on each and the saved crew they were chosen as, and who ticked a task done and when — payment schedules, and invoices, and the business’s Price Book — the services, materials and fees it charges for, their prices and what each costs it — and its sales tax: the rates it collects and the ZIP codes each applies in, a client’s exemption certificate (why they are exempt, its number and when it expires), and what the business recorded paying each state, county and city. These are kept with the business’s other records and sent nowhere; no rate is looked up from anyone
• Client Equipment: The units a business services at a client’s property — what each is, its make, model and serial number, where it is, when it went in, the manufacturer’s warranty, a service interval, notes and photographs of it — and which jobs touched it. This is the client’s data, held on the business’s behalf as part of the client’s record: it is exported with the business’s data, and deleted with it, photographs included
• Readings: Numbers a business records against a thing it services or owns — a temperature, a pressure, a voltage — with the unit they were taken in, what the business expected them to read, any note, when the reading was taken, and which member of the business took it. A reading is kept against the thing it was read off rather than the visit that produced it, so readings on a client’s own unit accumulate over years and are part of that client’s record: they are exported with the business’s data and deleted with it. Readings on a client’s unit are not shown on that client’s own pages
• Your Equipment: The vehicles, machines and tools a business runs — what each is, its make, model, serial number and plate, what it cost and when, its meter readings, service records, running costs and time logged on jobs, inspection checklists and their answers including any numbers those lines asked for, photographs of a defect, and the code on its printed label — and, for each reading, inspection and checkout, which member of the business did it and when
• Inventory: Where a business adds Inventory, the parts it stocks and where — each shop and van, each part’s quantity, bin and restock levels at the average cost the business recorded paying; every count, receipt, move and adjustment, and the parts used on each job, each with which member of the business did it and when; requests for parts between its people; the serial numbers of units it stocks, and the job and client a fitted one went to. A van is linked to the person who drives it, so what a count finds missing is reported against whoever held the van. This is the business’s data: exported with the business’s data, and deleted with it
• Purchasing: Where a business adds Purchasing, its suppliers — their names, the business’s account numbers with them, contacts, ordering addresses and terms — what each sells the business and at what cost, and the price lists it brings in; its purchase orders, each with who wrote, approved, sent and received it and when, the address it was emailed to or the supplier’s confirmation number; what arrived, with serial numbers; its suppliers’ bills, the photo or file of each where one was attached, each line as checked against what was ordered and received and the answer given to each difference; the payments it records to its suppliers; and its returns, warranty claims, cores and the credits its suppliers gave. A purchase order emailed from SMG Tools goes to the supplier address the business entered, carrying the business’s name and contact details and where to deliver — its own shop, or a job’s site with the job’s number, title and address — and the name of whoever picks it up; never a client’s name or contact details beyond what the business wrote into the job’s title. This is the business’s data: exported with the business’s data, and deleted with it
• Site Measurements: Where a business adds Site Intelligence, the places it measures for its clients and leads — each site’s address as it was first written and, where it was located or its pin dropped by hand, its point on the map — and what was measured there: each measurement’s name, group, note and size, the outline traced on the map, a pitch, and which member of the business took or changed it and when. A roof face measured from Google’s roof data keeps the month and quality of Google’s imagery. A lead’s sites become its client’s when the lead is converted. This is the business’s data: exported with the business’s data, and deleted with it
• Calculators: Where a business adds Calculators, the calculators it builds, starts from a spreadsheet or adds from the ready-made library — their inputs, choices, rules and items, at the costs and prices the business sets — and each run on a proposal or a job: the figures it was given, the site measurements that filled them, and what it worked out. A parts list a business starts a calculator from — a CSV or Excel file — is read to make the calculator and not kept: the file is never stored, only the calculator made from it. The free calculators on smgtools.com work in the visitor’s browser and send us nothing
• Reports You Build: The reports a business builds and saves — each one’s name, what it reports on and who made it, never its figures, which are worked out from the business’s records each time it is opened — when one runs on its own, who is told when it has, and how; and each notice sent. A notice, in SMG Tools or by email, names the report and its period and links to it behind sign-in; it never carries the report’s figures. A report printed or exported is made when it is asked for and not kept. They are part of the business’s export and deleted with its data
• Weather: Where a business adds Weather, the weather rules it sets for each kind of work; the visits it chose to go ahead with despite their forecast; and the visits it moved for the weather — from when to when, what the forecast said, and what the move cost in idle hours and revenue moved. These are the business’s data: exported with the business’s data, and deleted with it. It also keeps Google’s forecast for the places its visits are, by a point rounded to about a kilometer; that forecast is Google’s, replaced each time it is fetched again, and not part of the export
• Financial Records: Expense entries, mileage entries, payment records, transaction history, and receipt uploads
• Pay Records: Where a business adds Commissions & pay rules, the rules it sets for what its workers earn, and what each payment, refund and tip earned each worker under them — the job, the invoice, the rule, the share and the hours behind each amount, and the revenue credited to each worker. This is the business’s own record of what it owes its people: its owners and managers see everybody’s, a worker who signs in sees their own commissions and tips and nobody else’s, it is part of the business’s export and deleted with its data, and we send it to no payroll provider, connected ledger or webhook
• Working Hours, Time Away and Skills: When each of a business’s workers works; the time away the business records for them, with a reason if it gives one, and — where it has Timesheets — its kind (vacation, sick, holiday or unpaid) and the hours it counts; where a business adds Shifts & time off, a second week a worker alternates with and the days the business changes, with its note, the stretches each worker is on call, the work that came in after hours while they were and who handled it, and the time off a worker asks for, with their note, the business’s answer and its reason for a decline; and, where a business adds Scheduling & dispatch, the skills it records each worker has — a skill that needs a license counting only while the license it keeps in Compliance is current — the service zones each covers, and, where its owner has new work assigned automatically, what was assigned to whom and the reasons given. Its owners and managers see everybody’s; a worker who signs in sees their own hours, time away and skills and nobody else’s. A reason for time away, its kind and a worker’s note asking for it are never shown to a client or to other workers, never put in an email or a text we send, and never passed to a connected system or a webhook; the email answering a request names its days and, for a decline, the business’s reason. Suggestions of who should do a job are worked out from these records and the business’s own bookings and addresses, not by an AI model. It is part of the business’s export and deleted with its data
• Location Data: Starting and destination addresses you optionally provide when logging mileage entries, and addresses entered into autocomplete fields. Separately, where a business switches it on, the coordinates a field worker’s phone reports at the single moment they mark themselves arrived at a job — see section 4.10. We never track a device continuously and there is no live location map.
• Communications: Messages you send to clients through our platform, support requests, and feedback
• Job Checklists: The lists a business writes down for a kind of work, and the copy of that list each job carries — every step, what was answered, any note written beside it, the signature somebody drew on a screen at the door, the photograph taken of the work, and the reading a measurement step recorded. Each answer records which member of the business gave it and when. Where a job was marked done with steps still unanswered, the reason given, who gave it, and what was outstanding at the time are kept on the job
• Drafted Quotes: Where a business turns on Drafted for you, each quote drafted for a new request or a site walk — its lines, what it assumed and what to ask — with a site walk’s photos and what was said or typed about the work, who took it and when, and whether it was made a proposal or put away; and each concept of the finished work drawn from a walk’s photo when someone asks for one.
• Documents: Contracts, proposals, warranties, before/after photos, and other files you upload
• Public Page Content: Business name, description, logo, phone number, email, address, hours of operation, and photos you publish on your public business page
• Lead Submissions: When visitors submit the “Request a Quote” form on a public business page, we collect their name, email address, phone number, address, description of work, and contact preferences
• Getting into a client’s property: Where a business records it, we hold what its crew needs at the door — a gate or door code, a lockbox code, an alarm code, notes about pets, where to park, whether the client asked to be telephoned before anybody knocks, and a note for the crew. This is the client’s data, held on the business’s behalf as part of the client’s record. It is shown only to that business’s owners and managers, and to a field worker on the day’s work they are assigned to. We never put it in an email or a text message we send, never show it on a page a client or a customer reads, and never pass it to a connected system or a webhook. It is included in the business’s own export of its data, and deleted with that data
• Where a client came from, and the customer’s own reference: Each client record carries the door the client arrived through — a public page, a referral from another client, a directory, a telephone call, a connected tool, an online booking, an import, or the office entering them — with an optional label the business writes. A job and the invoices raised from it may carry a reference the customer’s own organization issued, such as a purchase order number, which is printed on the invoice and the pages where that customer views or pays it. Both are included in the business’s export and, where the business has connected one, in the records sent to that system
• Bookings: When a customer books a visit from a business’s public page, the link a client already holds, or through the business’s telephone assistant, we collect their name, email address, phone number, service address, a description of the work, and the service and time they chose. Where a deposit is taken, the card is entered on Stripe’s page and never reaches us; we hold the payment’s reference and result
• Service Agreements: Recurring service arrangements between a business and its client — the work covered, how often it happens, the price, the term, and the client’s signature and consent to automatic renewal where they have given one
• Team Members: When a business owner invites somebody to their business, the invitee’s email address and the role they were invited with, and any role the owner builds for the business — its name, a sentence about it, and what it reaches; when that person accepts, their name and sign-in details. We record who invited whom, when each membership started, and when it ended
• Passkeys: When you add a passkey, the public half of a key pair your device made, an identifier for it, the name you gave it, and when it was added and last used. Never the fingerprint, face or PIN — see Section 4.15
• Sign-In Sessions: For each device signed in to your account, the browser and operating system it reported, a name made from them (“Chrome on Windows”), its IP address, when it signed in and when it last asked for anything, and whether it is remembered for the second factor — see Section 4.16
• Company Sign-In: Where a business on Scale signs its people in through its company’s Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, its domains and the DNS value that proves each, the company directory connected to each and who connected it, whether it requires its people to sign in through the company, and the requests to join it — see Section 4.22

2.2 Information Collected Automatically

• Usage Data: Pages visited, features used, actions taken, time and date of access, and session duration
• Device Information: Browser type, device type, operating system, IP address, and unique device identifiers
• Analytics Data: We use Google Analytics to understand how users interact with our Service, and to measure whether our advertising leads to sign-ups (see Section 7)
• Cookies: We use cookies and similar technologies to maintain sessions and remember preferences (see Section 8)

