Terms of Use

1. Agreement to Terms

SMG Tools is a product of MECCSoft LLC. By accessing and using the SMG Tools platform ("Service"), you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms of Use ("Terms"). If you do not agree to these Terms, you may not access or use the Service.

These Terms apply to all visitors, users, and others who access or use the Service. By using the Service on behalf of an organization, you represent that you have the authority to bind that organization to these Terms.

During your use of the Service, including payment processing and third-party integrations, you may see references to MECCSoft LLC. This is expected — MECCSoft LLC is the legal entity that operates SMG Tools.

2. Description of Service

SMG Tools is a job-centric service management platform for contractors and field service businesses of every size. The Service provides:

• Job Management: Create and manage jobs with scope, milestones, status tracking, and client associations
• Proposals: Generate and send client-facing proposals with legally binding e-signature acceptance, consent disclosure, and immutable signed PDF storage; optionally with two to four priced options and extras for your client to choose between, and a deposit taken when they accept. See Section 8.12
• Change Orders: Create change orders with structured content sections, itemized line items, and client e-signature acceptance
• Payment Processing: Collect payments from clients via Stripe integration
• Expense Tracking: Record expenses, upload receipts, and track job profitability
• Crew Coordination: Job planning and task assignment, a day board that reads the whole day as a lane per person, and each person’s day on their phone — clock in and out, arrival, status, and notes and photos from site. Available on every plan; sign-ins for field workers and additional office users are on the Crew and Scale plans (see Sections 3.1 and 4.1). Labor reporting shows the hours people logged against the estimates on the work itself; it does not score, rate or rank individuals — see Section 7.8
• Price Book: The services, materials and fees you charge for, each with its price and what it costs you, sold alone or together as a bundle, and quoted and invoiced from. Each item shows its margin against your target, the price its cost needs to meet that target, and, from your own proposals and finished jobs, how often it wins and what it made. Recommended prices and the notes beside them are arithmetic over the figures you enter and your own history; they never change a price you did not change. See Section 7.8
• Receipt OCR Scanning (Pro): Automatically extract vendor, date, and amount from receipt images using optical character recognition
• Mileage Tracking: Log business mileage for tax preparation and record-keeping purposes
• Address Autocomplete & Mileage Calculations (Pro): Smart address suggestions and automatic distance calculations for mileage tracking, powered by Google Maps Platform
• Route Planning: A person’s day planned as a route — the stops in order with a planned arrival and departure at each — the crew’s view of it, and whether the day is running behind, read from the job statuses your workers report and never from a device’s location. On Professional, the drive between stops, an optimized order, the map and drive-aware booking windows are computed by Google Maps Platform. Planned and expected times are estimates made from your schedule, your address records and the mapping provider’s drive-time estimates; they are not commitments to your clients — the visit you booked is — and we do not guarantee that a plan can be kept or that an estimated drive time is accurate
• Shifts & Time Off: A worker’s second week and changed days, a rota of who is on call, after-hours leads, calls and online bookings sent to whoever is on call, and time off your workers ask for and you approve or decline. The hours, the rota and every decision are yours: a notice to whoever is on call or to a worker is sent where their device and settings allow and is not a guarantee that anybody saw it, so answering your customers after hours stays your responsibility; and the product records time off in hours, with no balance or accrual, and does not tell you what your leave policy or the law requires you to pay
• Work at Our Place: Work done at your own shop, studio or bay — your spaces, online booking that asks no address and offers a time only while a space is free, drop-offs with the date you tell a customer their item will be ready, the message that it is ready to pick up, and a price a customer approves or declines before the work. A ready-by date is worked out from the turnaround and hours you set and is your promise to your customer, not ours; whether an item is ready, what is done to it and what a customer is charged are yours to decide; and the ready message is sent where the customer’s number or email allows, which is not a guarantee that they saw it
• Scheduling & Dispatch: Each person’s working hours and time away; the skills each can do, a skill that needs a license counting only while the license is current; who should do a job and when it could be done, ranked with their reasons and, if you choose, by what the job keeps; and, where your owner switches it on, new work assigned on its own as it arrives. On Professional, drive times are computed by Google Maps Platform. A suggestion is advice made from your own records and estimates — your hours, skills, bookings, addresses, prices and cost rates, and the mapping provider’s drive times — and you decide who goes; work assigned automatically can be moved like any other, and we do not guarantee that a suggested person, time or figure is right
• Field Service Compliance (Opt-In): Per-organization compliance module for regulated trades (pest control, lawn care, HVAC refrigerant, pool/spa, janitorial, agriculture, plus a Generic profile). Tracks technicians and licenses, captures material applications and weather snapshots, and produces an audit-ready CSV export. Manual entries, license-expiration reminders, the Needs Attention dashboard, and the CSV export are included on all tiers
• Job Site Weather Snapshots (Pro): On-demand weather snapshot fetch (temperature, wind, conditions) for Field Service Compliance entries, anchored to the entry’s application date and time. Snapshots are captured via Google Maps Platform geocoding and weather lookups and stored permanently on the compliance entry. Manual weather entry remains available on every tier
• Bank Account Integration: Connect bank accounts via Plaid for transaction import and expense reconciliation
• Accounting Sync (Pro): Connect your QuickBooks Online company or Xero organization and have your customers, items, invoices, payments, refunds, costs and payouts sent to it as they change, into the accounts you confirm. See Section 8.14
• Thumbtack (Pro): Connect your Thumbtack account and have each lead arrive with its conversation, reply to it from here, tell Thumbtack how the work went, and record what each lead cost. See Section 8.16
• Equipment: Your own vans, trailers, machines and tools — a catalog, who has what on a day, meter readings, service due, what each costs to run, its time on a job’s costs, inspection checklists with a record of each inspection, and printed labels scanned out and back. See Section 7.13
• Measurements: The readings your work takes — what your business measures, what each is expected to read, and the numbers your people record against a client’s unit, your own equipment, or a visit. See Section 7.13
• Inventory: The parts your business stocks in its shops and vans, valued at their average cost — counts, receipts, moves and requests, the parts each job used, a job’s materials list and the next day’s load, serial numbers, reports on what went missing, what sits unused and what to keep on hand, and the year’s inventory value. See Section 7.18
• Purchasing: Your suppliers and what each charges you, purchase orders emailed or marked sent, what arrives, your suppliers’ bills checked against what was ordered and received, payments to suppliers, returns, warranty claims, cores and credits, and the costs your bills move. See Section 7.21
• Site Intelligence: A site’s areas, lengths and counts — typed, or on Professional traced on satellite imagery or read from Google’s roof data — kept at a client’s or lead’s address and priced onto proposals from your Price Book. See Section 7.19
• Weather: Google’s forecast for each visit’s hours, the visits your rules for each kind of work say the weather puts at risk, a clearer day with who is free to move one to, and what each weather move costs. See Section 7.20
• Job checklists: How a kind of work is done, written once and carried by every job of that kind — the steps, what was answered, the photographs and signatures taken against them, and the report you can send your client. See Section 7.14
• Projects: A plan for a big job — its stages in order, each holding its tasks and its visits, the people and saved crews on them, and the checklists on a stage and its visits. A stage is done when its work is, and a payment on the job’s schedule that falls due on it then comes due; the Owner or a Manager can mark one done early, or reopen it, with a reason. Visits proposed for a stage are booked only when you accept them, and a plan drafted with AI (Pro) is yours to change before you save it (see Section 7)
• Calculators: A project quoted from a few measurements — your own calculators, one started from your spreadsheet, or the ready-made ones for your trade — every line the job takes worked out by its rule with its waste and rounding and how each quantity was got, filled from the site’s measurements, priced onto a proposal, carried to the job and run again into a change order, and on Professional drafted by the assistant. See Section 7.8
• Client Management: Maintain client records, contact information, and history
• Dashboard & Reporting: View business metrics, outstanding payments, and financial summaries
• Margin Intelligence: Monitor job profitability in real-time with at-risk job alerts and variance tracking based on your cost baselines, including labor efficiency — estimated hours against hours logged — on a job, across jobs, and on the record of the people who worked them. See Section 7.8
• AI-Assisted Tools (Pro): AI-powered proposal drafting, Smart Block suggestions, milestone recommendations, suggested lines for a proposal’s options, a payment reminder drafted from an invoice and a follow-up drafted for a quote that has gone quiet, each for you to edit before it is sent, a job’s plan drafted from what it sold, a calculator drafted from your description or its rules worked out from your parts list’s assumptions, your templates and your past jobs for you to change before you save it, a draft quote for each new request and one from a site walk’s photos and words, drafted only once you turn it on, waiting for you and never sent until you send it, with what your Price Book lacks estimated and marked as an estimate until you keep or change it, and, when you ask, a concept of the finished work drawn from a site walk’s photo, and proposal quality auditing
• Voice Assistant (Pro): Record mileage, time, expenses and work notes by speaking, start clients, jobs, appointments, change orders and proposals, and ask about job status, client details and invoice balances. The assistant acts only on a curated list of actions; anything that creates or changes a record is shown to you for confirmation before it is written, and it cannot send messages to your clients, move money, or delete anything. Recordings are transcribed and discarded; the transcript is retained as the record of what was asked. See Privacy Policy section 4.6
• Public Business Page: A publicly accessible page displaying your business information, photo gallery, and hours of operation at a unique shareable URL
• Service Agreements: Recurring service arrangements with your clients — scheduled visits that become jobs, invoices raised on a billing cycle, membership benefits, term renewal, and per-agreement profitability. Optionally, automatic payment against a card your client has saved and authorized (see Section 5)
• Contractor Directory: An optional listing in the public directory of businesses using SMG Tools, searchable by service category and area. Free on every plan, and removable at any time (see Section 8.8)
• Lead Capture: A “Request a Quote” form on your public page that captures visitor inquiries and feeds them into your lead management pipeline
• Online Booking: Services and times you publish, offered to a customer on your public page, on a client’s own link, and by the telephone assistant where you have it; a booking is a client, a job and a visit on your calendar, made instantly or held for your confirmation, optionally with your diagnostic fee paid as a deposit; on the services you mark repeatable, a customer can ask for the visit to repeat, which always waits for your confirmation. See Section 8.10
• Visits That Repeat & Work Due Again: A visit set to repeat on a rule you choose, each visit a job of its own made a set number of days ahead, its times held from online booking; how often each kind of work usually comes back, the clients due again for it, and, where you switch it on, an email reminding each one, in your name, the days before you choose. Due dates are worked out from your own records and are estimates, not commitments; the reminder is a message from your business, so its words are your responsibility as any message your account sends is; and because it asks for new work, the Service adds what commercial-email law asks of it — that it says what it is, your postal address, and a link that stops it — and never texts it (see the Privacy Policy, Section 4.14)
• Public Page Flyer (PDF): A downloadable, printable flyer with your business information and QR code linking to your public page
• Client Hub: A page where your client sees everything they hold with you — what needs their attention, their next visit, their quotes, agreements, invoices and change orders, the jobs you have finished for them with what you shared from each, a job you plan in stages while it is under way — its stages, their visits and its payments, never its tasks, hours or costs — and the documents you share with them. Opened with a link you send them and a code sent to the contact already on their record; there is no account to create and no password. Every document keeps its own link, and the hub never becomes the only way to reach one. It shows each conversation you have had with them on a job and lets them reply, or write on any open job of theirs or one finished in the last ninety days, and lets them pay what they owe in one card payment (see Section 8.9)
• Notes to Clients, and Their Replies: Send a job’s note to your client by email or text, whichever their consent allows, from the job itself. What they write back — by text, or on their hub — lands on the same job as a note from them, and whoever asked is told. A note can also name a teammate, who is emailed and whose reading of it is recorded; and For you lists what is waiting on each person across the jobs they can see (see Sections 8.5 and 8.9)

