Privacy Policy

Clarity Books AI ("Clarity Books," "we," "us," or "our") is an AI-assisted bookkeeping service operated by Clarity Books AI, LLC, a Connecticut limited liability company. We help self-employed individuals and small business owners track income and expenses with AI-assisted categorization.

Contact: brayden@claritybooksai.com

This Privacy Policy explains what information we collect, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you have. It applies to our websites, web application, emails, and SMS communications. It does not cover the practices of any third-party services that are linked from our product (such as your bank or Plaid itself) — those are governed by their own policies.

3.1 Information you provide directly

• Account information: name, email address, phone number, business name, business type, and password (hashed, never stored in plain text).
• Billing information: processed by Stripe — we receive only a token and billing metadata, never full card numbers.
• Communications: messages you send to us via email, SMS replies, or in-app forms.
• Manual entries or corrections you make inside the app.

3.2 Information collected automatically

• Financial data via Plaid: connected bank and credit card accounts, transaction history, running balances, account type, and institution name. We do not receive or store full account numbers or your online-banking credentials.
• Usage data: pages visited, features used, timestamps, device type, browser, approximate region (from IP), and crash/error logs.
• Cookies and local storage as described in our Cookie Policy.

3.3 Information from third parties

If you connect a bank via Plaid, we receive transaction and balance data from Plaid. If you communicate with us via Twilio-powered SMS, we receive the content of your replies and associated phone metadata from Twilio.

• To provide the core bookkeeping service: importing, categorizing, and displaying transactions; generating reports; producing year-end summaries.
• To send you SMS and email messages about ambiguous transactions, account activity, and service updates.
• To train the AI categorization rules that apply only to your own account (rules are never shared across customers).
• To authenticate you, secure your account, detect abuse, and prevent fraud.
• To process payments, send receipts, and comply with tax and accounting rules that apply to us as a business.
• To comply with legal obligations, respond to lawful requests, and enforce our Terms of Service.
• To improve the Service — measure feature adoption, fix bugs, and make product decisions.

We do not sell your personal information. We do not share your financial data with advertisers, data brokers, or any third party for marketing purposes.

When you provide a phone number during onboarding, you may enroll in our SMS program by actively checking a consent checkbox. Providing a phone number is optional — if you do not provide one, no SMS is ever sent. The consent disclosure shown at enrollment reads:

“I agree to receive SMS messages from Clarity Books AI about my bookkeeping — transaction-categorization questions, receipt requests, and monthly summaries. Message frequency varies, typically up to 1 per week. Msg & data rates may apply. Reply STOP to opt out or HELP for help. See our Privacy Policy and Terms.”

SMS messaging is entirely optional and is not a condition of using Clarity Books AI. The phone-number field is optional during onboarding — leaving it blank does not block account creation. If you enter a phone number, the consent checkbox appears unticked by default; you may submit the profile form whether or not you tick it. We only enroll you in SMS when both the phone number is entered and the box is actively checked, and no SMS is sent until consent is explicitly recorded.

Message types

• Welcome message upon enrollment
• Transaction-categorization questions (e.g., “What was the $52 charge at Shell for?”)
• Receipt photo requests
• Confirmation messages after transactions are categorized
• Monthly book-close and reconciliation notifications

Frequency: Varies based on account activity — typically up to once per week. We never send marketing or promotional messages via SMS.

To opt out: Reply STOP to any message at any time. You will receive one confirmation and no further messages will be sent. You can re-enroll by replying START or from Settings in the app.

For help: Reply HELP to any message or email brayden@claritybooksai.com.

Msg & data rates may apply. Contact your carrier for details.

We do not sell, share, or rent your phone number or SMS opt-in data to any third party for marketing purposes.

Where the General Data Protection Regulation or the UK GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases: (a) performance of a contract with you; (b) your consent, where you have given it (for example, connecting a bank account); (c) our legitimate interests in operating and improving the Service; and (d) compliance with legal obligations.