2.3 Information from Third Parties

• Payment Processor (Stripe): Transaction status, payment confirmation, and limited payment details. Where a client has authorized automatic payment for a service agreement, we also receive a reference to their saved card, its brand, its last four digits, and the reason a charge was declined when one is. We never receive or store the full card number, expiry, or security code — those are entered on a page Stripe hosts and are held by Stripe. Where a client pays from their bank account, they sign in to their bank or enter the account on Stripe’s page, and we receive the bank’s name, the account’s last four digits and, when a payment does not go through, the bank’s reason — never the account or routing number. We also receive each refund made on a card payment, and each payout Stripe makes to a business’s bank — its amount, the day it arrives, its status and any reason it failed — with the payments, refunds, disputes and fees it carried. See Section 4.9
• Bank Connections (Plaid): When you connect your bank account through Plaid, we receive: account holder name, account type, account and routing numbers, transaction history (including date, amount, merchant name, and category), and account balances. We use this data solely for expense reconciliation and financial tracking within the Service.
• Mapping, Geocoding & Weather (Google Maps Platform): Address data submitted for autocomplete suggestions — including what a business’s customers type into the address field of its public booking page and request form, where the business offers suggestions — and distance calculations for mileage tracking, geocoding of service addresses for Field Service Compliance entries, the addresses of a day’s stops when a business plans a day as a route (the drive between them, the order to drive them, and the drive to a customer’s address when a visit is booked into a planned day), and on-demand weather snapshots (temperature, wind, conditions) anchored to a compliance entry’s application date and time. Where a business adds Site Intelligence on Professional: the satellite imagery and Street View at a site’s address, which your browser loads from Google; the point clicked on a building when Google’s roof data is asked for; and the shapes traced at a site when a proposal carries its picture, which Google draws each time the picture is shown and we do not store. Where a business adds Weather on Professional: the point of each place its visits are, rounded to about a kilometer, for that place’s forecast — at most three times a day, and when somebody opens a visit — and no name, address or detail of the visit. Address and lat/long queries are processed by Google Maps Platform — no personal location tracking is performed. Weather snapshots are stored permanently on the compliance entry; we never re-query the API for completed entries.
• Voice Assistant (Azure OpenAI Whisper): When you press the microphone in the assistant, your recording is sent to Microsoft Azure for transcription and discarded once the text returns. We never store the audio. The transcript is stored so a record the assistant created can be explained later. See Section 4.6.
• Receipt Scanning (Azure AI Document Intelligence): When you upload receipts for OCR scanning, the receipt image is sent to Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence for text extraction. We receive extracted data including vendor name, transaction date, and total amount. Where a business on Professional reads a supplier’s bill from a photo or PDF, that file is sent the same way, and we receive the supplier, the bill’s numbers and dates, its lines with their part numbers, quantities and prices, its tax and its total, which are matched to the business’s own orders for a person to check. The image is processed in real-time and not retained by Azure after processing.
• Your Business Listing (Google Places): When you ask us to set your business up from your website, we search Google Places for the business name we read off that site. If a listing comes back and the website Google holds for it resolves to the same domain you gave us, we receive that listing’s name, telephone number, address, opening hours and the areas it serves. If it does not resolve to your domain, we discard it and use nothing from it. See Section 4.17
• Your own website: Also when you ask us to set your business up from it, we fetch a small number of pages from the address you give us and read their text and logo. This is a request our servers make to a site you named — it is not a tracker, it runs once when you ask, and your browser is not involved. See Section 4.17
• Thumbtack: Where a business connects its Thumbtack account, each lead Thumbtack sends it — the customer’s request and the contact details Thumbtack shares — the lead’s conversation, and what Thumbtack charged for it. See Section 4.24

3. How We Use Your Information

We use the collected information for the following purposes:

• Service Delivery: To provide, operate, and maintain SMG Tools features including job management, proposals, milestones, and payment processing
• Payment Processing: To facilitate payments between you and your clients through Stripe
• Financial Features: To enable expense tracking, mileage tracking, receipt storage, receipt OCR scanning, job profitability calculations, bank transaction reconciliation, and address autocomplete with mileage distance calculations
• AI Features: To provide AI-assisted proposal drafting, terms generation, and other AI-powered tools (Pro feature)
• Communications: To send transactional emails, payment notifications, and service updates
• Customer Support: To respond to your inquiries and resolve issues
• Analytics: To understand usage patterns, improve our Service, and develop new features
• Security: To detect, prevent, and address technical issues, fraud, and security threats
• Legal Compliance: To comply with applicable laws, regulations, and legal processes

4. Data Sharing and Disclosure

We do not sell your personal information. We may share your information in the following circumstances:

4.1 Service Providers

We share data with third-party service providers who assist us in operating our Service:

The full list is published. See Subprocessors for every third party that receives your data, what each one receives, and why. That page is built from what our software actually calls rather than from memory, and we update it whenever a service is added or removed.

• Stripe: Payment processing and transaction management
• Plaid: Bank account verification, account information retrieval, and transaction data import (see Section 4.5 for details)
• Google Maps Platform: Address autocomplete and distance calculations for mileage tracking (Pro feature), the drive between and the order of a planned day’s stops and the drive to an address being booked into one (Pro feature), service-address geocoding for Field Service Compliance entries, on-demand weather snapshot lookups for compliance entries (Pro feature), satellite imagery, Street View, roof data and the site picture for measuring a site (Pro feature), and the forecast for the places a business’s visits are (Pro feature)
• Microsoft Azure: Cloud hosting, file storage, email services, and receipt and supplier bill OCR processing via Azure AI Document Intelligence
• Twilio: Each business’s own telephone number, the calls its phone assistant answers, the texts it sends its customers, and the verification of its number with the phone carriers (see Sections 4.8 and 4.13)
• Google Analytics: Website analytics and usage tracking, and measuring whether our advertising leads to sign-ups, which is shared with Google Ads (see Section 7)
• AI Service Providers (Azure OpenAI): To power AI-assisted features including proposal drafting, Smart Block suggestions, suggested costing lines and lines for a proposal’s options, a proposal’s lines drafted from a site’s measurements, a payment reminder drafted from an invoice, a job’s plan drafted from what it sold, a follow-up drafted from a proposal that has gone quiet, a calculator drafted from a description or its rules worked out from a parts list’s assumptions, a report built from a description or explained in a paragraph, proposal auditing, and the voice assistant — which sends voice recordings for transcription. See Section 4.6 for details.

4.2 Your Clients and Your Team

When you send proposals or payment requests to your clients, we share relevant job and payment information with them as necessary to complete the transaction. A client can also be given a link to a page of their own — one showing a visit in progress, or one showing everything they hold with you. See Section 4.14 for what those pages show, and what a client has to prove before they see it.

Members of your business see the business’s data that their role allows, and the owner chooses each person’s role. A manager sees what the owner sees except billing, organization settings, refunds and the bank feed; a dispatcher, an estimator and a bookkeeper each see the part of the business their role names; a crew lead sees the visits they are on and the jobs those visits are for, and the clocks, time and next seven days of the people on them; a field worker sees only the work assigned to them, plus the names of anybody else assigned to that same work; and on the Scale plan a business can build roles of its own from the same parts. Wherever this policy says owners and managers can see something, a role that reaches the same part of the business can see it too. A role without prices and costs — a dispatcher’s, a crew lead’s, a field worker’s — is sent none: every price, cost, margin, rate, balance and amount is left out of what it reads, except a person’s own pay and own purchases. Connecting or removing a bank account is the owner’s alone. The bank feed’s transactions are seen by the owner and by anybody whose role includes the bank feed — a bookkeeper’s does — and the owner’s bank accounts page names everybody who sees them. Where a business matches card purchases to jobs, a manager also sees those purchases, and a worker tied to a card sees the purchases on that card — where, how much, the day and the job — and never the account, its balance, or any other transaction. The owner sees everybody’s name and email address on the Team page; nobody else can reach it. Records show who created or changed them, by name, and that attribution stays after a person leaves the business. An equipment checkout, an inspection, a meter reading and a measurement reading each record which member did it and when, as a time entry or an arrival does; they are seen by the people who can see the item, and a field worker sees their own — and sees the readings on a job that is theirs, including what the thing read on earlier visits, because comparing against last time is what the reading is for. With Inventory, a field worker sees what is on their own van and where else a part is — names, quantities and bins, never a cost — and the parts used on the jobs that are theirs; owners and managers see every place, what each part cost, and what each count found missing against the person who held the van. With Purchasing, a field worker sees the orders they are to pick up and the orders they placed at a supplier’s counter — what and where, never a cost or a price; owners and managers see the suppliers, every order, bill, payment, return and credit, and what each part cost.

A note written on a job can name a teammate. The person named is emailed the note and a link to the job, and the note records who has opened it; only people who can already see that job can be named, so naming somebody never widens what they can reach. A reply a client sends about a job (see Section 4.8 and 4.12) is kept on that job and is visible to the same people who can see the job: owners and managers always, and a field worker only while assigned to it.

4.3 Legal Requirements

We may disclose your information if required by law, court order, or government request, or if we believe disclosure is necessary to protect our rights, your safety, or the safety of others.

4.4 Business Transfers

In the event of a merger, acquisition, or sale of assets, your information may be transferred as part of that transaction. We will notify you of any such change.

4.5 Bank Connection Data (Plaid)

When you choose to connect your bank account(s) through Plaid, Inc., the following applies:

What Plaid Collects

To connect your bank account, Plaid collects your login credentials (username and password) or uses your bank's secure authentication flow. Plaid does not share your bank credentials with us. Through your bank, Plaid accesses:

• Account holder name and contact information
• Account type, number, and routing number
• Account balances (current and available)
• Transaction history (date, amount, merchant/payee name, category, pending status)
• Account ownership verification information

What We Receive from Plaid

We receive: account identifiers, account type, account balances, and transaction details. We do NOT receive or store your bank login credentials — those are handled securely by Plaid.

Plaid tells us when your bank has reported new transactions, with a notification we check is genuinely Plaid’s before acting on it, and we fetch them then — usually the same day. We also check each night for anything a notification missed.

How We Use Bank Data

We use bank account and transaction data solely to:

• Import transactions for expense categorization and reconciliation
• Match transactions to jobs, expenses, and invoices
• If you tie a business card to the worker who carries it, put each purchase on that card in front of them, to say which job it was for
• Provide financial summaries and job profitability insights
• Help you identify business vs. personal transactions

Plaid's Privacy Practices

Plaid's collection and use of your data is governed by Plaid's End User Privacy Policy. We encourage you to review their policy. By connecting your bank account through Plaid, you acknowledge that Plaid may retain certain data as described in their privacy policy.

