Privacy Policy

What we collect

• Your account: your email address, whether it's verified, your name if you sign in with Google, and when you signed in. Passwords are handled by our sign-in provider; we never see them.
• Your budget: what you enter or import: accounts (names and balances, never bank account numbers), categories, planned amounts, transactions (date, description, amount, category, notes, tags), bills, goals and debts.
• Imports: files you upload (CSV, PDF, Excel) are read to show you a preview and then discarded; we don't keep the files. Account numbers in them are masked before anything is saved or sent for AI features.
• Purchases: what you bought, the amount, tax and whether it was refunded. Card details go straight to our payment processor; we never see or store them. For Etsy purchases we keep your order number and a one-way scrambled fingerprint of the buyer email from the sale, never the email itself.
• AI use: when you use AI features we record which feature and what it cost us, never what you asked or what it answered.
• Visitor statistics: the pages visited, the site or campaign that sent you, and your country (worked out from your IP address at the moment of the visit, which we then discard). Visits are counted with an anonymous code that changes every day, not with a cookie.

We never store IP addresses.

How we use it

To run the app for you; to process purchases; to send the emails you ask for (verification, password reset, and reminders, alerts and summaries you switch on) and, only if you opt in, product news; to keep the service secure and prevent abuse; and to understand, in aggregate, which ads and sources bring visitors. We don't sell your data, and we don't use your financial data for advertising.

AI features

Ask AI, type-it quick add, the budget setup helper, category suggestions and the monthly summary send the relevant part of your budget to an AI service provider to produce an answer. Account numbers are masked first. Our provider doesn't keep these requests and doesn't use them to train its models. AI answers are general information, not financial advice.

A shared merchant list improves category suggestions for everyone: it holds only a scrambled fingerprint of a merchant name and a standard category name (like "Groceries"), learned when at least two people chose the same one. It can't be traced back to you.

Sharing a budget

If you share a budget (Pro), the people you invite can see and change everything in it, and see each other's names and email addresses.

Who we share data with

We use trusted service providers to run ClearPenny: cloud hosting and storage, sign-in, payment processing and tax, AI features, email delivery, and our domain and email forwarding. Each one processes data only to provide its service to us, under its own security and privacy commitments. Our app and database are hosted in Canada; some providers may process data in other countries, such as the United States.

If we run ads, the ad platforms learn only that a sign-up or purchase happened, only with your cookie consent, and never your email or IP address. We don't sell your data to anyone.

Cookies

A sign-in cookie (needed to keep you logged in), a cookie remembering which budget you last used, and one remembering for a week that you came to unlock an Etsy purchase. If we run ads, advertising measurement cookies are set only after you accept them in the cookie banner.

How long we keep it

As long as you have an account. When you delete your account, your login, the budgets you own and everything in them are deleted right away; purchase records are kept for 6 years for tax and accounting, without being linked to you. Backups roll off within 14 days.

Free trial accounts that never choose a plan are deleted after 12 months without use (we email you 30 days before). To keep the free trial to one per person, we keep a one-way scrambled fingerprint of the email address that used it, never the address itself, also after the account is deleted.

Your choices and rights

In Settings you can download your budget and all your account data, reset a budget, and delete your account. You can also email support@clearpenny.app to access, correct or delete your data; we answer within 30 days. If you're in Canada, you can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada. If you live in California, the EU or the UK, you have the rights your local privacy laws give you, and you can contact us to use them.

Children

ClearPenny is not for children under 13.

Changes

We'll post changes on this page and email you about important ones. See also our Terms and Refund Policy.