3. Account Registration

To use certain features of the Service, you must create an account. When you create an account:

• You must provide accurate, current, and complete information
• You are responsible for maintaining the confidentiality of your account credentials — a password, a linked Google or Microsoft account, or a passkey on a device you control
• You are responsible for all activities that occur under your account
• You must notify us immediately of any unauthorized use of your account
• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account

We reserve the right to suspend or terminate accounts that violate these Terms or for any other reason at our discretion.

3.1 Team Members

On the Crew and Scale plans, the owner of a business may invite other people to it by email. An invited person creates their own sign-in, accepts these Terms for themselves, and becomes a member of that business with the role the owner chose. A role decides what the member can see and what they can change: a Manager, who can do everything the owner can except manage billing, organization settings and the team itself; a Dispatcher, Estimator, Bookkeeper or Crew lead, each reaching the part of the business its name says; a Field worker, who sees only what is theirs; or, on the Scale plan, a role the owner builds from the same list. A person belongs to exactly one business at a time.

• The owner decides who is invited and with what role — including who sees the business’s prices and costs and who sees its bank transactions, which a Bookkeeper does — and is responsible for what those people do in the Service on the business’s behalf
• The owner may change a member’s role or remove a member at any time. Removal ends that person’s access to the business immediately; everything they created stays with the business, attributed to them
• Each member is responsible for their own sign-in credentials, as in Sections 3 and 3.2, and remains bound by these Terms for their own account after they leave a business
• Only the owner can change the business’s subscription, export its data, or close its account. There is exactly one owner per business
• The owner may hand the business over to someone else — a member or anyone by email — who becomes its owner only by accepting, within seven days. When they accept, the payment, bank and accounting connections the previous owner made with their own sign-ins end and the new owner makes their own; the subscription stays with the business and bills the new owner; and the previous owner stays on as a Manager or leaves, which deletes their account, as they chose when offering it. From then on the new owner is the owner for every purpose in these Terms

3.2 Ways to Sign In, and Passkeys

An account may sign in with a password, with a linked Google or Microsoft account, or with a passkey — a credential held on your phone, computer or security key and unlocked there by your face, fingerprint or PIN. A passkey is optional on every plan. What the Service holds about one is described in the Privacy Policy, Section 4.15.

• An account must always keep at least one way in. The Service refuses to remove the last one, whether it is a password, a linked account or a passkey
• A passkey on a device that is shared, lost or no longer yours is yours to remove, from your Security page, without delay. A person who can unlock that device can sign in as you until you do
• A person invited to a business may join with a passkey and never set a password. If they lose the device, the owner of the business sends them a new invitation from the Team page; accepting it on a new device sets up a passkey there and switches off every passkey the account held before. A business’s owner always keeps a password, because the owner is who recovers everyone else
• A passkey sign-in counts as a second factor: no code is asked after it
• A Google or Microsoft account reaches an account that already uses its email address only when Google or Microsoft confirms the address belongs to it. Otherwise you sign in the way you usually do and connect the account from your Security page

3.3 Where You Are Signed In, and a Business’s Sign-In Requirement

Your Security page lists every device holding a session on your account and lets you 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. The Service emails the address on your account when it signs in from a device it has not seen, and that email cannot be turned off. What is kept about a session is described in the Privacy Policy, Section 4.16.

• The owner of a business may require every member of it to sign in with a second factor — a password (whose sign-in always carries an emailed code), an email code, an authenticator app, or a passkey — or, more strictly, with an authenticator app or a passkey. The requirement applies to the owner too, and the Service will not let the owner switch it on, or raise it, before the owner meets it
• A member who does not meet the requirement can still sign in and reach their own Security page, where the requirement is met, and cannot reach the business’s data until they have. The Service checks this on every request, not only at sign-in, so a member who is signed in when the requirement is switched on is asked at their next request. Nothing the member set up is removed by the requirement, and lowering or removing it opens the business to every member again at once
• The owner can see, on the Team page, whether each member meets the requirement and what kind of factor they hold, and can send a member a reminder by email. The owner cannot see a member’s codes, secrets or keys, or the devices a member is signed in on
• An invitation sent while a requirement is in force says what will be asked of the invited person’s sign-in

3.4 Company Sign-In

On the Scale plan, the owner of a business may prove the company’s domain with a record in its DNS, connect the company’s Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace to it, let people from the company ask to join, and require everyone whose sign-in address is on the domain to sign in only through the company. What is kept is described in the Privacy Policy, Section 4.22.

• The company’s directory and its administration are the company’s. Who it lets sign in, its passwords and two-step rules, which accounts it switches off, and whether it is available are decided and run by the company and by Microsoft or Google, not by the Service. The Service acts on their answer and is not responsible for it
• The owner may add only a domain the company controls. A domain belongs to one business at a time; a domain another business proved first is refused, and the Service will not say whose it is
• Nobody joins a business by asking: the owner approves each person, with a role, through an invitation, and an approval follows the seat rules of Section 4
• The owner keeps a way in of their own that does not go through the company — a passkey, or an authenticator app with a password — and the Service will not let the requirement be switched on before the owner has one. People whose sign-in address is not on the domain sign in as before
• A session begun through the company is asked again every twelve hours, so somebody the company switches off is out of the Service within a working day; removing a member on the Team page ends their access at once. Switching the requirement off restores every other way in at once
• A business that leaves the Scale plan keeps the requirement in force until its owner switches it off, which remains possible; nothing else about company sign-in can be changed until the business is on Scale again

4. Subscription Plans and Pricing

4.1 Current Plans

SMG Tools offers the following subscription tiers:

• Starter (Free): No monthly fee. Everything that runs on our own systems is included: job management, invoicing with sales tax by jurisdiction, client management, expense, time and mileage tracking, calendar and appointments with email reminders and digests, automations that email your clients, Margin Intelligence with at-risk alerts and labor efficiency, recurring revenue reporting, equipment records and assignment, inventory in your shops and vans, purchasing from your suppliers with every bill checked against its order, site measurements typed and priced onto proposals, quarterly tax reminders, a public business page with lead capture, PDF flyer and photo gallery (up to 5 photos), 1 GB of storage for the files your business keeps (see Section 4.3), and an inbound lead address other software may post a lead to. Transaction fees apply when you receive payments through Stripe (see Section 4.5).
• Professional: $49/month. Includes everything in Starter plus the removal of the $1.00 minimum transaction fee, and the capabilities that run on a third-party service billed per use: receipt OCR scanning and reading a supplier’s bill from a photo or PDF, address autocomplete, route mileage calculation and service zones, job-site weather snapshots, measuring sites on satellite imagery with roof data and the site picture, AI-powered proposal tools, the voice assistant, describing your own automation in your own words, text messages to your clients, and bank account connections; and what other software drives: API keys and the public API, webhooks, the Zapier app, accounting sync with QuickBooks Online or Xero, and the Thumbtack connection. Professional also includes 25 GB of storage. The rule is stated plainly: a capability is Professional when a vendor bills us for each use of it, or when it lets other software work your account, and on every plan otherwise. On Starter, your keys and webhooks are kept and paused, and work again when your plan includes them.
• Crew: $99/month. Everything in Professional plus multi-user access to your business: 5 office users included (the owner and everyone whose role works in the office, each counted as a seat, including seats held by unanswered invitations) and an unlimited number of field workers and crew leads, who are never counted. Additional office users are $25/month each. Crew includes 100 GB of storage.
• Scale: $299/month. Everything in Crew, with 15 office users included, additional office users at $20/month each, larger monthly allowances of AI use, receipt scans and connected bank accounts, and 500 GB of storage. Scale also includes help setting up — your records brought in from the files your previous product exports, your office users invited, and a session with your crew — and priority support by email, which means your emails are answered before others’; a reply time is a target, not a guarantee of resolution. Scale includes no tool that Crew does not; beyond Crew, it lets the owner build the business’s own roles.

An additional office user is charged from the day it is added, prorated for the rest of the billing period, and is removed at the end of a billing period; no partial period is refunded. If your plan changes to one with fewer office seats than you are using, nobody is removed and nothing anyone made is deleted: the people beyond the new plan’s seats are paused, and cannot sign in until the plan covers them again. Seats are covered in this order: the owner first, then field workers and crew leads where the plan includes them, then everyone else whose role works in the office, longest-standing first.

Pricing, features, and availability may change at any time. We will communicate material pricing changes to existing subscribers at least 30 days in advance.

We may also provide a plan, a limit or an add-on to a business at no charge — for a pilot, a partnership or a test account, for instance — until a date we set or until we end it. Your Billing page says what is provided by SMG Tools and until when. When it ends, your account has the plan you pay for, or Starter, and what that plan includes. Providing something at no charge never cancels a subscription you hold: that subscription is billed as usual until you cancel it.

4.2 Feature Availability

Features described in this document or elsewhere are subject to change, modification, or removal at any time. We do not guarantee that any specific feature will be available, will continue to be available, or will function in any particular way. New features may be added to paid tiers only.

4.3 Usage Limits

We may impose usage limits on the Service at any time, including but not limited to:

• File storage capacity and individual file size limits
• Number of clients, jobs, invoices, or other records
• Number of connected bank accounts
• Number of receipt OCR scans per billing period
• AI token usage per billing period
• Number of address autocomplete lookups
• API request rates and data export frequency
• Email or notification sending limits

Users who exceed reasonable usage limits may be required to upgrade to a paid plan, reduce usage, or may have their access restricted. We reserve the right to define and enforce usage limits without prior notice.