Disconnecting Your Bank Account

You may disconnect your bank account at any time through your SMG Tools settings. When you disconnect:

• We will stop receiving new transaction data from that account
• Previously imported transactions remain in your SMG Tools account for your records
• You may also revoke Plaid's access via your bank's connected apps settings or through Plaid Portal

Data Security for Bank Information

Bank data is encrypted in transit and at rest. We apply strict access controls to bank-related data and limit internal access to authorized personnel only. We do not sell, rent, or share your bank transaction data with third parties for marketing purposes.

4.6 AI & Voice Features (Azure OpenAI)

AI-powered features in SMG Tools — including the voice assistant — are provided through Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. This section describes how your data is handled when you use them.

What Data is Sent to AI Services

When you use AI features, the following data may be transmitted to Azure OpenAI for processing:

• Shorthand notes or prompts you enter in AI Assist
• Job scope descriptions (for context)
• Existing proposal block titles and categories (to avoid duplicates)
• Existing milestone information (to avoid duplicates)
• A proposal’s lines and your own rates and prices, when you ask the assistant to suggest costing lines, or the lines of a proposal’s options. Both send the job’s description and kind of work, the lines already on the proposal, and your Price Book’s active items by name, kind, unit and price. Suggesting costing lines also sends your labor rates — what each is billed at and what it costs you per hour — and the hours and materials on the lines already there. Suggesting an option’s lines sends your labor rates by name only, and never what anything costs you. Neither sends your client’s record
• What was measured at a site, and your Price Book’s item names, when you ask the assistant to draft a proposal’s lines from the site: the proposal’s title and description, the site’s address, each measurement’s name, group, note and sizes, and your Price Book’s active items by name, kind, unit and what each is measured by. Never a price or what anything costs you, and nothing else about your client
• An unpaid invoice, and whether your client usually pays on time, when you ask the assistant to draft a payment reminder: your business’s name, your client’s first name, the invoice’s number and what it was for, what is still owed and its total, its due date and how many days late it is, and whether the client usually pays on time or is slow to pay, with the days they typically take. Not their contact details, their other invoices or their payments. The draft goes into the message box for you to edit, and reaches your client only if you send it
• A description of the work, and your own measurements, when you ask the assistant to suggest a checklist’s steps: the sentence you typed, or the job’s own description when you ask from a job; the kind of work; the trades your business lists on its public page; and the measurements you already define, by name, unit and the range you expect. Nothing about your clients, your prices or your margins. The steps go into the editor for you to change, and a measurement it proposes is created only if you create it
• A job’s lines and the parts you stock, when you ask the assistant to draft a job’s materials list: the job’s title, description and kind of work, what it was sold as by each line’s title and how many, the parts you count in stock by name and unit, and the parts your recent jobs of the same kind used. Never what a part costs or sells for, and nothing from your client’s record. Each part it drafts is on the list only if you keep it
• A job’s lines and your own plans, when you ask the assistant to draft a job’s plan: the job’s title, description and kind of work; each line it sold by its title, the Price Book item it was quoted from, how many and its hours; your skills and checklists by name; your templates for that kind of work, with their stages, tasks, hours, skills and crew sizes; and your recent jobs of the same kind, with their stages’ names, their tasks’ titles, the hours planned and the hours worked. Never a price or what anything costs you, and nothing from your client’s record. The draft is shown to you to change, and becomes the job’s plan only if you save it
• A proposal, as your client was shown it, when the assistant drafts the follow-up on a quote that has gone quiet: your business’s name, your client’s first name, your own first name to sign it, the proposal’s number, what it includes by the names on your client’s page, its total or its options’ prices, the day it was sent and the day its price holds until. Never the proposal’s own title or description, what anything costs you, or your client’s contact details. It is drafted only when you open the quote to follow it up, goes into the message box for you to edit, and reaches your client only if you send it
• A description of the job, or a parts list’s assumptions, and your Price Book’s item names, when you ask the assistant to draft a calculator or to work out a calculator’s rules: what you typed; your trade; your Price Book’s active items by name, kind and unit; and, as examples of how a calculator is written, two of the ready-made calculators for your trade and one of your own. Working out rules also sends the calculator’s lines by item name, unit and quantity. Never a price or what anything costs you, and nothing about a client or a site. The draft opens for you to check and save, and a rule is used only if you accept it. Running a calculator for a client by asking sends only what you said to the assistant; the client is found and the calculator worked out on our own servers
• A new request, or a site walk’s photos and words, and your own records to price them from, where your business turns on Drafted for you: what the request says it wants done, in the requester’s own words, and where it came from; or, on a site walk, the photos your own person took and what they said or typed is changing. With it go your Price Book’s items by name, kind and unit; your kinds of work with the hours your own finished jobs of each took; your calculators by what each asks for and what its lines are; what is measured at the place; the titles of the proposals and jobs the client had before; and your business’s own city and state, so that what your Price Book has no item for can be estimated in hours and materials at local prices. A site walk’s photos go to one model, which describes what they show and reads any label on them, and only that description goes on to the model that drafts. When somebody in your business asks to see what the finished work could look like, one of the walk’s photos goes to an image model with the draft’s description of the work and your trade, and it draws that photo as the finished job; the drawing is kept with the walk’s photos. Never a price or what anything costs you, and never the requester’s name, email, phone or address. A drafted quote is never sent to your client: it waits for you, and becomes a proposal only if you make it one. A concept reaches your client only if you put it on a proposal, where it is labeled as made by AI
• Block content when using inline enhancement features
• What you type into the assistant, when you ask it to work out what you meant
• Voice recordings, when you press the microphone in the assistant
• Your organization’s own vocabulary — client names, active job titles and service categories — sent with a recording so that proper nouns and trade terms are recognized correctly. Names only. No contact details, addresses, or anything else about a client is sent to improve recognition
• The readable text of your own website, or the sentence you typed instead, when you ask us to set your business up from it. Only the text, and only from the pages we fetched. See Section 4.17
• Your question and the matching help text, when you ask the assistant how something is done on its Help tab. This is the one AI feature that sends nothing of yours at all. What goes is the sentence you typed and the sections of our own published help pages that matched it — public documentation, the same words for every customer, already readable by anyone at smgtools.com/help. No record of yours is involved: not a client, a job, an invoice, a figure or a name. The console page you asked from is used by our servers to rank the results and is not sent onward, and a section covering a capability your plan does not include is not sent either
• Figures your own reports have already worked out, when you ask the assistant how your business did on its Ask tab. Two things happen and they send different data. Working out which reports answer your question is the same step as working out any request in that tab, and sends the question and the list of things the assistant can do and read — no figures at all. Writing the summary over them sends what those reports answered: the sentences and rows you can see on your own screen, such as “July to September brought in $42,150” and the kinds of work that moved it. Your records are never sent. No job, client, invoice or expense row leaves us — only the totals your reports computed from them, and only for the period or job you asked about. The monthly summary sends the same thing on a schedule rather than when you ask: if you switch it on, those computed figures are sent once a month so the summary over them can be written, and the result is emailed to you and to nobody else
• A description of a report, or a report to explain, when you use Describe a report or Explain this report. Describing sends your words and the list of records and fields your role can build a report from — what each field means, never a value of one — and the answer is which of them the report should use; SMG Tools checks that against the list and works out every figure itself. Explaining sends the report as you see it — its groups and their figures — so a paragraph can be written over them, and the paragraph is shown only if every figure in it is one the report contains. Your records are never sent: no client, job, invoice or other record leaves us

Data Retention by AI Services

Azure OpenAI processes your prompts in real-time to generate responses. According to Microsoft's data handling policies for Azure OpenAI Service:

• Your prompts and completions are not stored by Azure OpenAI after processing
• Your data is not used to train or improve Microsoft's AI models
• Processing occurs within Microsoft Azure's secure infrastructure

What We Store

We store AI-generated content that you choose to accept and add to your proposals. We do not retain a history of typed AI prompts or rejected suggestions.

Voice is the exception, and deliberately so. We retain the transcript of what you said, because a record created by voice cannot be explained to whoever is surprised by it if there is no record of what was said. The audit trail is worth more to you than the alternative.

Drafted for you is the other exception. It keeps each draft it writes with the request’s words, or the site walk’s photos and words, that it was drafted from, whether you make it a proposal or put it away, so a draft can be opened again and you can see what it was drafted from. A site walk’s photos, and the concepts drawn from them, are kept in your business’s storage like any other photo you upload.

The Voice Assistant

• The microphone is used only while you hold it open. It is switched on when you press record and released when you stop or cancel. The product never listens in the background, has no wake word, and cannot start a recording on its own
• Audio is never stored by us. Your recording is streamed to Azure OpenAI Whisper for transcription and discarded as soon as the text comes back. It is not written to our file storage and there is no way for us to play it back
• Azure does not retain your audio or train on it. The same Microsoft data-handling commitments described above cover speech
• The transcript is stored. It is kept with the record it created — the mileage entry, the note, the draft proposal — and retained for as long as that record is, under the Business Records period in Section 5
• A transcript that created nothing is deleted after 30 days. If you spoke a request and never confirmed it, no record exists for the transcript to explain, so it does not stay
• Your assistant history keeps what you said for 90 days. Each turn — including anything you had it take down as text — records what you said, what you were told, and which records it found, so you can look back at it under Profile → Assistant History. After 90 days the words are removed and the turn remains as a record that it happened — we keep that part because it is also how your AI usage is counted
• You can see and take it with you. Voice transcripts are included in your data export (Section 9), and deleted with everything else when an organization is deleted
• Nothing is written without you confirming it on screen. The assistant proposes; you approve. See Section 5.2 of the Terms of Use

Best Practices

While AI features are designed for business content, we recommend:

• Avoid including sensitive personal information (SSNs, passwords, etc.) in AI prompts
• Review all AI-generated content before sending to clients
• Use AI features as a starting point, not a replacement for professional judgment

4.7 Public Business Pages & Lead Capture

SMG Tools allows users to create a public business page accessible at a unique URL without authentication. The following applies to public pages:

Publicly Visible Information

When you enable your public business page, the following information you provide may be visible to anyone on the internet:

• Business name, logo, and description
• Phone number, email address, and physical address (if provided)
• Hours of operation
• Photos you upload to your public page gallery (up to 5 images)

You control what information appears on your page through your organization settings. You may disable your public page at any time.

Lead Capture Data

When a visitor submits the “Request a Quote” form on your public page, we collect their name, contact information, description of work, and scheduling preferences. This data is:

• Stored as a Lead record associated with your organization
• Used to send you an email notification about the new lead
• Accessible only to you (the organization owner) within your SMG Tools account
• Not shared with third parties or used for marketing purposes

Lead form submissions are rate-limited to prevent abuse. We do not require visitors to create an account to submit a lead form.