We use Plaid Inc. to connect to your financial institutions. Plaid authenticates you directly with your bank and shares transaction and balance information with us on your behalf. Plaid's handling of your data is governed by Plaid's End User Privacy Policy.

The Plaid access token we receive is read-only and scoped to transactions and balances. It cannot be used to move money, change account settings, or interact with your account beyond reading that data.

We share the minimum data necessary with the following vendors to operate the Service. A full, current list is also available in our Data Processing Addendum.

• Supabase — database, authentication, and file storage (US region).
• Vercel — application hosting and CDN.
• Plaid — bank-account connectivity.
• Stripe — payment processing.
• Twilio — outbound and inbound SMS delivery.
• Anthropic — the Claude AI model used for transaction categorization. We send only the fields needed (vendor name, amount, date, memo, business type). We do not send your name, email, bank credentials, account numbers, or other identifiers. Anthropic's API does not retain this data for model training.
• Resend / Postmark (or equivalent) — transactional email.

If you provide a CPA email and trigger a year-end send, we email your report to the CPA you specify. You control each send.

We retain your data while your account is active and for a limited period afterward so we can restore it if you change your mind.

• Active accounts: for the life of your account.
• Closed accounts: live records are deleted within 48 hours of your deletion request; encrypted backups are rotated out within 30 days.
• Financial records we are required to keep: invoices, tax documents, and payment records may be retained for up to 7 years to meet federal and state tax and accounting obligations, even after your account is closed.
• Anonymous usage and security logs: retained up to 12 months in a de-identified form.

Depending on where you live, you may have some or all of the following rights:

• Access: request a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
• Correction: update your profile and business details from Settings.
• Deletion: delete your account and associated data from Settings → Account → Delete Account, or by emailing us.
• Portability: export your transaction history and reports as CSV from any report page.
• Opt out of sale or sharing: we do not sell or share your personal information for cross-context behavioral advertising, so this right does not apply in practice — but you may still submit a request and we will confirm in writing.
• Withdraw consent: disconnect bank accounts or cancel SMS at any time.
• Non-discrimination: we will not deny, charge a different price, or degrade service because you exercise a privacy right.

To exercise any right, email brayden@claritybooksai.com. We may need to verify your identity before responding. We will respond within 30 days (or 45 where permitted by law).

California residents have the rights listed in Section 9, plus the right to know what categories of personal information we have collected, the sources, the business purpose, and the categories of third parties with whom we have shared it. The categories we collect are listed in Section 3. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under the CCPA/CPRA.

Clarity Books AI is intended for users aged 18 or older operating a legitimate business. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13 (or the equivalent minimum age in your jurisdiction). If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

Our Service is hosted in the United States. If you access the Service from outside the US, your information will be transferred to, stored in, and processed in the US. Where required, we rely on appropriate safeguards (for example, the EU Standard Contractual Clauses) for cross-border transfers.

We protect your data with TLS 1.3 in transit, AES-256 at rest, row-level security in the database, role-based access control, and multi-factor authentication for administrative systems. No system is completely secure, but we have designed the Service so that even a successful breach should not expose banking credentials (we never have them) or allow money movement (we have read-only access).

If we discover a breach of security that results in unauthorized access to your personal information, we will notify you by email within 72 hours of confirming the scope of the incident, describe what was accessed, and tell you the steps we are taking and the steps you should take.

We use strictly-necessary cookies for authentication and a small number of first-party analytics cookies. We do not use advertising, third-party tracking, or cross-site behavioral advertising cookies. See our Cookie Policy for a full list and controls.

We may update this policy from time to time. The "Last updated" date at the top of this page reflects the most recent revision. If we make material changes, we will notify you by email and, where required by law, obtain your consent before the changes take effect. Continuing to use the Service after changes take effect means you accept the updated policy.

Questions, requests, or complaints? Email us at brayden@claritybooksai.com. If you are in the EU/UK and are not satisfied with our response, you have the right to lodge a complaint with your local data-protection authority.