Storage. Each plan includes a storage allowance for the files your business keeps in the Service: 1 GB on Starter, 25 GB on Professional, 100 GB on Crew and 500 GB on Scale, or a larger figure we have set for your business, which your Billing page shows. The allowance is the whole business’s, shared by everyone in it:

• Every file your business uploads counts against it at the size we store it — job photos, documents, receipts, supplier bills, photos of units, equipment and inspections, the public page gallery, the logo and team headshots, and files your clients send you once they pass their scan. What the Service produces for you, such as a signed PDF, a report or a data export, does not count, and neither does a person’s own profile picture
• The account owner is told in the Service and by email when the business has used 80% of its allowance, and again when it is full
• When the allowance is full, new uploads are refused until the business removes files or its allowance is raised. Nothing already kept is removed or made unreadable, and the rest of the Service keeps working. The owner may ask us for more by email, from the Service
• A file you remove is deleted from storage and cannot be recovered, by you or by us. A record it was on — a job, a document, an expense, a bill — is kept and shows that a file was removed, by whom and when
• We may change a plan’s allowance: a larger one applies at once, and a smaller one applies only from your first renewal at least 30 days after we tell the account owner by email. A smaller allowance never deletes a file; it stops new uploads until the business is under it

4.4 Transaction Fees

Your client pays the invoice amount and nothing more. Nothing is added to their charge for card processing or for us. The cost of accepting the card comes out of your side of the payment, the way card acceptance has always worked — so a $150 invoice is a $150 charge, and what varies is what reaches your account. The one thing that can make the charge larger than the invoice is a tip your client chooses to add (Section 5), which is theirs to add and yours to keep.

You are the merchant. Every payment your client makes through the Service is a charge on your own Stripe account, made in your business’s name. Two fees come out of each payment before it settles to you:

• SMG Tools service fee — 0.25% of the amount charged, with a minimum of $1.00 per transaction, which Stripe takes from the payment and pays to us. The minimum is waived on the Professional plan, which is what makes that plan pay for itself for a business billing steadily
• Stripe’s processing fee — charged to you by Stripe. Stripe charges its fee to your Stripe account at your Stripe rate; for U.S. cards its published rate is currently 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction. We do not set, collect or mark up Stripe’s fee, and it changes when Stripe changes it. The worked examples below use Stripe’s published rate

Stripe’s other fees are Stripe’s to charge you as well — its fee on a disputed payment, on a bank payment that fails or is returned, and on a card it charges more to accept, such as one issued abroad. Our service fee is not returned when a payment is refunded or disputed, whatever the outcome.

Both are calculated on the full amount charged — neither is applied to what is left after the other, so the order they are taken in makes no difference. Amounts are rounded up to the nearest cent. Online payment requires a balance of at least $5.00. Where a client adds a tip, our service fee is calculated on the invoice amount alone and card processing on the invoice and the tip together: a $150 invoice with a $20 tip on the Starter plan is a $170 charge, a $1.00 service fee, $5.23 of card processing, and $163.77 to you.

A payment from your client’s bank account (ACH, where you use Bank payments) carries the same service fee. In place of the card fee, Stripe charges your Stripe account its ACH fee — at its published rate currently 0.8% of the amount charged, never more than $5.00, and $1.50 when Stripe checks the account instantly. A bank payment is paid when the bank settles it, usually within a few business days; until then the invoice reads as processing and is not treated as overdue. If the bank does not settle it, or returns it after it settled, the payment does not count and the balance is owed again. A bank payment can only be refunded in full.

Worked examples

The extremes are worth understanding. On the smallest invoice that can be paid online, the two flat amounts — our $1.00 minimum and Stripe’s $0.30 — are most of the fee, and 29% of a $5.00 invoice never reaches you. That is why the $5.00 floor exists at all, and why small balances are better collected in cash or rolled into the next invoice. As the invoice grows, the flat amounts stop mattering and the cost settles at roughly 3.2%, where it stays however large the invoice becomes.

The $1.00 minimum is what the Professional plan removes, and it only bites below about $400 — above that, 0.25% is more than a dollar and both plans cost the same. That is also why the plan pays for itself on volume rather than on any single payment.

These fees apply to card payments taken through the Service. Payments you collect another way — cash, check, bank transfer — and record against an invoice manually carry no fee from us.

4.5 Price Changes

We reserve the right to modify pricing, fees, and subscription terms at any time. For existing users, changes to subscription pricing will be communicated at least 30 days in advance. Transaction fee changes and terms for new users may take effect immediately without prior notice.

5. Payment Processing

Payment processing is provided by Stripe, Inc. By using payment features, you agree to:

• Stripe's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy
• Provide accurate business and banking information for payouts
• Comply with all applicable laws regarding payment collection and tax obligations
• Accept responsibility for chargebacks, disputes, and refunds with your clients. Each payment is your own charge, so its dispute is yours: when a client’s bank disputes a card payment, Stripe takes the disputed amount from your Stripe balance while the bank decides and charges you its dispute fee, and you answer the dispute in your own Stripe Dashboard. We tell you of it, with the bank’s reason and its deadline, and record the outcome: if the bank finds for you Stripe returns the amount to you, and if it finds for the cardholder the payment is voided and the invoice shows the balance owed again. A payment taken before October 22, 2026 was made on our Stripe account, and its dispute is answered with the evidence you send us

SMG Tools is not responsible for payment processing errors, delays, or failures caused by Stripe or banking institutions.

Tips. You may choose to ask a client for a tip when they pay an invoice online; nobody is asked unless you switch it on. A tip the client adds is charged with the invoice, on the same card charge, and belongs to you: it is recorded as income of your business against the job, separately from the invoice, which is paid by the invoice amount alone. Our service fee in Section 4.4 is not taken on a tip; Stripe’s fee applies to the whole charge, as Stripe charges it. A tip is between you and your client — how it is shared with the people who did the work, and any tax on it, are yours to handle. If the client’s bank disputes the payment, the tip is taken back with it while the bank decides and returned with it if the bank finds for you.

Refunds. The owner of your business may refund a card payment, in full or in part, from its invoice. The refund is returned to your client’s card from your Stripe balance. Neither Stripe’s fee nor our service fee in Section 4.4 on the original payment is returned, as Stripe keeps its own. A refund is money given back, not a bill reopened: the invoice stays paid and shows the refund, and nothing asks your client to pay again. A refund however it was made — including one we make at your request — is recorded against the payment it refunds. A payment under dispute cannot be refunded while the bank decides.

Payouts. We record each payout Stripe makes to your bank as Stripe reports it, with the payments, refunds, disputes and fees it carried, so you can match what arrived to the work that earned it. Stripe’s own records decide what was paid out and when; ours are a copy of them.

We never receive, see, or store your client’s card number, expiry date, or security code. Card details are entered on a page hosted by Stripe. Where a client has authorized automatic payment for a service agreement, what we hold is a reference issued by Stripe together with the card’s brand and last four digits — enough to show which card is on file, and not enough to use anywhere else.

5.1 Saved Payment Methods and Automatic Payments

A client may authorize their card to be charged automatically for the invoices raised by a service agreement. The following applies:

• Only the client can save a card. They do so from their own agreement link, on a page hosted by Stripe. You cannot enter a card on your client’s behalf, and neither can we
• Authorizing automatic payment is a separate act from signing the agreement, recorded separately, with its own date. A signature on a service commitment is not consent to unattended charges
• The saved card is used only for the invoices of the agreement it was saved against. It is never available for other charges, other agreements, or other businesses
• A client may remove their saved card at any time, from the same link, without contacting you and without ending the agreement. Their invoices are then sent to be paid the ordinary way
• Every charge attempt is recorded and visible to you, including failures and the reason for them. A failed charge is retried on a defined schedule, and both you and your client are notified
• A failed payment never cancels an invoice. The amount remains owed. After repeated failures the agreement pauses itself and you are both told
• Automatic payment is available on every plan. It requires an active Stripe connection — a business that cannot take card payments cannot take them automatically either
• An automatic charge is the invoice amount, exactly as it would be if the client paid it by hand. Nothing is added to what your client is charged; the transaction fees in section 4.4 come out of your side of the payment either way
• Invoices below $5.00 are not charged automatically. On a balance that small the flat parts of the fees are most of what would reach you, so the amount stays owed and can be paid another way or rolled into the next invoice

5.2 The Voice Assistant

The Service can act on things you say out loud. What it produces is a proposal for you to approve, never an instruction it carries out on its own.

• Nothing is written until you confirm it on screen. The assistant shows you what it heard, what it intends to do, and every value it filled in, and does nothing until you press the button. There is no setting that skips this step
• Your confirmation is what authorizes the action, and you are responsible for what you confirm — exactly as you would be for something you typed. Read the card before you approve it, particularly the client or job it names
• Everything it produces is a draft. A proposal or change order started by voice is a draft proposal or change order, subject to the same review before it reaches anybody
• The assistant cannot send, charge, delete, void, archive, or change your settings, billing, users or bank connections — with two exceptions: it can add and change your job types and the services customers can book. Everything else in that list is deliberately outside what it can do at all, not merely behind a confirmation
• A bookable service it adds or changes is live as soon as you confirm it. If online booking is on, customers can book it, at the price on the card, from that moment; there is no draft. The card says so before you confirm, and you are responsible for the service and its price exactly as if you had entered them on the settings page
• It cannot do anything you could not do yourself. It acts as you, within your own organization, through the same rules the rest of the Service uses
• Speech recognition is imperfect, particularly with names, addresses and figures. The confirmation card exists so a mis-heard word costs you a correction rather than a wrong record
• Voice requires a Professional subscription and uses the same monthly AI allowance as the other AI features. Working out what you meant consumes allowance whether or not you go on to confirm the result; confirming costs nothing further

5.3 Service Agreements and Automatic Renewal

A service agreement is a contract between you and your client. SMG Tools provides the tools to write, send, sign, schedule, bill and renew it; we are not a party to it, and we do not guarantee its enforceability. You are responsible for its terms, its price, and for having the authority to bill your client for it.