Online Booking

A business may publish the services a customer can book and the times it takes them. What is shown to a visitor is the services, their durations and any prices the business chose to publish, and the times on offer — never why a time is not offered, and nothing about the business’s other customers or calendar.

When a visitor books, what they typed becomes a client record, a job, an appointment and a lead in that business’s account, on the same terms as a lead submission above: it belongs to the business, is used to confirm the visit to the customer by email and, where they gave a mobile number, by text, and is not used by us for marketing. The confirmation carries a link to see, cancel or move the visit, protected by a code sent to the contact details given at booking. A customer who books on the link a business already sent them is matched to their existing record by that link, so nothing about them is asked twice; a stranger whose telephone number matches an existing client is never told so — the business is, and decides.

Where a business requires its diagnostic fee as a deposit, the customer pays on Stripe’s hosted checkout page for that business’s connected account. No card number, expiry or security code is entered on or passes through SMG Tools. We keep the checkout session’s reference and Stripe’s report of whether it was paid, which is what makes the visit. Stripe’s own privacy policy governs what Stripe collects on that page. The deposit is invoiced by the business and its refund is the business’s decision under the policy shown to the customer before paying; SMG Tools refunds nothing itself.

Contractor Directory

SMG Tools publishes a directory of listed businesses at smgtools.com/directory, where anyone can search for a contractor by service and by area without an account. A listing shows your business name, logo, the city and state of your primary service area, and up to three of your service categories, and links to your public business page. Nothing else is published there — no contact details, no internal identifiers, and no information about your jobs, clients, or the work you do for them.

Listing is a choice, and it is not made for you. A business that existed before the directory launched is not listed until it opts in; one created afterwards starts listed and can leave at any time. Either way the switch is in your Public Page settings, and turning it off removes you from the directory on the next page load without affecting your own public page.

When someone reaches your public page from a directory listing, we record that the visit came from the directory so the inquiry can be attributed to it. That record is a cookie in the visitor’s own browser and is used for nothing else. Where you take bookings online, your listing says so and links to your booking page, and a booking made from there is attributed the same way.

PDF Flyer

You may download a PDF flyer containing your public page information and a QR code linking to your page. The flyer is generated on-demand and is not stored by us.

4.8 Text Messages (SMS)

SMG Tools can send text messages on behalf of a business to that business's own customers, about work those customers have booked, from the business's own telephone number. There are four kinds, and they are treated differently:

• Service messages: booking confirmations, notice that a visit has been moved or cancelled — and, when the business moves it for the weather, that the weather is why — appointment reminders, the text that somebody is on the way, one text or email that something the customer left with the business is ready to pick up, and — where a business switches that automation on — one text that the crew is running behind for a visit that day. These are sent because the customer gave the business their mobile number in order to receive service, and they stop as soon as an opt-out is recorded.
• Notes about a job: a note a person at the business chooses to send from the job it is about — what was found, what happens next, a question. Each one is sent by a person, on purpose, and is a service message: it stops as soon as an opt-out is recorded, and a customer who has opted out of texts, or has no mobile number on file, is sent the same note by email instead. The text carries the business’s name, the job, as much of the note as one text holds, and a link to the customer’s own page where the whole note is. A summary of the job, which a person at the business sends the same way, is a service message too: one text with a link to the customer’s own page.
• Verification codes: a six-digit code a customer asks for by pressing the button that sends it — to sign or decline a proposal, a change order or a service agreement, to cancel or move a visit, or to open their own records — and receives seconds later. It goes to the email address and mobile number already on the customer’s record, never to one typed in at the time. The text comes from SMG Tools’ own number, names the business and SMG Tools, and carries the code, how soon it expires and opt-out instructions, and no link. One text is sent each time the customer asks. It is a service message: it stops as soon as an opt-out is recorded, and the code still goes by email.
• Marketing texts: none are sent. A review or referral request, and anything that asks a customer to book new work, goes by email instead (Section 4.14). SMG Tools sends no marketing text until a customer has agreed to marketing texts themselves, and the product does not yet ask them; a business’s note that a customer said yes is kept on their record, with the date and where it came from, and sends nothing.

What a customer texts back

A customer can answer a note by replying to the text. What they write is kept as a note from them on the job it is about, dated when it arrived, and shown to the people at the business who can see that job and to the customer on their own page (Section 4.14). Keeping it needs no further consent: the customer sent it to the business, and it is kept for the business the way a letter would be. When SMG Tools cannot tell which job a reply is about, it is kept on the customer’s record until a person at the business files it on one. A text from a number that is not on exactly one customer record at that business is not kept at all, and a text that is only a keyword — STOP, START, HELP — changes consent and is not kept as a note.

Message frequency varies with the work booked; a customer typically receives one to three messages per job. Message and data rates may apply. Every message names the business it comes from and carries opt-out instructions.

Stopping messages

Reply STOP to any message to stop receiving them. STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END and QUIT are honored the same way. Each business texts from its own number, so an opt-out stops that business's texts: the carrier blocks its number for the person who opted out, and the opt-out is recorded on that business's records. A STOP to SMG Tools' own number stops the verification codes it sends, which then go by email. Reply START to resume service messages; that does not restore marketing messages, which need a fresh opt-in. Reply HELP for help, or contact support@smgtools.com.

No text is scheduled outside 8:00 AM to 9:00 PM in the recipient's local time.

Mobile numbers and third parties

Mobile phone numbers and text messaging consent are never sold, rented, or shared with third parties or affiliates for their own marketing or promotional purposes. A number is used only to contact that customer about their own work with the business holding their record. Messages are delivered through Twilio, which processes the number solely to deliver the message on our behalf and for no purpose of its own (see Section 4 and our Subprocessors page).

Verifying a business’s number

The phone carriers require every number that texts to be verified before they deliver its messages. A business verifies its own number once, through SMG Tools: its legal name and address, its website, a contact, sample messages, how its customers agree to texts, and its EIN — or that it is a sole proprietor with none. These go to Twilio for the carriers’ check. The EIN is passed through and never stored by SMG Tools: not in the business’s records, not in a document and not in a log. The legal name, the website and where the verification stands are kept, so a refused verification can be fixed and sent again. Until a number is approved its texts are held, not sent; when it is, those still worth sending go, each checked against consent again.

If you are a business using SMG Tools

You are responsible for having the consent you need before texting your customers, and for the content of the messages your account sends. SMG Tools records each customer's consent, where that consent came from, and every message it sends or blocks on their behalf, so the record is there when you need it. The people who run your business can see that record, and everything else the product sent a customer under your name or received from them — the emails, the invoices and quotes they were sent and opened, the calls the assistant took, the notes and their replies — in one list on the customer's record, and can download it; it is read from records the product already keeps, and nothing is recorded a second time to show it. Text messaging can be switched off for your whole organization, or per message type, in your organization settings.

4.9 Service Agreements & Automatic Payments

A business using SMG Tools can set up a recurring service agreement with its client — a maintenance plan, a quarterly programme, a seasonal contract. The agreement records what is covered, how often the work happens, the price, the term, and whether it renews itself.

What the client is asked, and when

A client is sent a link to read the agreement and sign it. Signing requires a code sent to the phone number or email address already on their record, so the person agreeing is the person the business has a relationship with. Where an agreement renews automatically, the renewal terms — what renews, when, for how long, at what price, and how to cancel — are shown next to the signature, and the client’s acknowledgment of them is recorded separately from their signature on the agreement itself. Before each automatic renewal takes effect, the client is emailed the date and the price, including when the price has changed.

Saved payment methods

A client may separately choose to have the agreement’s invoices charged to a card automatically. This is a separate decision from signing the agreement, made by the client on their own agreement link, and it is recorded as its own act with its own date — agreeing to a service commitment is not agreeing to unattended charges.

Card details are entered on a page hosted by Stripe and are never seen by SMG Tools. The card is saved to the business’s own Stripe account, since the business is the merchant on every payment its clients make. What we hold is a reference Stripe gives us, together with the card’s brand and last four digits so the client and the business can tell which card is on file. We use that reference only to charge the invoices of the agreement it was saved against; we never use it for any other charge, for any other business, or for anything the client did not authorize. A card saved before October 22, 2026 was kept on SMG Tools’ own Stripe account; Stripe copies it to the business’s account the first time it is charged, and if it cannot, the client is asked to save it again.

A client can remove a saved card at any time from the same agreement link, without contacting anyone and without ending their agreement — removing it simply means their invoices are sent to be paid the ordinary way. Removing it deletes the card at Stripe.

What the card is charged

The amount charged is the invoice amount. Nothing is added for card processing or for us — those costs come out of the business’s side of the payment, so a $150 invoice is a $150 charge on the card and the receipt says $150. The fees the business pays are set out in section 4.4 of the Terms of Use.

When a payment fails

Every charge attempt is recorded, successful or not, along with the reason a card was declined. A failed charge is retried over the following week, and both the client and the business are told each time, with the client told plainly whether their card needs replacing or their bank simply needs to approve the payment. After repeated failures the agreement pauses itself and both parties are told. A failed payment never cancels an invoice — the amount is still owed and can be paid the ordinary way.

If you are a business using SMG Tools

You are responsible for the agreements you write and the prices you set, and for having the authority to bill your client for them. SMG Tools records what was disclosed to the client, what they signed, when they consented to automatic renewal, when they authorized a saved card, and every charge made against it — so the record is there when you need it. Your business never enters or sees a client’s card details; only the client can add one.

4.10 Arrival Location (Field Workers)

A worker assigned to a job can mark themselves arrived from their phone. SMG Tools records who they are and the exact time, on that job’s record. The timestamp is the whole point of the feature — it is what answers a client asking whether anybody turned up, and when.

Location is off unless a business turns it on

Businesses can additionally choose to record where the worker’s phone was at that moment. This is off for every organization until an Owner switches it on, and switching it on never applies to arrivals already recorded.

What is captured, and when

Only the coordinates the phone reports at the instant the worker taps “I have arrived”, together with how accurate the phone believes that reading to be. Nothing is captured before, after, or between arrivals. SMG Tools does not track a device’s movement, does not run in the background, and offers no live location map.

Workers are told, and can decline

Where the setting is on, the app explains what will be recorded before the phone asks for permission, and offers to record the time only. If a worker declines, or their phone cannot get a fix, the arrival is still recorded with its timestamp. An arrival without coordinates is a complete record, not a failed one.

Who can see it, and where it goes

Arrival records, including any coordinates, are visible to Owners and Managers of that business on the job’s record. Clients never see them. They are stored in our database and sent to no third party — there is no location vendor involved. They are included in a data export and are deleted with the organization’s data.

