Privacy Policy for Contractor Website Services
Effective Date: January 1, 2023
At Contractor Website Services, your privacy is very important to us. This privacy policy explains how we collect, use, protect, and disclose information and data when you use Contractor Website Services’ website and services (“Services”).
1. Information We Collect
Personal Information
When you use our Services, we may collect personally identifiable information such as your name, email address, phone number, and physical address. We collect this information when you register or fill out a form on our website, for example, when you request a quote for our marketing services.
Non-Personal Information
We also may collect non-personally identifiable information, such as your IP address, cookies, the type of device or browser you use, and the pages you visit on our website. This information helps us improve our Services.
Client Accounting Software Information
Where a client authorizes it, we also access a limited set of records from that client’s QuickBooks Online account. See “Client Accounting Software Data (QuickBooks Online)” below.
2. How We Use Your Information
We use the information we collect to provide, maintain, and improve our Services, to process transactions, send periodic emails, and for other legitimate business purposes within the company only.
3. How We Share Your Information
Contractor Website Services does not sell your personal information to third parties. We also do not share personal data (phone numbers) and consent with third parties / affiliates or partners.
4. Client Accounting Software Data (QuickBooks Online)
Where a client authorizes it, we connect to that client’s QuickBooks Online account in order to write accurate content for the client’s own website. This section explains exactly what that connection does.
Authorization
We access a client’s QuickBooks Online data only after a user with administrative rights to that QuickBooks company has authorized the connection through Intuit’s own authorization screen. A client may disconnect our application at any time from the apps page inside their QuickBooks account. When a connection is removed, our stored access credentials for that account are deleted.
Our access is read-only
We do not create, change, or delete anything in a client’s QuickBooks account.
What we read
We read a narrow set of records, chosen because they describe the client’s business and the work it performs: the company profile (legal name, business address, and founding date); the products and services list, including item names, descriptions and categories; vendor and supplier names; customer records (see “Customer information” below); the free-text descriptions written on individual lines of invoices, sales receipts, estimates, bills, expenses and purchase orders, together with the dates of those documents; and a summary report of sales totals by product or service.
What we do not read
We do not access financial statements or accounting records, including profit and loss statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, accounts receivable or accounts payable aging reports, customer or vendor balance reports, the general ledger, trial balances, journal entries, the chart of accounts, payroll or employee records, tax configuration or tax filings, recorded payments, bank deposits, or files attached to transactions.
How we use it
We use the descriptive text — the services a client offers, the materials and brands they work with, and the plain-language descriptions of work performed — to write and maintain website content for that client. Dates are used to understand which services are seasonal.
Monetary amounts
We do not retain monetary amounts. QuickBooks does not permit requesting individual fields, so full records are returned to our system and the amounts are discarded at the point of receipt, before any data is stored. Amounts are therefore not kept in our records, backups, or logs.
Customer information
For each client we store the customer records held in their QuickBooks Online account: the customer’s name, the name of our client’s contact person where one is recorded, their telephone number, email address, and postal address including street, city, state and postal code, and a record of which of our client’s services that customer purchased or was quoted for, together with the dates.
None of this is ever published to any website, and none of it is included in the website content we write. It is used only to match a client’s online reviews to the correct job; to send review, appointment and referral messages on the client’s behalf where the client has asked us to; to help a client identify customers who may be due for recurring work; and to identify and remove personal information from other text as described below.
We do not sell this information, we do not share it with anyone outside our own staff, and we do not use it to market our own services. Access is limited to staff accounts protected by two-factor authentication, and every time a member of staff views or exports a client’s customer list it is recorded in an internal log. It is deleted together with the rest of a client’s information, as described under “Deletion” below.
Supplier information
We also store the names and contact details of the suppliers and subcontractors a client works with, taken from their QuickBooks Online records. Supplier names may inform the website content we write — the brands and materials a contractor works with are useful detail — but supplier contact details are never published.
Removal of personal information
Descriptions and item names in accounting systems sometimes contain personal information — a customer’s name, a job-site address, or a telephone number — because whoever wrote the record typed it there. Before storing this text we remove personal names, street addresses, telephone numbers and email addresses from it. This process is automated and, while thorough, cannot be guaranteed to catch every instance. We do not publish this text to a client’s website without human review.
Where it is stored and who can see it
Extracted data is stored on servers we control in the United States. Access credentials are held in encrypted form. Access is restricted to Contractor Website Services staff who require it to perform the work, and requires an individual login.
Third-party processing
We do not transmit client accounting data to any third-party service. The information described in this section is used by Contractor Website Services and is not sold, shared, or sent to outside processors.
How long we keep it
We retain information obtained from a client’s QuickBooks Online account for as long as we provide services to that client, and for no more than 30 days after those services end.
Deletion
When a client ceases to be a customer, we disconnect from their QuickBooks Online account and delete the information obtained from it within 30 days. A client may request deletion at any time by contacting us at the address below, and we will complete it within 30 days of the request.
Security incidents
If we become aware of unauthorized access to information obtained from a client’s QuickBooks Online account, we will notify the affected client within 5 business days, describing what occurred and the steps we are taking in response.
5. Security
We implement a variety of security measures to protect the safety of your personal information. However, no method of transmission over the Internet is 100% secure, so we cannot guarantee its absolute security.
6. Your Choices
You can update, correct, or delete your personal information by contacting us directly. You can also unsubscribe from our marketing emails by following the instructions in those messages.
7. Changes to This Policy
We may revise this Privacy Policy from time to time. The most current version will always be on this page. If we make changes that we believe substantially alter your rights, we will notify you.
8. Contact Us
If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, please contact us at support@contractorwebsiteservices.com