Where an agreement renews automatically, the Service is built to disclose that before it happens:

• The renewal terms — what renews, when, for how long, at what price, and how to cancel — are shown to the client next to the signature, and stored with what they signed
• The client’s acknowledgment of automatic renewal is recorded separately from their signature on the agreement
• Before each renewal takes effect, the client is emailed the renewal date and the price, including when the price has changed. A material increase is stated plainly rather than shown only as a new total
• The client can cancel from the same link they signed on, in the same number of steps
• A price you schedule for a future term never changes the term the client is currently in

Several jurisdictions regulate automatic renewal, and the obligations fall on you as the business contracting with your client. The disclosures above are provided so you can meet them; they are not legal advice, and it remains your responsibility to confirm that your agreements comply with the automatic-renewal, cancellation, and consumer-protection laws that apply where you and your client are.

6. Bank Account Integration (Plaid)

Bank account integration is powered by Plaid, Inc. ("Plaid"). By connecting your bank account(s), you agree to the following:

6.1 Authorization

By connecting your bank account through Plaid, you:

• Authorize Plaid to access your bank account information on your behalf, including account details, balances, and transaction history
• Authorize us to receive and store account information and transaction data from Plaid for the purposes described in these Terms and our Privacy Policy
• Acknowledge that Plaid is acting as your agent to retrieve information from your financial institution
• Agree to Plaid's End User Privacy Policy

6.2 Data Access and Use

When you connect a bank account, we access and use your data to:

• Import transactions for expense tracking and categorization
• Reconcile transactions with your recorded expenses and income
• Provide financial summaries and job profitability insights
• Help you distinguish business and personal transactions

We do not access your bank login credentials. Those are handled securely by Plaid and not shared with us.

6.3 Your Responsibilities

When using bank account integration, you agree to:

• Connect only accounts that you own or have legal authority to access
• Ensure your bank account credentials are accurate and up to date
• Review imported transactions for accuracy before relying on them for business decisions
• Notify us if you suspect unauthorized access to your connected accounts
• Not use the bank integration feature for any fraudulent, illegal, or unauthorized purpose

6.4 Limitations and Disclaimers

You acknowledge and agree that:

• Bank connectivity depends on your financial institution's availability and compatibility with Plaid
• Transaction data may be delayed, incomplete, or occasionally inaccurate due to bank or Plaid limitations
• We are not responsible for errors, outages, or disruptions caused by your bank or Plaid
• Some banks may require periodic re-authentication to maintain the connection
• Transaction categorization is automated and may require manual review and correction
• Imported data should be verified before use for tax, accounting, or other critical purposes

6.5 Disconnecting Your Account

You may disconnect your bank account at any time through your SMG Tools account settings. Upon disconnection:

• We will stop receiving new transaction data from that account
• Previously imported transactions will remain in your account for your business records
• To fully revoke Plaid's access, you may also need to disconnect through your bank's connected apps settings or visit Plaid Portal

6.6 Plaid's Terms

Your use of bank account integration is also subject to Plaid's terms and policies. By using this feature, you acknowledge that you have reviewed and agree to:

• Plaid End User Privacy Policy
• Plaid End User Services Agreement

In the event of a conflict between our Terms and Plaid's terms regarding the Plaid services, Plaid's terms shall govern with respect to Plaid's services.

7. AI-Assisted Features

Certain features of the Service use artificial intelligence ("AI") to assist with tasks such as proposal drafting, Smart Block content generation, milestone suggestions, suggesting the lines of a proposal’s options, drafting a job’s plan, proposal quality auditing, summarizing figures your own reports have computed when you ask how your business has done, and building a report from your description of it or explaining one in a paragraph. These features are powered by Azure OpenAI Service. By using AI features, you acknowledge and agree to the following:

7.1 AI Content Is Suggestive Only

• All AI-generated content is provided as a starting point and suggestion only
• You are solely responsible for reviewing, editing, and approving all AI-generated content before use
• AI suggestions do not constitute legal, financial, contractual, or professional advice
• You should not rely on AI output for critical business, legal, or financial decisions without independent verification

7.1a Your Own Figures Are Not AI Content

Where the Service answers a question about your business, the figures in that answer are computed by the Service from the records you entered — by the same reports you can open yourself — and are not AI-generated content for the purposes of this Section 7. What AI produces there is the summary written over those figures, and any sentence in it. Section 7.1 and Section 7.2 apply to that summary.

Those figures remain estimates derived from what you recorded, and Section 7.11 continues to apply to them: they are for running and costing your own work, and are not accounting, tax or professional advice.

7.2 No Warranty on AI Output

AI-generated content is provided "AS IS" without any warranty of any kind. We do not guarantee that AI-generated content is accurate, complete, appropriate, legally compliant, or fit for any particular purpose. AI models may produce content that is incorrect, incomplete, misleading, or inappropriate for your specific situation.

7.3 Your Responsibility

• You are fully responsible for any content you use, send, or publish that was generated or suggested by AI features
• Review all AI-generated proposals, terms, and content before sending to clients
• A concept of the finished work is a picture drawn by AI, not a representation of the work you will do. It reaches your client only if you put it on a proposal, where the Service labels it as made by AI and says the finished work will differ; you are responsible for what the proposal and the work itself include
• Consult with appropriate professionals (legal, accounting, etc.) for content that may have legal or financial implications
• Do not include sensitive personal information in AI prompts or shorthand notes

7.4 Limitation of Liability for AI Content

MECCSoft LLC and SMG Tools are not liable for any damages, losses, claims, or expenses arising from your use of AI-generated content, including but not limited to:

• Incorrect or misleading information in AI suggestions
• Client disputes arising from AI-generated proposal content
• Legal issues related to AI-generated terms or language
• Business decisions made based on AI output
• Any content you send to clients without adequate review

7.5 Third-Party AI Services

AI features are powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI Service. Your use of AI features is also subject to Microsoft's acceptable use policies. We may change AI service providers at any time without notice. Your prompts and shorthand notes may be transmitted to AI service providers for processing but are not retained by those providers after processing.

7.6 Usage Limits

AI features are subject to monthly token limits based on your subscription tier. Usage resets at the start of each billing period. We may change a plan’s limits: a higher limit applies at once, and a lower one applies only from your first renewal at least 30 days after we tell the account owner by email. Where you switch on a summary that is produced on a schedule rather than on request — the monthly business summary — it consumes that same allowance each time it runs, and you can switch it off at any time from your notification settings.

7.7 Scope & Risk Auditor Disclaimer

The Scope & Risk Auditor feature analyzes your proposals for potential scope gaps, missing terms, and business risk indicators. This is not legal review, legal advice, or a substitute for consultation with a licensed attorney.

• Risk identification and suggestions are automated observations, not legal determinations
• The auditor may miss risks, identify non-issues as risks, or provide suggestions that don't apply to your jurisdiction
• Contract recommendations do not account for local, state, or industry-specific legal requirements
• You are solely responsible for ensuring your proposals and contracts comply with all applicable laws and regulations
• Always consult with a qualified attorney for contracts involving significant financial obligations, liability concerns, or legal compliance requirements
• We accept no liability for disputes, losses, or legal issues arising from reliance on Scope & Risk Auditor suggestions

7.8 Margin Intelligence Disclaimer

Margin Intelligence features, including at-risk job alerts, labor forecasts, labor efficiency figures, expense variance tracking, and change order impact calculations, and the Price Book’s margins, recommended prices, win rates and estimated-against-actual margins, are provided to help you monitor job profitability and set your prices. What you charge is always your decision. These calculations are estimates based on the data you provide and are not guarantees of actual financial performance.

• Margin calculations are based solely on the baseline costs, expenses, time entries, and other data you enter into the system
• Calculations use simple formulas: margin drift = (current margin % - baseline margin %), variance = (actual expenses - baseline costs), and similar arithmetic operations on your input data
• At-risk alerts and forecasts are automated indicators based on threshold comparisons — they are not predictions of actual outcomes
• The accuracy of all Margin Intelligence features depends entirely on the accuracy and completeness of the data you provide
• We do not verify the accuracy of your input data, including cost estimates, labor rates, actual expenses, or time entries
• Labor forecasts use your logged time entries and estimated remaining hours — actual labor costs may vary significantly
• Labor efficiency compares the hours estimated for a job against the hours logged against it. It is arithmetic on your own figures, and it is only as meaningful as the estimate you entered — an efficiency figure can as easily mean the estimate was wrong as that the work was slow
• Labor efficiency describes work, not people. Where more than one person worked a job, the job’s efficiency figure belongs to all of them and to none of them individually. The Service does not calculate a performance, productivity or efficiency score for any individual, and the figures it does show must not be treated as one
• A person’s labor record lists the jobs they logged hours against together with each job’s own estimate. It attributes no share of any overrun to them, and no conclusion about an individual’s performance follows from it
• You are solely responsible for any employment, personnel, compensation or disciplinary decision you make, and for ensuring that any such decision complies with the law that applies to you. These figures are not a lawful or sufficient basis for one on their own
• Work logged against a job that carries no labor estimate produces no efficiency figure at all, because there is nothing to compare it against
• Change order impact calculations show potential margin effects based on current data — actual impacts depend on job execution
• A calculator’s quantities are estimates for you to check. A calculator works out what a job takes from the rules and figures you, a ready-made calculator or the assistant gave it; the free calculators on our website work the same way. It does not size a beam, a footing, an electrical service or a furnace, nothing in it says that anything meets a building code, and a waste figure it suggests is drawn only from what your own jobs recorded. Check every quantity against the job, and your local code where it matters, before you quote or order
• Margin Intelligence is not financial advice and should not be your sole basis for business decisions
• You are responsible for verifying calculations and consulting with appropriate professionals for significant financial decisions
• We accept no liability for business losses, missed opportunities, or financial harm arising from reliance on Margin Intelligence calculations

7.9 Electronic Signatures

SMG Tools provides electronic signature functionality for proposals and change orders. By using or facilitating e-signatures through the Service:

• Electronic signatures are intended to comply with the Electronic Signatures in Global and National Commerce Act (E-SIGN Act) and the Uniform Electronic Transactions Act (UETA)
• Signers must provide explicit consent via a required checkbox acknowledging that their electronic signature carries the same legal weight as a handwritten signature
• The Service records an audit trail for each signature, including timestamp, IP address, and user agent
• At the time of signing, an immutable PDF copy of the signed document is generated and stored. This PDF represents the document as it existed at the moment of signing and is not modified thereafter
• Where a proposal offers options or extras, the signature is for the option and extras the signer chose, at the price shown to them, and the record and the signed PDF say which (Section 8.12)
• SMG Tools is a technology platform that facilitates e-signatures — we do not provide legal advice and make no guarantees regarding the legal enforceability of any specific signed document
• You are responsible for ensuring that your proposals, change orders, and contract terms comply with all applicable laws and regulations in your jurisdiction
• Certain types of documents (e.g., wills, family law agreements, court orders) may not be legally valid with electronic signatures under applicable law — consult a qualified attorney if you are unsure
• We are not liable for disputes arising from the content, terms, or enforceability of documents signed through the Service

7.10 Receipt OCR Scanning

Receipt OCR (Optical Character Recognition) scanning uses Microsoft Azure AI Document Intelligence to extract information from receipt images. By using receipt OCR features:

• You understand that OCR-extracted data (vendor, date, amount) is a suggestion and requires your review before saving
• You are responsible for verifying the accuracy of extracted data before use
• OCR accuracy may vary based on receipt quality, format, and legibility
• Receipt images are transmitted to Microsoft Azure for processing but are not retained after analysis
• We do not guarantee 100% accuracy of OCR extraction
• Monthly usage limits apply to OCR scans; limits reset at the start of each billing period
• A supplier’s bill read from a photo or PDF is read the same way and counts as a scan; what it returns — the supplier, numbers, dates, lines, tax and total — is matched to your orders as a suggestion you check and correct before the bill is kept

7.11 Not Tax, Accounting, or Financial Advice

SMG Tools is operational business software designed to help you track jobs, expenses, mileage, payments, and profitability. SMG Tools is not tax software, accounting software, or a substitute for professional advice.