If you are a business using SMG Tools

Recording where an employee is may require their knowledge or consent depending on where you operate. Turning this setting on is your decision, and telling your team about it is part of making it. SMG Tools acts as your processor for this data.

4.11 Worker Profiles Shown to Clients

A business can give the people who work for them a short profile — a photograph, a line about themselves, and what they specialize in — so a customer expecting somebody sees a professional rather than an unknown van.

It is off until a business turns it on

Every worker record starts unpublished, including every record that existed before this feature. Filling in a profile does not publish it: saving the fields and publishing them are separate actions, and nothing is shown to a client until an Owner or Manager deliberately switches that worker’s profile on. Switching it off stops the profile being shown from that point on; the fields stay on the record for the business.

What a published profile contains

The worker’s name, their photograph if one was uploaded, the short line written about them, and their specialties chosen from a fixed list. Nothing else from their record — not their contact details, not their pay, not their compliance history — is ever part of it.

Who can see it

Clients of that business, when they are told who is coming to their job. A profile is never listed publicly, never indexed by search engines, and never shared with other businesses using SMG Tools. Only Owners and Managers can edit a profile or change whether it is shown — a worker cannot publish themselves, and cannot be published by another worker.

If you are a worker

The business you work for controls whether your profile is shown. If you would rather it were not, ask them to switch it off — it takes one click and stops the profile being shown immediately. If you believe a profile was published without your agreement, contact us and we will help.

If you are a business using SMG Tools

Publishing somebody’s photograph and name to your customers is a disclosure about them, and depending on where you operate it may require their agreement. That conversation is yours to have; SMG Tools makes the switch deliberate rather than automatic, and never turns it on for you.

4.12 What a Client Can Be Shown From a Job

Notes and photos recorded against a job are internal to the business by default. A business can mark an individual note or photo as one their client may see; those appear on the client’s invoice for that job, alongside what they are being billed for. Nothing else from the job’s record is ever shown.

Only Owners and Managers can share an entry or stop sharing it, and every one of those decisions is recorded with who made it and when. Entries created before this feature existed, and anything whose sharing state is unknown, are internal. Stopping sharing removes an entry from what the client is shown from that point on; it cannot recall what somebody has already read.

If you are a business using SMG Tools: a photograph taken on a job can show more than the work — a person, a vehicle, the inside of somebody’s home. Deciding what to send your client is your judgment to make, and the product asks you to make it one entry at a time rather than in bulk.

A business can also send a note to its client, from the job, by email or text according to the consent that client has given (Section 4.8). A sent note is shared and delivered in one act: it appears on the client’s invoice for that job like any shared entry, and on the client’s own page (Section 4.14) as part of a thread with whatever the client writes back. A note that has been sent cannot be unsent, and sending is recorded in the client’s communication history with the channel it went by.

The completed checklist a client can be sent

Where a business has written a checklist for a kind of work, a job of that kind carries a copy of it and the crew answers it as they work. A business can turn that finished list into a document for its client: the business’s name and logo, the job, the day, who did the work, each step with what was answered and any note beside it, each reading with the value, the unit and the range it was judged against, and the photographs taken against those steps. It can be downloaded, emailed to the client as an attachment, and shown on the client’s own page (Section 4.14).

Whether a client sees it at all is the business’s decision, made per checklist and off by default. That decision is read as it stands rather than as it stood: switching it off stops the list appearing on the client’s page from that point on, including for work finished long ago. It cannot recall a document already emailed. A business can also mark individual steps internal; those steps are absent from the client’s copy, and absent without a placeholder, a count or a gap.

If you are a business using SMG Tools: the caution in this section about photographs applies with more force here. A checklist report is generated from the job rather than assembled entry by entry, so every photograph taken against a step is on the customer’s copy unless the step itself is marked internal. Before sending, the product gives you a second download of exactly what the client would receive, so what you are about to disclose can be read rather than assumed.

Sending the report is recorded in the client’s communication history with the address it went to, as every other thing sent to a client is.

The job summary a client can be sent

A business can send its client a summary of a job: the business’s name and logo, the job, its progress, its stages and when each is due, and its payment schedule — each payment, when it falls due and whether it is paid — with the agreed price, what has been paid and what is still to pay. It never contains the business’s expenses, costs or margin. A person at the business who is not permitted to see prices sends it without any amounts. It is emailed from SMG Tools with replies going to the business, with a link to the client’s own page (Section 4.14), and texted with that link where the client takes service texts (Section 4.8).

Each summary sent is recorded in the client’s communication history, by email and by text, and on the job; one that could not be sent — no email address and no text the client takes — is recorded as not sent, with the reason.

4.13 The Assistant That Answers the Phone

A business can add an assistant that answers its telephone. It is an add-on, off for every organization until an Owner buys it, and it only ever answers a number that business leased through SMG Tools or forwarded to one.

SMG Tools does not record calls

No audio is captured, stored, or kept. There is no call recording in this product and no setting that turns one on. What the assistant produces is a written transcript of the conversation, kept so the business can check what a caller actually said rather than trusting a summary.

The assistant says what it is

It announces itself as an assistant on every call, in its opening sentence, before it asks the caller anything. That is not a setting and cannot be switched off.

It may recognize a returning caller

Where the business has left recognition on — it is on by default and switched off under Online Booking — the assistant compares the caller’s telephone number with the business’s own client records. A number that matches exactly one client is greeted by that client’s first name and asked whether the visit is at the address the business has on file; the address itself is never read out, and a number that matches nobody, or more than one record, is treated as a stranger and told nothing. Recognition discloses to the caller only that the business knows a first name for their number. It uses the client records the business already holds and creates nothing new about the caller.

What a call produces

The caller’s telephone number, the number they rang, when the call happened, the transcript of what was said, and whatever the assistant managed to write down — typically the work wanted, the address and a number to ring back. Where the business takes bookings and the caller took a time, a visit on the business’s calendar and the client, job and lead records a booking makes, as described under Online Booking in section 4.7. All of it belongs to the business that was called, appears in a queue their staff work through, is included in that business’s data export, and is deleted with their data.

Who processes it

Calls are carried by Twilio, which turns the caller’s speech into text and the assistant’s replies into speech while the call is in progress, and the conversation is interpreted by Azure OpenAI, both under contract to process it on our behalf and for no purpose of their own. Neither is permitted to use it to train models. See our Subprocessors page.

If you are a business using SMG Tools

The assistant answers your telephone on your behalf and the conversations belong to you. What you must tell callers about it, and any recording or monitoring rules where you operate, are your decision to comply with. SMG Tools acts as your processor for this data. Because nothing is recorded as audio, the all-party consent laws that govern call recording in several states are not engaged by the product itself.

4.14 Pages Your Clients Open Without an Account

A client of a business using SMG Tools never creates an account, chooses a password, or has a profile with us. What they get instead is a link, sent to them by the business they are dealing with. There are two kinds that show them something about themselves: the page that tracks a visit on the day it happens, and the hub that shows everything they hold with that business.

Watching a visit

When somebody sets off to a client, that client can be sent a link to a page showing that the visit is under way, the appointment window, who is coming where that worker has published a profile, and the vehicle to look for. It shows nothing else about them and asks nothing of them — being timely is the whole point, and a code in front of it would mean nobody read it in time. The page stops working a week after the job is finished.

Where the business has planned the day as a route, the page, the on-the-way text and a day-before reminder can name a planned arrival time — “about 25 minutes”, “expected around 2:30 PM”. A planned time is derived from the business’s schedule and its address records — the visits booked, the addresses on them, and the drive between those addresses as a mapping provider estimates it — and never from a device’s location. Whether a day is running behind is read from the status a worker reported on a job, not from where their phone is. Section 4.10 remains the only place a location is ever recorded, and it plays no part in any of this.

From that page a client can call the visit off, and that does take a code, sent to the contact details already on their record. Reading the page grants nothing; cancelling removes a job from somebody’s working day, and a link forwarded to a neighbor must not be able to do that.

The client hub

A business can send a client a link to a page showing everything they hold with that business: what needs their attention, their next visit, and their quotes, service agreements, invoices and change orders, each opening the document’s own page. Where a service agreement pays itself, the page shows the card it is paid with by its brand and last four digits, and a way to change it on the agreement’s own page. It also lists the units the business services at the client’s own property — what each is, where it is, when it went in and when it is next due for service — read-only, with no serial number and nothing to open or change, and only when the business has written some down — and the warranties on the work the business has done for them: what each covers, until when, and whether it is still in force, with the manufacturer’s warranty on a unit where the business recorded one. A client may ask for warranty service from that page; the request goes through the business’s own request form and is kept as a request, the way every request through that form is (Section 4.7). Nothing about any other client is shown.

The page lists every job the business has finished for the client, with the notes and photographs the business marked for the client to see (Section 4.12) and nothing else from the job. It also shows the documents the business sharedwith the client — a permit, a manual, a report — each downloaded by a link that lasts minutes; a document is on the page only while the business shares it.

Where the business plans a job in stages (Projects), the page also shows that job while it is under way: each stage of the work with its dates and whether it has started or is done, each stage’s visits with their day, time and where each has got to, the notes and photographs the business marked for the client to see, and the payments on that job’s schedule with when each falls due and whether it is paid. The business can hide a stage, which leaves it, its visits and what was shared from it off the page.It never shows the tasks, the hours, who is on the work or anything it costs the business.Where the business turns it on, the client is emailed as each stage is done, with a link to this page.

Where the business has turned a checklist on for its customers (Section 4.12), the page also shows what was done on each visit: the steps, what was answered, the notes written beside them, each reading with the range it was judged against, and the photographs. It is the same content as the document the business can email, built the same way and redacted the same way, so the two cannot come to say different things about one visit. It is read-only; nothing on this page changes a record.

The link alone shows nothing about the client. Opening it displays the business’s name and logo — which are on every other page that business sends — and asks for a code. Nothing else is rendered, and nothing else is sent to the browser, until the code is entered. A forwarded, bookmarked or shared copy of the link therefore discloses nothing.

For each job the business has sent them a note about, the page also shows that conversation: the notes the business chose to send, and the client’s own replies, in order. A box under it lets the client write back, and they may also start a note on any open job of theirs, or one finished in the last ninety days. What they write is kept on the job as a note from them (Section 4.8), exactly as a reply by text would be, and reaches the person who last wrote to them on it. Writing there never agrees to anything: a note is not a document, and answering one is not accepting one.

Where the client owes on more than one invoice, the page offers to pay what they owe in one card payment. It is taken by Stripe on a page Stripe hosts, exactly as each invoice’s own payment is (Section 4.9), and recorded as a payment on each invoice; we never receive the card number. It is the one payment the page takes, and it signs nothing. The client may also ask for more work through the business’s own request form (Section 4.7).