Features such as expense tracking, mileage tracking, receipt storage, deductible expense flags, and financial summaries are provided for organizational and record-keeping purposes only. These features are intended to help you maintain organized records that you can provide to your accountant or tax professional.

By using these features, you acknowledge that:

• SMG Tools does not provide tax, legal, or accounting advice
• You are solely responsible for your own tax compliance and filings
• Expense categories, mileage records, and deductible flags are for your organizational convenience — we make no determination about actual tax deductibility
• Mileage tracking is for record-keeping only — consult your tax professional for applicable mileage deduction rates and methods
• Distance calculations provided by the Service are estimates from third-party mapping services (Google Maps Platform) — actual driving distances may vary based on route taken, road conditions, and other factors. You should verify mileage for tax purposes.
• The accounting sync sends your records as you entered them, into the accounts you confirmed. It does not reconcile your books, decide whether an account is the right one for a record, or replace your bookkeeper (see Section 8.14)
• Equipment depreciation, cost per mile or hour, and utilization figures are estimates from the purchase price, expected life, salvage value, readings and expenses you entered. They are not a depreciation schedule for tax purposes, make no determination about what you may deduct or how, and are not tax advice (see Section 7.13)
• Inventory values, the year’s beginning and ending inventory, and what a count found missing are worked out from the counts, receipts, moves and parts used your people recorded, at the average cost those records give. They are not a valuation, an audit or a cost of goods sold calculation, make no determination about what you must report or how, and are not tax advice (see Section 7.18)
• What you owe your suppliers, a part’s price history, price creep and the costs a supplier’s bill moves are worked out from the orders, receipts, bills and payments your people recorded. They are not an accounts payable ledger, an audit or accounting advice (see Section 7.21)
• Sales tax rates, which lines are taxable, a client’s exemption certificate and the sales tax report are your own records. You enter the rates you registered to collect and decide what is taxable; SMG Tools does not look up rates, decide what is taxable where, verify an exemption certificate, file a sales tax return or pay any state, county or city. The tax billed, collected, remitted and owed that it works out are calculations from what you recorded, not a return and not tax advice; check them against your return before you file it
• You should consult a qualified accountant or tax professional for tax-related decisions
• We are not responsible for any tax penalties, missed deductions, or financial losses resulting from your use of the Service

7.12 The Assistant That Answers Your Telephone

The call assistant is a paid add-on. When you switch it on, an automated assistant answers calls to a number you leased through SMG Tools or forwarded to one, and writes down what the caller wanted for your staff to act on.

By using it, you acknowledge that:

• It announces itself as an assistant on every call, before it asks the caller anything. This is not configurable and cannot be switched off.
• It books only what you published, and says only the price you published. Where you have switched online booking on, the assistant may offer a caller the times your booking page would show and book a visit against one, exactly as your page would — instantly, or held for your confirmation according to your setting. A held booking commits nobody until you confirm it, and the assistant never tells a caller a held time is booked. The only price it will state is one you yourself published for that service, in the words you published it in. It makes no other offer, quote or estimate, and no statement it makes beyond those creates a contract between you and a caller. A service that takes a deposit is taken down as a request; the assistant takes no payment.
• It may recognize a returning caller by telephone number, where you have left that on: a caller whose number matches exactly one of your clients is greeted by first name and asked whether the visit is at the address on file, without the address being read out. You can switch recognition off on the Phone Assistant’s page, under Tools.
• SMG Tools does not record calls. No audio is captured or kept. The assistant produces a written transcript of the conversation, which is your data and is stored on your organization’s records.
• It is automated and will sometimes mishear, miss detail, or fail to capture a request. Reviewing what it wrote down, and calling people back, remains yours to do.
• The assistant answers on your behalf. What you must tell your callers about it, and any call monitoring or notification rules that apply where you operate, are your responsibility to comply with.
• Calls are carried by Twilio and interpreted by Azure OpenAI. See our Privacy Policy section 4.13 and our Subprocessors page.

The add-on is billed monthly at a flat price regardless of how many calls are answered, alongside your plan, and can be cancelled from Billing at any time. It continues until the end of the period you have paid for. The number is your business’s own, included at no charge, and if you text your customers your texts go from it. The phone carriers require a number that texts to be verified first: you complete it through SMG Tools with your legal name and your EIN, or as a sole proprietor without one. Your EIN is passed to Twilio for the carriers’ check and not kept by SMG Tools, and your texts are held, not sent, until the number is approved.

7.13 Equipment Records, Inspections and Costs

The equipment features keep a record of the vehicles, machines and tools your business runs, what your people do with them, and what they cost. They are records, and the following is what a record is and is not:

• Inspection templates and inspection records are Your Content (Section 8.1). The Service ships example checklists — a pre-trip vehicle check, a daily machine check — as a starting point. Which items you inspect, how often, which lines are critical, and what a failed line means for your operation are your decisions, and a template you edit or write is the business’s own
• The Service certifies no vehicle or piece of equipment as compliant with any regulation, standard or inspection regime. A passed inspection is a record that your checklist was completed with the answers your people gave, at the time they gave them. It is not a roadworthiness, safety or regulatory inspection, does not satisfy any legal obligation to inspect, maintain, certify or take equipment out of service, and is not evidence that the thing was safe to use. Out of service is a status on a record: the Service prevents nobody from operating anything
• A reading is what a person wrote down, and a range is what your business typed in. The Service does not measure anything and verifies no number: a reading is a figure one of your people entered, and whether it reads within range or below or above is arithmetic against minimum and maximum values your business chose. Those values are Your Content (Section 8.1) — not a manufacturer specification, a code requirement or an engineering standard, and not checked by us against any of them. A reading inside a range is not a finding that anything is correct, serviceable or safe; a reading outside one is not a finding that anything is faulty. What a number means for the thing it came off, and what to do about it, are your decisions and your people’s judgment
• Depreciation, cost per mile or hour, cost per job and utilization are estimates from the figures you entered — a purchase price, an expected life, a salvage value, meter readings, the expenses you assigned to an item and the time logged against it. They are for costing your own work and are not tax advice, a depreciation schedule, or a basis for any filing (Section 7.11)
• A checkout, an inspection, a meter reading and a measurement reading each record which member of your business did it and when, as a time entry or an arrival does. That is an operational record of your business (Section 8.1), seen by the same people who can see the item, and it stays after the person leaves (see the Privacy Policy, Section 4.2)
• A printed equipment label carries a code that identifies the item only to members of your business who are signed in; scanned by anyone else, it identifies nothing

7.14 Job Checklists and the Report Your Client Receives

The checklist features let your business write down how a kind of work is done and record that it was done. They are records, and the following is what a record is and is not:

• Checklists and their answers are Your Content (Section 8.1). Which steps a kind of work has, which of them are required, what a step asks for, and what a completed one means for your operation are your decisions
• The Service certifies nothing about the work, the property or anything in it. A completed checklist is a record that your people answered the steps your business wrote, at the time they answered them. It is not an inspection, a survey, a safety check, a commissioning certificate or a warranty; it satisfies no legal obligation to inspect, test, certify or report; and it is not evidence that anything was done correctly or that any equipment or premises was safe. The clause in Section 7.13 about a reading and a range applies wherever a checklist step records a number
• A required step is your own rule, and the Service enforces it as one. Refusing to let a job be marked complete is a workflow the Service applies on your behalf; it is not a statement that any work was finished, adequate or compliant. An Owner or Manager may complete a job over unanswered steps by giving a reason, which the Service records — the steps stay unanswered, and nothing about the override represents that they were done
• What your client receives is what you chose to send. A checklist report is generated from the job and sent by you. Which checklists a client may see, which steps are marked internal and therefore absent from their copy, and whether to send it at all are your decisions. A step one of your people adds to a job on site is on the client's copy of a checklist they may see, marked as added on site, unless your business keeps it off; the Service does not review what a report contains, what it omits, or whether it is appropriate to disclose to that recipient. You are responsible for the content of anything you send to your clients (Section 8.2), photographs of their property included
• A checklist answer, and a step or reading added on site, records which member of your business gave or added it and when, as a time entry or an arrival does. That is an operational record of your business (Section 8.1), and it stays after the person leaves (see the Privacy Policy, Section 4.2)

7.15 Setting Up From a Website

During setup you may give us a website address and ask us to read it, so that the Service can propose your settings from what the site says. Section 7 applies to what comes back: it is a suggestion, you review it, and nothing is saved until you confirm it. Three things are specific to this feature.

The Address You Give Us Must Be Yours to Give

We have no way to establish who owns a website and we do not attempt to. By entering an address you confirm that you are entitled to have us fetch and read it— because it is your business’s own site, or because you are authorized to act for whoever it belongs to. You are responsible for that, and for any claim arising from an address you gave us that was not yours.

What the Service reads is material the site publishes openly to any visitor. It does not sign in, does not attempt to reach anything behind a login, and requests no more than a handful of pages on one occasion, when you ask.

We Do Not Warrant What a Website Says

A proposal built from a website is only as good as the website. A site that is out of date, describes work the business no longer does, or lists a town it has stopped covering will produce proposals that say the same. Every proposed value is shown with the words that produced it, for you to check before you accept it, and accepting it is your decision. We do not warrant that anything read from a site is accurate, current, or applicable to your business.