Where the business has added Files from clients, the client may also send photos and documents — photos with a note, and the documents the business asks them for. Each is scanned for malware by Microsoft before anyone at the business can open it (Section 4.23).

Where the code goes, and why the client cannot choose

The code is sent to the email address or telephone number already on the client’s record with that business. The visitor is never asked where to send it and there is no way for them to say. A prompt offering to send a code somewhere else would only confirm that whoever holds the link can read their own inbox, which proves nothing about who they are. Too many wrong codes locks the check for a period, and a confirmed session lasts thirty minutes before it has to be proved again.

This is the same check a client passes to sign a proposal or a service agreement. It proves who somebody is and authorizes nothing on its own: what a client may do to any particular document is still governed by that document’s own rules.

Reminders to book, and stopping them

Some emails a business sends ask a customer to book work again: that work they had before is due again, or that a unit at their property is due for service. Each one says it is a reminder from that business about booking work, carries the business’s postal address, and has a link to stop these reminders. The link needs no sign-in and asks for one press; the customer’s mail app’s own unsubscribe does the same, and either works at once. The stop is kept on the customer’s record at that business with how it was asked for, and only the business, on the customer’s word, records that they want to be reminded again. It stops reminders to book and nothing else: invoices, visit reminders and confirmations, and messages about work the customer has already asked for still come. None of these reminders is texted, and SMG Tools sends no marketing text until a customer has agreed to marketing texts themselves.

A reminder’s link to book opens the business’s booking page or request form on the customer’s own link, marked as coming from the reminder, so the business can see what its reminders brought back. The hub shows the same work due again, with a way to book it.

What these pages never show

A client is shown their own records and nothing internal. Documents a business has not finished writing, invoices it has voided, its notes to itself, its costs and its margins do not appear on any page a client can reach. A thread shows only notes the business sent and the client’s replies — never a note the business wrote to itself, a teammate it named, or who at the business has read what. The hub is a second route to things the client was already sent, never a wider view of them.

Ending it

A business archiving a client stops that client’s hub link working. Neither kind of link is included in a business’s data export, because both are credentials rather than records.

If you are a business using SMG Tools

You decide who receives these links and when. We verify that whoever opens a hub link can receive a code at the contact details you hold for that client, so keeping those details accurate is what keeps the check meaningful — a stale email address on a client record is the one way this protection weakens. Nothing a client sees on these pages is anything you had not already sent them.

4.15 Passkeys

A passkey is a way to sign in with your face, your fingerprint or your device’s PIN instead of a password. You add one from your Security page; after that the sign-in page can offer it, and it also serves as the “confirm it’s you” check in front of a sensitive change. A passkey is optional on every plan, and password sign-in is never taken away from an account that has one.

The biometric never leaves your device

A passkey is a pair of keys made by your phone, computer or security key. The private half stays in that device’s secure hardware and is unlocked there by your face, fingerprint or PIN. No fingerprint, face, PIN or biometric template of any kind is sent to or stored by SMG Tools, and none could be: we never receive it. What we receive when you add a passkey is the public half of the pair, an identifier for the credential, and the make of the device where it says one; what we store is that public key and identifier, the name you gave the passkey, the kind of device it is, and when it was added and last used. Signing in sends us a signature to check against the public key, which proves the device was unlocked by you without telling us how.

Removing one

You can rename or remove any passkey from your Security page at any time. Removing it stops it signing you in from then on; the copy on the device is left where it is and opens nothing. An account always keeps at least one way in — a password, a linked Google or Microsoft account, or a passkey — and the Service will not remove the last. A person invited to a business may join with a passkey and never set a password; if they lose the device, the business’s owner sends them a new invitation, and accepting it on a new device sets up a passkey there and switches off the old one.

What is recorded

Your account’s sign-in history shows how each sign-in was made — password, a linked account, or a passkey — and when a passkey was added, renamed or removed, so that a sign-in you do not recognize can be told apart from your own. A passkey belongs to you, not to the business you work in: it is not part of a business’s data export, and leaving a business does not change it.

No third party is involved

The device that holds your passkey is your own, and the name we suggest for it comes from a short list kept in the Service; nothing is looked up with any outside registry. No subprocessor receives anything about your passkeys.

4.16 Where You’re Signed In, New-Device Emails, and a Business’s Sign-In Requirement

The devices signed in to your account

Every sign-in makes a session on the device it was made from, and the session carries what that device told us when it signed in: the browser and operating system from the user agent, a name made from the two (“Chrome on Windows”, “Safari on iPhone”), the IP address it came from, when it signed in and when it last asked for anything. Your Security page lists them — Devices — and you can sign any of them out, or everything but the one you are on. A signed-out device is back at the sign-in page on its next visit. A device that is remembered for the second factor — the “remember this device” choice at the second-factor step, good for thirty days — is shown on the same row as its session, because it is the same device. Nothing else is read from a device: no contacts, no files, no continuous location.

An email when a new device signs in

When your account signs in from a device that is not holding a session or a remembered-device cookie of ours, we email the address on the account: the device name, the time, the IP address it came from, and the way it signed in — your password, a linked Google or Microsoft account, a passkey, a reset link. This email cannot be turned off: the one message that says somebody else may be in your account is the setting an intruder would switch off first. It is sent for the sign-in, never for the ordinary renewal of a session, and it says why it may have arrived when it was you — a week away, a browser cleared, a device signed out and used again. We do not turn the IP address into a place: nothing is sent to a third party for it, and the email carries the address and no more. The first sign-in after an account is created, and the first sign-in after this feature shipped for an account that existed before it, records the device silently and sends nothing.

What a business’s owner can see, and require

The owner of a business may require a second factor of everyone who signs in to it, or, more strictly, an authenticator app or a passkey. To show who meets it, the Team page tells the owner, for each member, whether their sign-in meets the requirement and what kindof factor they hold: a password, an email code, an authenticator app, a passkey. The owner never sees a code, a secret, a key, or which devices a member is signed in on; the Devices list is the member’s own. A member who does not meet the requirement can still reach their own Security page to set it up, and nothing else of the business until they have. The owner is held to the same requirement and cannot switch it on before meeting it. The Terms of Use, Section 3.3, say how the requirement is applied. On Scale, a business may also require its people to sign in through its company’s Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace — see Section 4.22.

What is recorded

Your account’s sign-in history records a device signed out and a sign-in from a device the account had not seen, with the address and device name, so that an event you do not recognize can be told apart from your own; a business’s owner changing the sign-in requirement is recorded against the owner. Sessions are deleted when they are signed out or expire; the history is kept with the account.

4.17 Setting Up From Your Website

When you give us your website address during setup, our servers fetch a small number of pages from it and read them so we can propose your settings. This section says exactly what that does. It happens only when you ask for it, and nothing about your business is changed until you have read what came back and confirmed it.

What We Fetch

• Up to six pages from the address you give us — the homepage, and the handful of pages linked from it that look like they describe your services. Nothing behind a login, and nothing on any other site
• The logo, if the page declares one, so we can offer it for your quotes and invoices
• Any business facts the page publishes for search engines — the structured name, telephone number and address many sites carry for that purpose

We refuse addresses that are not public websites. A request is checked against the address it actually resolves to, on every redirect it follows, and refused if that address is a private or internal one. This exists so that the feature cannot be used to make our servers reach somewhere they should not, and it is a safeguard rather than a limitation you are likely to notice.

What We Send to the AI Service

The readable text of those pages — or the sentence you typed, if you described the business instead — is sent to Azure OpenAI so it can propose the kinds of work you do, the kinds of equipment you work on, the categories your business matches, and the towns you work in. With it go the names you already use for your kinds of work and your kinds of equipment, so that nothing is proposed twice — names only, nothing about a client or a job. The same Microsoft commitments described in Section 4.6 apply: it is not stored by Azure after processing and it is not used to train any model.

Your Google Listing

We also search Google Places for the business name we read off your site. A listing is used only once we have checked that the website Google holds for it resolves to the same domain you gave us. Where it does, we take its name, telephone number, address, opening hours and service areas. Where it does not, we discard the result and the proposal simply has no listing in it — we do not show you a business that might be yours.

What We Keep

• The page text is not kept. It is read, used to produce the proposal you see on screen, and discarded. We do not store a copy of your website, a cache of it, or the prompt built from it
• The proposal itself is not stored either. Nothing is written while that screen is in front of you — not a setting, not a job type, not the logo
• What you confirm becomes your settings, held exactly as if you had typed them: your business name, telephone number, address, website, kinds of work, service categories, service areas and opening hours
• An accepted logo is uploaded by your own browser, through the same path the logo form uses. Our servers never write a fetched file to storage
• The AI usage is counted, as it is for every AI feature, because that is how your monthly allowance is measured. What is recorded is that a request happened and what it cost, not what was in it

If the Site Is Not Yours

We have no way to know whether a website belongs to you, and we do not try to establish it. You are asked for your own address and are responsible for giving us one you are entitled to have us read — see Section 7.15 of the Terms of Use. What we read is in any case material the site publishes openly to anyone with a browser.

4.18 Webhooks, the Inbound Lead Address and API Keys

A business may connect SMG Tools to software of its own choosing in two directions, both from its own pages in SMG Tools and both optional: records sent out by webhook or read through an API key, and leads or records taken in through its inbound lead address or an API key. Nothing below happens unless a business sets it up.

Webhooks: records sent to an address the business chose

A business’s owner may add a web address and choose which events it is told about — an invoice sent or paid, a job created or finished, a visit booked, a lead arriving, a client replying, an order sent to a supplier or received, a supplier’s bill made ready, and the like. When one of those happens, SMG Tools sends that address a message describing it: the record’s identifiers and the details a person would need to act on it, which can include a client’s name, contact details and address, a job’s title and location, and an invoice’s number and amounts. We send only what the business configured, only to the address the business gave, and only from the business’s own records. Each message is signed so the receiver can verify it came from us. A message that cannot be delivered is retried for about a day and then given up; a receiver that keeps failing is paused and the owner emailed.

The receiver is the business’s choice, not ours. It is not one of our service providers, and we do not control, review or take responsibility for what it does with a message once delivered — that is between the business and whoever runs the receiving software. A business is responsible for telling its clients, where the law requires, that their details may be passed to tools the business uses.

We keep a log of each delivery — the message as sent, when, and what the receiver answered — for thirty days, so the business can see what was sent and send it again if need be, and then delete it. Deleting a webhook deletes its log at once. The signing secret is stored encrypted and is shown to the business once, when made; it is never included in a data export.