The same applies to a business listing. Where the Service finds a Google listing and confirms it points back to the domain you gave us, what it takes from that listing — including opening hours, which become the hours customers can book you for — is Google’s record and not ours. Review it before you accept it.

The Request Costs Your Allowance

Reading a website uses the AI allowance described in Section 7.6, and it is used whether or not you accept the result — including where the site could not be read, because the request was still made. The remaining balance is shown before you ask.

7.16 Commissions, Pay Rules and Tips to the Crew

Commissions & pay rules works out what the pay rules your business sets say each of your workers earned, from the payments, refunds, tips, hours and assignments recorded in the Service. It is arithmetic on your own figures, not payroll.

• What it shows is what your rules produce from those records as they stood when each amount was earned. We do not verify the payments, hours or assignments it reads, and an amount is only as right as they are
• It calculates and withholds no tax, overtime, minimum wage or tip credit, meets no other wage-and-hour obligation, and pays nobody. You decide what you pay and pay it through your payroll provider or otherwise; the payroll file is one you hand to that provider yourself
• Whether your commission plan, and the way your business shares tips, comply with the law that applies to you is your responsibility — including any law on who may share in tips, on written commission agreements, and on taking back commission when a customer is refunded. Crediting a tip to the workers on a job by their hours is the product’s arithmetic, not advice that the practice is lawful for your business
• The revenue credited to a person is their share, by hours, of what customers paid on the jobs they worked. It describes how a job’s revenue divides by time, not how well anybody worked, and what Section 7.8 says about individual performance and about employment and compensation decisions applies to it

7.17 Text Messages

SMG Tools sends text messages on behalf of the businesses that use the Service, to those businesses’ own customers, about work the customers have asked for: booking confirmations and reminders, notice that a visit has moved, that somebody is on the way, notes and summaries about a job, and the one-time verification codes a customer asks for to sign a document, cancel or move a visit, or open their own records. Which messages are sent, and the consent each needs, is set out in Section 4.8 of our Privacy Policy.

• Each business’s texts go from its own number, which the carriers verify before they deliver them; a verification code goes from SMG Tools’ own
• Message frequency varies with the work booked; a verification code is one text each time the customer asks for one. Message and data rates may apply
• Reply STOP to any message to stop receiving texts, or HELP for help. You can also contact support@smgtools.com
• Carriers are not liable for delayed or undelivered messages
• A business that texts its customers through the Service is responsible for having their consent to receive those texts, and for what any message it writes says

7.18 Inventory, Stock and the Year’s Value

The inventory features keep a record of the parts your business stocks, where they are, and what each job used. They are records, and the following is what a record is and is not:

• Stock is what your people recorded. A quantity is what the counts, receipts, moves, adjustments and parts used your business entered add up to; the Service counts nothing itself, and a place may hold more or fewer than it shows until it is counted. Recording more used than a place holds is allowed, so the work is never stopped by a number
• Costs and values are averages from your own figures. A part’s cost is the average of what your business recorded paying for it, and a place’s worth, a job’s parts cost and the year’s beginning and ending inventory are worked out from it. They are records for your accountant to use, not a valuation, an audit or tax advice (see Section 7.11)
• Suggestions are suggestions. Suggested restock levels, a drafted materials list and a part offered for an invoice are made from your own records — what went, what is booked, what jobs like it used — and change nothing until someone in your business accepts them. We do not guarantee that a suggested level keeps a part in stock or that a drafted list is complete
• A count, a part used, a move and an adjustment each record which member of your business did it and when; and what a count found missing is reported against the person who held a van between counts, read from your own records of who had it. That is an operational record of your business, for your business to use fairly; it is not a finding that anybody took anything
• A fitted unit offered as your client’s equipment carries the serial, install date and manufacturer’s warranty period your business recorded for the part; the warranty is the manufacturer’s, and the Service makes no promise about it

7.19 Site Measurements Are Estimates

Site Intelligence keeps what your business measured at a site and prices proposals from it. A measurement is an estimate, and the following is what that means:

• A size is as good as how it was taken. A typed size is what your people typed; a traced one is worked out from the shape drawn on imagery that may be out of date, may not show what is under trees or eaves, and is not a survey. The Service makes no warranty that any size is exact, and your business checks a measurement before it commits to a price
• Roof data is for quoting. A roof face read from Google’s roof data is Google’s estimate of its area and pitch from imagery whose date and quality are shown with it. It is not an inspection or an insurance-grade roof report, and ridges, hips, valleys and eaves are not measured by it
• Quantities follow your settings; prices are yours. A proposal line’s quantity is worked out from the measurements it was given, converted, sloped where it has a pitch, with the waste your business set on the item; its price is your Price Book’s. A line is a suggestion until someone in your business adds it, and so is every line the assistant drafts
• Google’s imagery is Google’s. Satellite imagery, Street View, roof data and the picture of a site on a proposal come from Google Maps Platform and are shown under Google’s terms; the picture is made each time it is shown and is not stored, and it may be unavailable when Google is

7.20 A Forecast Is Not a Promise

Weather shows Google’s forecast against your visits and reads it against the rules your business sets. The following is what that means:

• The forecast is Google’s. It comes from Google Maps Platform’s weather service, is shown with when it was fetched, and is a forecast — weather can differ from it at the place and hour of a visit. It may be unavailable when Google is, and the last forecast is shown with its time, or none
• A flag is advice. A visit marked at risk is one whose forecast breaks the rules your business set for its kind of work. The Service never moves, cancels or tells a client about a visit on its own; going ahead, moving and what a client is told are your business’s decisions
• The rules are yours. A trade kit’s rules are a starting point, not a statement that work can be done safely or to a product’s label in the weather they allow. Your business sets the rules for its own work, and remains responsible for following any product label, law or manufacturer’s instruction about weather
• What a move costs is worked out, not booked. Idle hours, their cost and the revenue moved are worked out from your visits, your labor rates and your jobs’ prices when a move is made, and change nothing in your pay, prices or books

7.21 Purchasing, Orders and Supplier Bills

Purchasing keeps your business’s orders to its suppliers and checks their bills against them. The following is what the Service does and does not do:

• An order is between you and your supplier. An order emailed from the Service goes to the address your business entered, from our sending address with your business’s name and contact details; whether a supplier receives, accepts, fills or prices it as written is between you and the supplier. An order marked sent was placed by your people another way
• Your controls are yours. The amount over which an order waits for the owner’s approval, and whether and up to what a technician may order at a supplier’s counter, are set by your business; the Service applies them as set, and they are not a guarantee against misuse of your accounts with your suppliers
• The match is a check, not an audit. A bill’s lines are compared with what your business ordered and recorded receiving. Accepting a difference, disputing it, or a difference the records could not show, is your business’s decision; a bill made ready becomes your expenses at what you accepted, and its parts’ cost on your jobs
• Costs follow your bills; prices do not move by themselves. A ready bill updates what a supplier charges you and, unless you pin it, an item’s cost in your Price Book. Items left under your target margin are pointed out; the price you charge changes only when someone in your business changes it
• No money moves. A payment to a supplier recorded in the Service is a record of a payment your business made; the Service pays no supplier
• The assistant drafts and never sends. An order the voice assistant drafts is a draft for your business to check and send

8. Your Content and Data

8.1 Ownership

You retain all rights to the content you create and upload through the Service, including business data, client information, job records, proposals, documents, photos, and other materials ("Your Content"). Content entered by a member of your business is Your Content: it belongs to the business, not to the individual who entered it, and stays with the business when that person leaves.

8.2 License Grant

By using the Service, you grant us a limited, non-exclusive license to store, process, and display Your Content solely for the purpose of providing the Service to you. This includes displaying content you publish on your public business page (such as your business name, description, photos, and contact information) to the general public. This license terminates when you delete Your Content or close your account.

8.3 Public Business Page Content

Content you publish on your public business page — including your business name, description, logo, photos, contact information, and hours of operation — is publicly accessible to anyone on the internet. You are solely responsible for ensuring that:

• You have the right to publish all content on your public page, including photos
• Your public page does not contain misleading, defamatory, or unlawful content
• Any personal information you display (phone, email, address) is information you intend to make public

You may disable your public page or remove content at any time through your organization settings. The “Powered by SMG Tools” attribution displayed on public pages may not be removed or obscured.

8.4 Publishing About the People Who Work for You

You can give a worker a client-facing profile — a photograph, a short description, and their specialties — and switch it on so your clients see it when they are told who is attending their job. That is a disclosure about a person, and it is yours to make. You are solely responsible for ensuring that:

• You have that person’s agreement to show their photograph and description to your clients, where the law where you operate requires it
• The description you write about them is accurate and not misleading about their qualifications
• You switch the profile off when they leave, or when they ask you to

A profile is off until you turn it on, and archiving a worker stops their profile being shown. SMG Tools never publishes a worker profile on your behalf, and never shows one outside your own clients.

8.5 Sharing a Job’s Notes and Photos With Your Client

You can mark an individual note or photograph on a job as one your client may see. A photograph taken on a job can show more than the work — a person, a vehicle, the inside of somebody’s home — and deciding what to send is your judgment. Everything is internal until you share it, one entry at a time, and stopping sharing removes it from what the client is shown from that point on. It cannot recall what they have already read.

You can also send a note to your client from the job. It goes by email or by text according to the consent that client has given you, and it is a message from your business: the same responsibility as any other message your account sends (see the Privacy Policy, Section 4.8), written by a person, on purpose, one note at a time. A sent note is shared as well as delivered, and it cannot be unsent or unshared: a delivered note cannot be undelivered, so the product does not pretend otherwise. What your client writes back is kept on the job as a note from them, is never something you can edit, and is shown to your client on their hub alongside what you sent.

8.6 Data Export

You can download every record we hold for your business at any time from Organization → Your Data. The export is a zip archive holding a single machine-readable JSON file, covering your clients, jobs, quotes, invoices, expenses, workers and settings — including any sections you have switched off in Features, because those records are still yours. The photos, documents, receipts and signed PDFs you keep are not inside the archive: it records each one’s name and where it is kept, and you download the file itself where the Service shows it.

For your protection the export deliberately excludes credentials: password hashes, bank connection tokens, the links your clients use to open their documents and their hub, multi-factor authentication secrets, and passkeys, which belong to a person rather than to the business. Every other record is there. No request to us is required, and there is no charge.