The inbound lead address: leads a tool posts in

Each business has one web address of its own that other software may post a lead to — a form on the business’s website, a lead service, an automation tool. A lead that arrives this way is treated exactly as one submitted through the business’s public page (section 4.7): it is the business’s record, the business is notified, and the customer’s details are handled as that section describes. The one difference is that we do not know who sent it — the address carries a secret that proves it was given out by the business, and the business may label where it came from. We record how many leads arrived this way and how many requests were refused, without keeping the refused requests. A business may switch the address off or replace it at any time; the secret in it is stored encrypted, shown to the business on its own page in SMG Tools, and never included in a data export.

API keys: programs the business lets read and write its records

A business’s owner may issue an API key to a program of its choosing — an automation tool, its website, software a developer writes for it. With the key the program can read and change the business’s clients, jobs, leads and appointments, read its invoices and manage its own webhooks, only as far as the owner allowed when issuing it; what it reads can include a client’s name, contact details and address. Records leave SMG Tools this way only because the business issued a key, and only to the program holding it. What the program does with them is between the business and whoever runs it; it is not one of our service providers, and a business is responsible for telling its clients, where the law requires, that their details may be passed to tools the business uses.

The key is shown to the business once and we keep only a fingerprint of it, never included in a data export. For each key we keep a record of its recent requests — when, which address it asked for and how it was answered, never what it sent or what it was sent— for thirty days, up to its last five hundred, so the business can see what the key has been doing. What a key writes is recorded as done by that key. Revoking a key stops it at once; the key stays on the list as revoked so the records it made still say who made them.

If you are a business using SMG Tools

Closing your account deletes your webhooks, their logs and your inbound lead address. A lead that arrived through the address is kept or removed as any other lead is. It deletes your API keys and the record of their requests too.

4.19 Accounting Software Connections (QuickBooks Online and Xero)

A business can connect its own QuickBooks Online company or Xero organization, so the records it keeps in SMG Tools are added to its books as they change. Only the business’s owner can connect or disconnect it.

What We Receive

• The company’s or organization’s name and its identifier, and the country it keeps its books in
• Its chart of accounts, so the owner can choose where each kind of record goes
• The names of its customers and of its products and services, read only to match them to records already in SMG Tools, so a customer it already has is linked rather than added twice. These names are used for that match and not kept
• Access granted by Intuit or Xero when the owner signs in, which lets SMG Tools add the business’s records

What We Send

The business’s own records: its customers and vendors, its products and services, its invoices and the payments and refunds against them, its expenses, income and tips, its Stripe payouts and their fees, and its suppliers’ bills with the payments made against them and the credits its suppliers gave. A supplier’s bill goes with its amounts and, in QuickBooks Online, the customer each job’s line was for; never a quantity of stock. When a record is voided in SMG Tools, its copy is voided in the ledger, or deleted where the ledger cannot void that kind of record.

What We Keep, and Who Sees It

We keep the company’s name and identifier, the accounts the owner chose, and the identifiers that link each record to its copy in the ledger, with a log of what was sent. The business’s owners and managers see the connection and the log; no one outside the business does. The access granted by Intuit or Xero is encrypted at rest, is never shown to anyone, and is used only to send that business’s records. We do not sell or share data from a connected ledger, and we do not use it for anything but keeping the business’s books in step.

Disconnecting

The owner can disconnect at any time from the tool’s page in SMG Tools. When they do, we hand the access back to Intuit or Xero and delete it; records already in the ledger stay there, and the log of what was sent stays in SMG Tools. A business can also remove SMG Tools from its QuickBooks or Xero apps.

Intuit’s and Xero’s handling of the data in their products is governed by the Intuit Privacy Statement and Xero’s Privacy Notice.

4.20 Notifications on Your Phone or Computer

Each person can turn notifications on for a phone or computer they use, from Profile → Notifications. Nothing is turned on for anybody: the browser asks for permission only when the person presses Turn on, and a business cannot turn notifications on for its members.

What We Keep

For each device turned on, the address the browser’s push service gave it and the keys a notification is encrypted with, the browser and system the device’s sign-in reported, the sign-in it belongs to, when it was turned on and when it last received one. It is the person’s alone: no one else in the business, the owner included, can see it. We keep it while notifications are on for that device, and remove it when they are turned off or the device is removed from the list, when the device is signed out — on the device or from the list of devices — and when the push service tells us the browser no longer accepts them.

What a Notification Says

A notification says what happened, who, and on which job — “Dana Whitfield replied on Kitchen remodel” — and opens the console where the person can read it. Because a locked phone can be read by whoever is near it, a notification never carries a note’s or a reply’s words, an amount, or an address. Each person chooses which kinds reach their devices, separately from which are emailed.

Who Carries It

A notification is delivered by the push service of the person’s browser — Google’s for Chrome and Android, Apple’s for Safari and iPhone, Mozilla’s for Firefox, Microsoft’s for Edge on Windows. It is encrypted for the person’s browser before it leaves us, so the push service cannot read it; it receives only the device’s address, the encrypted notification and when it was sent. They are listed on our subprocessors page.

4.21 The History of Changes

Every change made to a business’s records — a visit moved, a price edited, a phone number corrected — is kept as a history the business can read, on every plan.

What Each Change Records

Who made the change: a person in the business, by name and the role they held at the time; a client, for what they did on their own page, such as signing a proposal or paying an invoice; one of the business’s automations or API keys; SMG Tools itself; or SMG Tools support, when our support team made it while helping the business. Where it came from: the console, a client’s page, the API, an automation, an import, the assistant or the phone. When it was made, and what it changed. No address and no device is recorded with a change — not an IP address, a browser or a location.

Who Can Read It

A record’s own history can be read by anybody in the business who can open that record. The whole business’s history — every change, by everybody, the owner included — is the owner’s, and anybody the owner gives a role that includes the Change history permission; that person sees only the changes to the kinds of record their role can already open. A role that keeps prices and costs from its people keeps them out of the history too. A client never sees it.

How Long It Is Kept

For as long as the business has an account. It cannot be edited or have a change taken out by anybody in the business. It is in the archive Organization → Your Data exports, and the owner can download it as a CSV. Closing the account removes it with the business’s other records (see Section 9.1).

4.22 Signing In With Microsoft, Google or Apple, and Company Sign-In

What Microsoft or Google tells us when you sign in with them

When you sign in with a Microsoft or Google account, we read what that sign-in says about you: Microsoft’s or Google’s own identifier for you, your name, your email address, whether Microsoft or Google confirms that address is yours, and the organization you signed in from — a Microsoft organization’s identifier, or the domain of a Google Workspace. We keep the identifier, linked to your account, so your next sign-in finds it. An address Microsoft or Google does not confirm never connects to an account that already uses it and never starts a new business; it can still accept an invitation sent to it, whose own link proves the inbox. The organization is used at the sign-in and, where your business connected that organization, recorded with the session — below.

What Apple tells us when you sign in with Apple

When you sign in with Apple, Apple tells us an identifier for you at SMG Tools, your email address — or, if you chose Hide My Email, an address at privaterelay.appleid.com that forwards to yours — and, the first time only, the name you gave Apple. We keep the identifier, linked to your account, so your next sign-in finds it. We also keep a token Apple issues, encrypted, only so that we can tell Apple to forget SMG Tools when you unlink Apple or delete your account; it is used for nothing else.

A business’s company sign-in

On Scale, a business’s owner may prove the company’s domain and connect the company’s Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. We keep each domain, the value the owner publishes in its DNS, when we last looked it up and what we found, the organization’s identifier or the Workspace’s domain, and the address of the person who connected it, with when. We look the domain’s public DNS up ourselves; nothing about the business is sent to do it. The domains, removed ones included, are in the business’s export, and a deleted business’s domains are released.

• Asking to join. Somebody with no account who signs in through a business’s connected company may ask to join it. We keep their name, their address, the organization they signed in from, when they asked and how it was answered, and email them the answer. The owner sees the request; nobody else in the business does. Requests are in the business’s export
• Requiring it. Where the owner requires company sign-in, everyone whose sign-in address is on the domain, but the owner, signs in only through the company. A session records whether it began through the company, and the company is asked again every twelve hours; whether a person may sign in there is the company’s decision, which we act on and do not see the reasons for. The Team page tells the owner, for each member, whether they sign in through the company
• What we never receive. The company’s passwords, its two-step codes, its other people, its groups or anything from its mailboxes or files. We ask Microsoft and Google for the sign-in alone

4.23 Files From Clients

On Professional, a business can add Files from clients, so that its clients can send photos with a note on their page (Section 4.14) and the documents the business asks them for — proof of insurance, an approval, a signed form. A client sends them only by choosing to; nothing is taken from their device.

Scanned Before Anyone Opens Them

Each file is checked when it arrives — that it is the kind of file it claims to be, and its size — and kept in a storage area of its own, apart from the business’s files, where Microsoft Defender for Storage scans it for malware. Until the scan says it is clean, nobody at the business can open, preview or download it, and nothing makes a thumbnail of it. One found harmful is deleted where it is and never reaches the business; the client is told it could not be accepted. Microsoft scans it within the same Azure region and does not keep it; in limited cases it may share a file’s fingerprint (its SHA-256 hash) with Microsoft’s own threat protection.

What We Keep

A file that passes becomes the business’s: a photo on the job it was sent about, marked as from the client, or a document on the client or their job. It is not shown back to the client unless the business shares it. We keep, for each file, when it arrived, what the scan said and what became of it; the files and that record are in the business’s export and deleted with its data. A file still waiting is deleted, unopened, if it is never sent with a note within a day or never checked within a week.

4.24 Thumbtack

A business on Professional can connect its own Thumbtack account, so the leads Thumbtack sends it arrive in SMG Tools with their conversation, and Thumbtack hears how the work went. Only the business’s owner can connect or disconnect it. Thumbtack is the destination the business chose, under the business’s own agreement with Thumbtack, and not our service provider.

What We Receive From Thumbtack

• The names and identifiers of the Thumbtack businesses on the owner’s account, so the owner can choose which to connect
• Each new lead: the customer’s request — the kind of work, the questions Thumbtack asked with their answers, and the timing they gave — their city, state and ZIP code, and the contact details Thumbtack shares: their name and, where Thumbtack gives them, a telephone number (usually a Thumbtack Number that reaches the customer) and an email address
• The messages in the lead’s conversation on Thumbtack — the customer’s, and the replies the business sent from Thumbtack’s own app — each with its text, who sent it and when. Attachments arrive as links and are not downloaded
• What Thumbtack charged the business for each lead, and whether it refunded or credited it
• Access granted by Thumbtack when the owner signs in, which lets SMG Tools do the above

A lead from Thumbtack is kept as any other lead is: the business’s record of a customer who asked it for work. Its conversation is kept with it, and with the client the lead becomes.

What We Send to Thumbtack

• The business’s replies, written in SMG Tools and sent as the business, on the conversation the customer started
• Each lead’s status as its work moves — not yet booked, a visit booked, the job done, paid in full with the amount paid, or called off by the customer or by the business — with the time it happened. Nothing else about the job, its visits or its invoices
• The telephone numbers the business calls and texts from: its SMG Tools number and the phone on its profile, and the phone of each person at the business who chooses to register their own, labeled with their name. A person’s number is sent only by their own choice, and comes off when they turn it off
• The addresses Thumbtack delivers new leads and messages to, each with a secret that proves a delivery came from Thumbtack

What We Keep, and Who Sees It

We keep which Thumbtack businesses are connected, the link between each lead and its Thumbtack lead, the conversation, the statuses sent, the numbers registered, each lead’s price as an expense where the business records it, and a log of what was sent and what Thumbtack answered. The people at the business who manage its integrations see the connection and its log; the people who work leads see the leads and their conversation; no one outside the business does. The access Thumbtack grants is encrypted at rest, is never shown to anyone, and is used only for this connection. We do not sell or share data from Thumbtack, and we do not use it for anything but this connection. All of it is in the business’s export and deleted with its data.

Disconnecting

The owner can disconnect at any time from Thumbtack’s page in SMG Tools. When they do, nothing more arrives or is sent; we remove the delivery addresses and the registered numbers at Thumbtack and hand the access back. Leads, their conversations and the recorded costs stay in SMG Tools. Removing SMG Tools’ access on Thumbtack’s side stops it the same way. What is on Thumbtack stays on Thumbtack.

Thumbtack’s handling of the data in its own service is governed by Thumbtack’s Privacy Policy.

5. Data Retention

We retain your information for as long as your account is active or as needed to provide you with our Service. Specifically:

• Account Data: Retained while your account is active and for a reasonable period after deletion for backup and legal purposes
• Business Records: Jobs, invoices, and financial records are retained for 7 years to comply with tax and accounting requirements
• Voice Transcripts: Kept with the record they created and retained for as long as it is. A transcript that created nothing — a request you spoke and never confirmed — is deleted after 30 days. Audio is never retained at all (see Section 4.6)
• Bank Transaction Data: Imported transactions are retained as part of your business records. If you disconnect a bank account, historical transaction data remains unless you request deletion.
• Usage Data: Aggregated analytics data may be retained indefinitely in anonymized form
• Uploaded Files: Every file a business uploads — photos, documents, receipts, bills — is kept until someone at the business removes it, or until the business’s account is deleted, when its files are deleted after a grace period. Running out of storage never removes a file; it only stops new ones (see Section 4.3 of the Terms of Use). A removed file is deleted from storage and cannot be recovered; the record it was on keeps who removed it and when
• The History of Changes: Kept as long as the business has an account, and removed when it is closed (see Section 4.21)
• Files From Clients: A file waiting for its malware scan is kept apart and deleted, unopened, if it is found harmful, if it is never sent within a day, or if it is never checked within a week. One that passes is kept as the business’s photo or document, for as long as its other files are (see Section 4.23)

You may request deletion of your data at any time (see Section 9 for your rights).

6. Data Security

We implement appropriate technical and organizational measures to protect your information:

• Encryption in transit (TLS/HTTPS) and at rest
• Secure authentication with support for multi-factor authentication and passkeys (Section 4.15), a list of the devices signed in to your account and an email when a new one signs in (Section 4.16)
• Regular security assessments and monitoring
• Access controls limiting employee access to personal data
• Secure cloud infrastructure (Microsoft Azure)

While we strive to protect your data, no method of transmission over the Internet or electronic storage is 100% secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.

7. Analytics and Tracking

We use Google Analytics to collect information about how you use our Service. Google Analytics uses cookies to collect information such as how often users visit our site, what pages they visit, and what other sites they used before coming to our site.

We use this information to improve our Service and user experience. Google Analytics collects the IP address assigned to you on the date you visit our Service, but we do not combine this with other data we hold about you.

We also use it to measure our own advertising. When somebody who has accepted analytics creates an account, Google Analytics records that an account was created and whether it was made with an email address or with a Google or Microsoft sign-in, together with the ad that brought them, if one did. That record is shared with Google Ads, which is linked to our Google Analytics property, so that we can tell which of our ads lead people to sign up. It carries no name, email address, business name or anything else you typed. We do not use Google Analytics to show you advertising on other websites, and we do not send Google a list of our customers.

Google Analytics does not load until you accept it. The first time you visit, we ask, and nothing is loaded, no cookie is set and no page view is recorded unless you say yes. Ignoring the question counts as declining.

You can change your answer at any time using the Cookie Preferences link at the foot of this page, and of every other page on this website and in the app (on a phone the app’s footer shortens it to Cookies), including withdrawing an acceptance you gave earlier. Withdrawing stops further collection and clears the analytics cookies already in your browser. You may also install the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on if you prefer a browser-wide setting.

8. Cookies

We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:

• Essential Cookies: Required to sign you in, keep your session secure, and — where you followed a referral link — to credit the business that referred you. These are always on. We do not ask about them because the Service does not work without them, so offering a choice would not be a real one.
• Preference Cookies: Remember your settings, such as which parts of the app you have chosen to show or hide. Stored in your browser only and never sent anywhere else.
• Analytics Cookies: Google Analytics, set only if you accept. See the section above for how to accept, decline, or change your mind.
• Your day, kept on your device: If you work from My Day, the browser or the app on that device keeps a copy of today so My Day opens with no signal: the day’s visits in order and, for each, the client’s name, address and phone number, how to get in, what the work is, the times and the steps of its checklist — with your name and email, so it knows whose day it is. It stays on that device, is read only by SMG Tools there, and is never sent anywhere. It is replaced each time My Day opens with a signal and deleted when you sign out, when your session is ended from elsewhere — a device removed from your account, or the account deleted — the next time that device is online, and once the day is over. The console’s own files are kept in the browser too, so it can open offline; they hold nothing about you or your clients.

You can also control cookies through your browser settings. Note that blocking essential cookies will prevent you from signing in.

9. Your Rights

Depending on your location, you may have the following rights regarding your personal data:

• Access: Request a copy of the personal data we hold about you
• Correction: Request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete data
• Deletion: Close your account and have your personal data removed. You can do this yourself from Organization → Your Data — see below for exactly what is removed and what is kept. If you are a member of a business you do not own, you can delete your own account from your Security page — see Section 9.2
• Portability: Request your data in a structured, machine-readable format
• Objection: Object to certain processing of your data
• Restriction: Request that we limit how we use your data
• Withdraw Consent: Where processing is based on consent, you may withdraw it at any time

Access and portability are self-service: Organization → Your Data exports every record we hold for your business as one archive — each photo and document by its name and where it is kept, the file itself downloaded where the Service shows it — and Import & export beside it downloads any one list — clients, their units, equipment, the Price Book, materials, job types, bookable services, invoices, time entries and service agreements — as a CSV, the importable lists in the same columns their import takes so a file can leave and come back. Timesheets downloads a pay period’s approved hours per person for payroll — name, email, hours and cost, and with Commissions & pay rules each person’s commission and tips, in a general layout or in the shape a payroll provider imports — as a file you hand to your provider yourself; we send nothing to any payroll provider. All of it is on every plan and none of it costs anything. Deletion is on the same page as the archive. For anything else, contact us at the email address below.

9.1 What Closing Your Account Removes

Closing your account removes your business details, your sign-in and every team member’s sign-in to the business, your clients and their contact details, your leads, your workers, the history of changes to your records, and the email addresses on any invitations you sent. Your public page comes down, and every link your clients hold for opening quotes and invoices stops working. Any data export you had produced is deleted along with it. Your subscription is cancelled immediately; the remainder of a paid period is not refunded.

What we keep, and why: invoices and payment records, because tax rules require us to retain them. They are kept without your clients’ names attached.

Being straight with you about one limitation: SMG Tools records what happened to your business as an immutable log, which is what makes the audit trail on a signed quote trustworthy. Closing your account removes your personal information from every read model the product serves, so it is no longer retrievable through any part of the Service. The underlying log retains a historical record of the events themselves. We are working towards cryptographic erasure of that layer; until then we would rather tell you precisely what we do than imply more.

9.2 What Deleting Your Own Account Removes

Deleting your own account removes your sign-in: your email address and password, your two-step settings, the Google or Microsoft accounts you linked, your passkeys, every device you were signed in on or had asked us to remember, your notification subscriptions, your profile and its picture, and your own preferences. You are signed out everywhere at once, and the email address is free to make a new account.

What stays, and why: what you recorded in a business you worked for — your time, notes and work — is that business’s record, and stays with it under the name you last used, as it does when a business removes a member. That business’s owner is told you deleted your account. Our sign-in security log keeps that each sign-in happened, without your address or where it came from. The underlying log of events is kept as described in Section 9.1.

The owner of a business deletes their account by closing the business (Section 9.1), or by handing the business over to someone else and choosing to leave. Handing a business over keeps its records, which become the new owner’s responsibility: when the new owner accepts, the former owner’s account is deleted as described above if they chose to leave, and the payment, bank and accounting connections the former owner made with their own sign-ins end — we tell the bank-feed and accounting providers to forget our access to them — so nothing more is paid into, or read from, the former owner’s own accounts. The subscription’s billing address becomes the new owner’s.

10. GDPR Compliance (European Users)

If you are located in the European Economic Area (EEA), United Kingdom, or Switzerland:

• We process your data based on: (a) your consent, (b) performance of a contract, (c) legitimate business interests, or (d) legal obligations
• You have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority
• Data transfers outside the EEA are protected by appropriate safeguards (Standard Contractual Clauses or equivalent)

11. California Privacy Rights (CCPA)

If you are a California resident, you have additional rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA):

• Right to know what personal information is collected, used, shared, or sold
• Right to delete personal information held by businesses
• Right to opt-out of sale of personal information (we do not sell your data)
• Right to non-discrimination for exercising your privacy rights

12. Children's Privacy

Our Service is not intended for anyone under the age of 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If we become aware that a child under 16 has provided us with personal data, we will delete such information promptly.

13. Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time to reflect changes in our practices or legal requirements. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the updated policy on this page and updating the "Last updated" date. We encourage you to review this policy periodically.

14. Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, wish to exercise your data rights, or have concerns about how we handle your information, please contact us at:

Email: support@smgtools.com

We will respond to your request within 30 days.