Any one list can also be downloaded as a CSV from Organization → Import & export or from the list’s own page — clients, client units, equipment, materials, job types, bookable services, invoices, time entries and service agreements — honoring the search and filter the page has. The same page brings lists in from a CSV: clients, client units, equipment, materials, job types and bookable services. An import is checked whole before anything is written and refused with the row and the reason when it cannot be; a row that matches a record you already hold is refused rather than merged; and nothing in an imported file grants a client’s consent to be texted, which is theirs to give through the Service (Section 8.5 and the Privacy Policy, Section 4.8). Records of things that happened elsewhere — invoices, payments, hours — are not imported, because here they would be events that never occurred. Import and export are on every plan and free of charge.

8.7 Backups

While we maintain backups for disaster recovery, you are responsible for maintaining your own backups of important business data.

8.8 Contractor Directory Listing

You may list your business in the public Contractor Directory. A listing shows your business name, logo, the city and state of your primary service area, and up to three service categories, and links to your public business page. Nothing about your jobs, clients, or the work you do for them appears there.

• Listing is free on every plan, and it is your choice. 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. There is no paid placement, no promoted position, and no way to bid for a higher spot — listings are ordered alphabetically and all carry equal weight
• You may remove your listing at any time from your Public Page settings. Removal takes effect on the next page load and does not affect your own public business page
• Where you take bookings online, your listing is marked Books online and links to your booking page as well; the mark follows your booking switch and needs nothing else from you
• A listing requires an enabled public page, at least one service category, and at least one service area — without them nobody could find you, and the listing would serve no purpose
• You are responsible for the accuracy of the business name, categories, and service areas you publish, on the same terms as the rest of your public page content
• We may remove a listing that breaches these Terms, and we may discontinue the directory. Neither affects your public business page or your account

8.9 The Link Your Client Uses to See Their Records

Each of your clients has a hub link, which you send them. Holding it is not enough to see anything: before the page shows a name, a document or an amount, whoever opened it must enter a code we send to the email address or telephone number already on that client’s record. The link alone shows only your business name and logo, so a forwarded or bookmarked copy discloses nothing about your client.

• The hub shows only what that client could already see. It is a second route to documents you have already sent them, never a wider view of them. Drafts, voided invoices, your internal notes, your costs and your margins never appear
• For each job you have sent a note about, the hub shows that conversation and takes a reply, and a client may also write on any open job of theirs, or one finished in the last ninety days. Only notes you chose to send appear, with the client’s replies; a note you wrote to yourself, a teammate you named in one, and who at your business has read what are never shown. What the client writes there is kept on the job exactly as a text reply is, and writing never accepts, signs or approves anything
• A finished job shows what you shared from it — the notes and photos you marked for the client — and a document is on the hub only while you share it. Sharing is your judgment, as it is on the invoice (Section 8.5)
• The hub takes one payment: what the client owes, at once. Where they owe on more than one invoice you take by card, they may pay those they choose in a single card payment. It is recorded as a payment on each invoice, each with its own receipt, and the fees of Section 4.4 apply once to the total. If an invoice is paid another way, voided or changed while they are paying, its share is refunded to their card at once and you are told. Each invoice can still be paid by itself from its own link. Nothing is signed on the hub
• Sending the link is your decision, and sending it to the right person is your responsibility. We verify that whoever opens it can receive a code at the contact details on the client’s record — so keeping those details correct is what keeps the check meaningful
• The link does not expire, because a client locked out of their own records has no way back except telephoning you. What protects it is the code, not the link’s lifetime
• Archiving a client stops their hub link working
• The link is excluded from your data export, for the same reason the rest of your clients’ access links are (see Section 8.6)

8.10 Online Booking

You may publish the services a customer can book and the times you take them, and let a customer book a visit from your public page, from the link a client of yours already holds, or through the telephone assistant. A booking made this way is a request for your services on your own terms, between you and the customer. SMG Tools is not a party to it, makes no promise to the customer on your behalf, and is not responsible for whether the work is done, when, or for what.

• You decide what a booking means. Set to Instant, a booking is on your calendar the moment the customer confirms it. Set to Hold, it is reserved and the customer is told you will confirm; you confirm or decline it, and a declined time is released with a message to the customer. A held booking commits you to nothing until you confirm it
• Only what you published is offered. Times come from the hours, windows, notice, horizon and capacity you set, less everything already on your calendar. SMG Tools never invents an available time, and a customer is never shown why a time is not offered
• A deposit is your diagnostic fee, on your terms. You may require a service to be paid for at booking. The fee is invoiced on the job and paid by the customer on Stripe’s hosted page for your connected account, with the transaction fee in Section 4.4 applied as on any invoice; the visit is made only when that payment is recorded. Before paying, the customer is shown the fee, your own deposit policy in the words you wrote, and that the fee is credited against the work if you do it. SMG Tools refunds nothing automatically and holds no money of yours. What happens to a deposit when a booking is cancelled or moved is governed by your stated policy, and is yours to carry out through the invoice as with any other payment
• Your policy is yours to write and keep. You must write a deposit policy before any service can require the fee, and you are responsible for it being lawful where you operate, for honoring it, and for keeping it current. We display it; we do not interpret or enforce it
• A booking creates a client record, a job and a visit in your account, and a lead recording where the customer came from. Those are your records under Section 8, and the customer’s details are handled as described in our Privacy Policy section 4.7
• A customer who books is sent a confirmation and a link to see, cancel or move the visit, with the same code check that protects the client hub (Section 8.9). Cancelling or moving a paid visit leaves the fee where it is and shows the customer your policy at that moment

8.11 Webhooks and Your Inbound Lead Address

You may have SMG Tools send your records to a web address of your choosing when events you pick happen (a webhook), and you have an address of your own that other software may post a lead to. The address is on every plan; webhooks are part of Professional and the plans above it, and on Starter they are kept and send nothing, and nothing that happened meanwhile is sent afterward. Both are yours to set up, keep and switch off.

• The receiver is yours. A webhook address you add, and whatever runs behind it, is your choice and your responsibility. We deliver to it what you configured and nothing else; what it does with a message once delivered is between you and it. It is not our service provider and Section 11 does not make us responsible for it
• The credentials are yours to keep. A webhook’s signing secret is shown to you once; your inbound lead address contains a secret and is shown to you on its own page in SMG Tools. Anyone holding either can do what it allows — verify messages as ours, or put leads on your Leads page. Keep them as you would a password, and rotate or regenerate them from their pages in SMG Tools if they may have leaked. We are not responsible for messages accepted, or leads created, by anyone you gave an address to
• Delivery is best effort, and we may stop. A message that cannot be delivered is retried on a fixed schedule for about a day and then recorded as failed; you may send it again from the log. A webhook whose address fails every delivery for long enough is paused and you are emailed; nothing is sent to it until you resume it, and nothing missed while paused is sent afterwards. We do not guarantee that any message reaches its receiver, or when
• What a message contains. A webhook carries your own records — which can include a client’s name, contact details and address — to the address you gave. You are responsible for the lawfulness of sending those details to that receiver, including any notice your clients are owed. Our Privacy Policy section 4.18 says what is sent and kept
• A lead through your address is your record under Section 8, exactly as a lead from your public page is, and you are responsible for the software you point at the address. Requests to it are rate-limited; a runaway source is refused and counted, not accepted
• We may change the events offered, the shape of a message, the retry schedule and the limits, and will not remove an event from the catalog without notice. Ten webhooks per account, sixty leads an hour through the address

8.12 Proposals With Options, and a Deposit Taken on Acceptance

A proposal may offer your client two to four priced options and extras they may add, and may ask for a deposit when they accept. What is offered, at what price and on what terms is yours; SMG Tools presents it, records what your client chose, and is not a party to the agreement.

• Your client chooses exactly one option, and nothing is chosen for them. They are shown each option’s name, your description of it, what it includes, its price and how it would be paid, and each extra with its price, never ticked on their behalf. Their signature is for the option and extras they chose, at the price shown, plus applicable tax
• What is recorded. With the signature (Section 7.9): the option chosen, its price and its payment schedule as shown, and the extras taken and not taken. The signed PDF shows the chosen option in full and the others as not chosen, and its contract is the proposal’s own terms and the chosen option’s, never another option’s. The job is made from that choice. When you record an acceptance yourself, you say which option and extras your client chose, and you are responsible for that being what they agreed
• A deposit taken on acceptance is part of the price, not a credit. The booking fee in Section 8.10 is taken before any price exists and is credited against the work; a proposal’s deposit is the first part of a price your client has already agreed. It is invoiced when they sign, and the final invoice bills the rest. It is paid on Stripe’s hosted page for your connected account, or recorded by you, with the transaction fee in Section 4.4 applied as on any invoice
• A required deposit. You may require the deposit before the work is booked. The proposal is then accepted, and the job made, only when the deposit is paid in full, by the later of the proposal’s valid-until date and the grace period you set after signing. No card payment can be started once that time has passed; if it is not paid by then, the proposal expires, its deposit invoice is voided and nothing is charged. A payment that reaches us after the proposal expired is still recorded against its invoice, because the money was taken, and what happens to it is yours to decide
• SMG Tools refunds nothing automatically and holds no money of yours. What happens to a deposit when the work does not go ahead is governed by your own terms with your client, and is yours to carry out through the invoice as with any other payment
• Each option’s margin, the report of which option sells and what each makes, and any lines the assistant suggests are aids to your own pricing, on the terms in Sections 7.1 and 7.8. None of them sets a price or recommends an option to your client for you

8.13 API Keys and the Public API

You may issue an API key to a program of your choosing — an automation tool, your website, software a developer writes for you — so that it can read and write your records through our public API. Keys are part of Professional and the plans above it, and are yours to issue, keep and revoke. On Starter your keys are kept, and every request they make is refused until your plan includes them again.

• What a key can reach. A key sees your whole business, as a manager does, and may do only what you allowed when you issued it: read or change your clients, jobs, leads and appointments, read your invoices, and manage its own webhooks. It never charges, refunds or deletes, and never sends an invoice, a proposal or a message of its own. What it writes goes through the same rules as your own work, with the same effects — a job it completes runs your automations for a completed job, and an appointment it books, moves or cancels tells your client as one you booked would — and is recorded as done by that key
• The key is yours to keep. It is shown to you once. Anyone holding it can do what it allows, as you. Keep it as you would a password, and revoke it from its page in SMG Tools if it may have leaked; a revoked key stops working at once. We are not responsible for what is read or done with a key you issued, or by whoever you gave it to
• The program is yours. A program you give a key, and whatever it does with what it reads, is your choice and your responsibility. It is not our service provider and Section 11 does not make us responsible for it. You are responsible for the lawfulness of the records you let it read — which can include a client’s name, contact details and address — including any notice your clients are owed. Our Privacy Policy section 4.18 says what we keep about a key and its requests
• Limits. Twenty working keys per account; each key may make 120 requests a minute and your account 600 across its keys, and a request past either is refused and may be retried later. We may change the limits
• Availability and change. The public API is provided as part of the Service and on the same terms of availability, with no further guarantee. Within a version we only add to it; anything that would break a program using it comes in a new version, and we will give notice before retiring a version

8.14 Accounting Sync With QuickBooks Online or Xero

On the Professional plan, the owner of your business may connect a QuickBooks Online company or a Xero organization of its own, so that SMG Tools sends your records to it as they change. Only the owner connects and disconnects it, and only a company or organization in the United States can be connected.

• The ledger is yours. The company or organization you connect, and everything in it, is yours, held by Intuit or Xero under your own agreement with them. It is the destination you chose for your records, not our service provider, and Section 11 does not make us responsible for it
• What you authorize. By connecting, you authorize us to read its chart of accounts, and the names of its customers and its products and services, and to add, update, void or delete in it the records we sent, in the accounts you confirmed, as your records here change. A customer, vendor, product or service already in your ledger under the same name as one of yours is linked to it rather than added twice, and is kept up to date from then on as if we had sent it. We change nothing else in your ledger
• SMG Tools is the source for what it sends. A change made in your ledger to a record we sent may be replaced the next time that record changes here, and nothing in your ledger comes back into SMG Tools. You are responsible for the accounts you confirm and for your books: what you send them, how they are reconciled, and the tax and filings made from them (Section 7.11)
• The access. The access Intuit or Xero grants when the owner signs in is kept encrypted, used only to send your records, and never shared. You may disconnect at any time from the tool’s page, or remove SMG Tools from your QuickBooks or Xero apps; either stops the sync. Records already sent stay in your ledger. If the access lapses, or your business leaves the Professional plan, nothing is sent until it is restored, and what changed meanwhile is sent then
• Delivery is best effort. Records are usually sent within minutes. One your ledger cannot take is retried on a fixed schedule or shown to you with the ledger’s reason, in the connection’s log, which is the record of what was sent and what the ledger answered. We do not guarantee that a record reaches your ledger, or when, and a total your ledger works out differently from ours is reported to you, not changed
• Your use of QuickBooks Online and Xero is governed by your agreements with Intuit and with Xero. Our Privacy Policy section 4.19 says what we receive from your ledger, what we keep and what we send. We may change the ledgers offered and how records are paced to them

8.15 Files From Your Clients

On the Professional plan, you may add Files from clients, so that your clients can send you photos with a note on their page and the documents you ask them for.

• You are responsible for what you ask your clients to send. A request names what it is; the Service does not read what arrives, and does not judge whether you should hold it. Never ask a client for what you should not keep — a full card number, a password, an identity document you have no need for — and keep what you receive only as your business needs it and the law where you operate allows
• What arrives is Your Content (Section 8.1) once it passes its scan, kept as your other photos and documents are, in your export and deleted with your data. It is not shown back to the client unless you share it
• Scanning reduces a risk; it does not remove it. Each file is scanned for malware by Microsoft before anyone at your business can open it, and one found harmful is deleted unopened. No scanner finds everything, and we do not warrant that a file which passed is harmless. Open what your clients send with the care you would give an email attachment
• Our Privacy Policy section 4.23 says what is checked, by whom, and how long a file waiting for its scan is kept

8.16 Thumbtack

On the Professional plan, the owner of your business may connect your Thumbtack account, so that the leads Thumbtack sends your business arrive here with their conversation, and Thumbtack is told how the work went. Only the owner connects and disconnects it.

• Your Thumbtack account is yours. It, your leads on Thumbtack and what Thumbtack charges you for them are between you and Thumbtack, under your own agreement with them. Thumbtack is the destination you chose, not our service provider, and Section 11 does not make us responsible for it
• What you authorize. By connecting, you authorize us to read your Thumbtack businesses, each new lead and its conversation, and what each lead was charged; to send your replies as your business; to tell Thumbtack each lead’s status as its work moves, with the amount paid; and to register with Thumbtack your business’s telephone numbers and the number of each person who chooses to register their own
• You answer for what is sent. A reply is sent as it was written. A status is sent as your records here say it happened, and a lead or job called off is sent as called off by whoever your people said called it off; Thumbtack may credit or charge you by what it is told. You are responsible for your replies, for the answers your people give, and for what a person’s registered number is used to call or text. A person’s own number is registered only when they turn it on themselves
• Lead costs. Where you record what each lead costs, each lead’s price is recorded as an expense from what Thumbtack reports, and voided when Thumbtack reports a refund. It is a record of Thumbtack’s charge, not a bill: your agreement with Thumbtack, and Thumbtack’s own records, decide what you owe it
• The access. The access Thumbtack grants when the owner signs in is kept encrypted, used only for this connection, and never shared. You may disconnect at any time from Thumbtack’s page in SMG Tools, or remove SMG Tools’ access on Thumbtack; either stops the connection, and what is already here stays. If the access lapses, or your business leaves the Professional plan, nothing arrives or is sent until it is restored; leads that came meanwhile are brought in then, up to thirty days back
• Delivery is best effort. Leads usually arrive within seconds, with an hourly check behind them. We do not guarantee that a lead, a message, a reply, a status or a number reaches its destination, or when; the connection’s log is the record of what was sent and what Thumbtack answered
• Your use of Thumbtack is governed by your agreement with Thumbtack. Our Privacy Policy section 4.24 says what we receive from Thumbtack, what we keep and what we send

9. Acceptable Use

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Violate any applicable laws, regulations, or third-party rights
• Engage in fraudulent, deceptive, or misleading practices
• Send spam or unsolicited communications to clients
• Upload malicious code, viruses, or harmful content
• Attempt to gain unauthorized access to the Service or other users' accounts
• Interfere with or disrupt the Service's infrastructure
• Reverse engineer, decompile, or attempt to extract source code
• Use the Service for any illegal activity or to process illegal transactions
• Infringe upon intellectual property rights of others
• Harass, abuse, or harm any person

10. Intellectual Property

The Service, including its original content, features, and functionality, is owned by SMG Tools and is protected by copyright, trademark, and other intellectual property laws. You may not copy, modify, distribute, sell, or lease any part of our Service without written permission.

"SMG Tools" and related logos are trademarks of the Company. You may not use these marks without prior written consent.

11. Third-Party Services

The Service integrates with third-party services including but not limited to:

• Stripe: For payment processing
• Plaid: For bank account connections and transaction import
• Google Maps Platform: For address autocomplete and distance calculations
• Microsoft Azure: For cloud hosting, storage, receipt OCR (Azure AI Document Intelligence), and AI-powered features (Azure OpenAI Service)
• Intuit QuickBooks Online and Xero: At your choosing, as the ledger you connect for the accounting sync. They receive your records as your destination, under your own agreement with them, not as our service providers (see Section 8.14)
• Thumbtack: At your choosing, as the lead marketplace you connect. It receives your replies, each lead’s status and your numbers as your destination, under your own agreement with it, not as our service provider (see Section 8.16)

Your use of these integrations is subject to the respective third party's terms and privacy policies. We are not responsible for the actions, content, or data handling practices of third-party services.

12. Disclaimer of Warranties

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, WHETHER EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT.

We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free, that defects will be corrected, or that the Service is free of viruses or other harmful components.

12.1 If There Is a Data Breach

If we become aware of a security breach affecting your personal data, we will notify you within 72 hours of becoming aware of it. We will tell you what happened, what data was involved, what we have done about it, and what — if anything — you should do.

We will tell you even where we are not legally required to, and even where the news reflects badly on us. A notification you receive late, or not at all, is worse for you than one that arrives before we have every answer — so where the picture is still incomplete at 72 hours, we will tell you what we know then and follow up.

We maintain a written incident response procedure covering detection, assessment, containment, notification and record-keeping. Every incident is recorded and assessed, including those that turn out not to be notifiable.

13. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, SMG TOOLS AND ITS AFFILIATES, OFFICERS, EMPLOYEES, AND AGENTS SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO:

• Loss of profits, revenue, or data
• Business interruption
• Cost of substitute services
• Damages arising from your use or inability to use the Service
• Damages arising from unauthorized access to or alteration of your data

Our total liability for any claims arising from these Terms or your use of the Service shall not exceed the amount you paid us in the twelve (12) months preceding the claim.

14. Indemnification

You agree to indemnify and hold harmless SMG Tools, its affiliates, officers, directors, employees, and agents from any claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and expenses (including legal fees) arising from:

• Your use of the Service
• Your violation of these Terms
• Your violation of any third-party rights
• Your Content or data you submit through the Service
• Disputes between you and your clients

15. Termination

You may terminate your account at any time by contacting us or using account deletion features in the Service. Only the owner of a business can close it; closing a business ends every member’s sign-in to it. Anyone who does not own a business may delete their own account from their Security page; what they recorded in a business they worked for stays that business’s. An owner may instead hand the business over and choose to leave, which deletes their account once the new owner accepts (Section 3.1). Upon termination:

• Your right to use the Service will immediately cease
• We may retain certain data as required by law or legitimate business purposes
• You may export your data before termination
• Any outstanding fees or charges remain due

We may suspend or terminate your access to the Service immediately, without prior notice, if you breach these Terms or engage in conduct that we determine is harmful to the Service or other users.

16. Changes to Terms

We reserve the right to modify these Terms at any time. Material changes will be communicated by posting the updated Terms on this page with a new "Last updated" date. Your continued use of the Service after changes become effective constitutes acceptance of the modified Terms.

17. Governing Law and Disputes

These Terms shall be governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without regard to its conflict of law provisions.

Any disputes arising from these Terms or your use of the Service shall be resolved through binding arbitration in accordance with the rules of the American Arbitration Association, except that either party may seek injunctive relief in court for intellectual property violations.

18. General Provisions

• Entire Agreement: These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy, constitute the entire agreement between you and SMG Tools.
• Severability: If any provision of these Terms is found invalid, the remaining provisions will continue in effect.
• Waiver: Our failure to enforce any provision of these Terms does not constitute a waiver of that provision.
• Assignment: You may not assign your rights under these Terms without our consent. We may assign our rights without restriction.

19. Contact Information

If you have any questions about these Terms of Use, please contact us at:

Email: support@smgtools.com