Privacy Policy

Ledgental makes software that bookkeeping firms use to send proposals, engagement letters, questions, document requests and invoices to their clients. We also run ledgental.com, a site with free tools and guides for bookkeepers. This policy says what we collect, who else gets it, how long we keep it and what you can do about it.

It covers three groups of people: firm users, who sign in to Ledgental; clients of those firms, who open a link a firm sent them; and visitors to ledgental.com.

Who is responsible for which data?

For firm accounts (your sign-in email, name and firm settings), Ledgental decides how the information is used.

For information a firm puts into Ledgental about its clients, we are a service provider to that firm. We process it only to run Ledgental for the firm and on its instructions. The firm is responsible for having the right to share it with us and for its own duties to its clients. If you are a firm's client and want to see or change your information, contact the firm first; we help them answer.

What do we collect from firm users?

• Your account: your email address and password. Supabase, our sign-in provider, stores the password only as a hash. If you choose “Sign in with Microsoft”, Microsoft sends us your name and email address, and we get no password.
• Two-step verification: the key your authenticator app uses, held by Supabase, and whether you chose “Not now” when we offered it.
• Your profile and firm settings: your name and title, the firm's name, email, phone, address, website, logo and color, your prices and default terms, your reminder settings, and the payment instructions you write for invoices. If you put bank details in the payment instructions, anyone who opens one of your invoice links sees them.
• Your clients and work: clients and their contacts, notes and tags; proposals, engagement letters, question lists, document requests, templates and monthly requests; and files you share with a client.
• Billing: your services and prices, the time you log, one-time charges, and invoices with their status. Ledgental doesn't take or process payments.
• Your team: the names and email addresses of people you invite, team chat messages, mentions, and which client is assigned to whom.
• The change log: who changed a client, a contact, a firm setting or the team, from what to what and when, and when each person signed in, and who connected or disconnected a client's QuickBooks. It doesn't record IP addresses or devices.
• Feedback you choose to give, such as an answer to “What stopped you?” and any note you write.

What do we collect from a firm's clients?

• When each link was opened. The page reports it after it loads, so an email scanner that only checks the link doesn't count.
• Proposals: the package chosen and the name typed to accept it, or a decline, and any question or “not right now” note sent to the firm.
• Engagement letters: the name and title typed to sign, a drawn signature if the client draws one, the time of signing, the consent text agreed to, the IP address and browser details (user agent) at signing, and a fingerprint (SHA-256 hash) of the letter. We keep these as a record of who signed what and when.
• Transaction questions: the answers, categories and notes given.
• Document requests: the files uploaded (such as statements, tax forms and receipts), their names and sizes, answers to questions, notes, and “I don't have this”.
• The client's page: messages sent to the firm, and approvals or requested changes on files the firm shared, with any note.
• Reminder emails: whether the client chose to stop them.
• “Was this easy?” at the end of a link: the answer and any note. It comes to Ledgental, to improve the pages, not to the firm.

What happens when a firm connects a client's QuickBooks?

Connecting is optional. Only the firm's owner can connect a client's QuickBooks Online company or disconnect it directly, by signing in to Intuit. Archiving or deleting the client also disconnects it. Ledgental never sees the QuickBooks password.

Intuit's permission for accounting data allows reading and changing it. Ledgental only reads. Nothing in the client's books changes.

Right after connecting, every night, and when someone at the firm chooses Sync now, Ledgental reads the company's name, its list of accounts and the Transaction Detail by Account report for the last 12 months. When the firm chooses Pull transactions in New question list, Ledgental reads the uncategorized lines for the dates the firm picks, up to one year at a time, and keeps them only as the questions the firm creates. From these reads, Ledgental keeps:

• The company's name and its QuickBooks company ID, who connected it and when, when it last synced, and a short code if a sync failed.
• Each line posted to an income or expense account, including Uncategorized Income, Uncategorized Expense and Ask My Accountant: its date, amount, customer or vendor name, description, account (category), transaction type and QuickBooks transaction ID.
• Which lines the firm asked the client about, and which months a firm user marked reviewed, by whom, when, and the month's line count and total then.
• The connection's access keys from Intuit, encrypted by the app (AES-256) before they are stored. The encryption key is kept only on the app's servers, not in the database.
• In the change log: who connected or disconnected QuickBooks, when, and the company's name.

Ledgental doesn't keep account balances or account numbers. A line's description is kept as QuickBooks shows it, and a bank's text there can include the last digits of a card. Everyone on the firm's team can see the lines. The client sees only the lines the firm puts on a question list, through that list's link. Ledgental uses this data only to show the firm its client's transactions and to ask the client about them. It isn't sold, used for advertising or used to train AI, and it goes to no one but the firm, the client (for lines on a question list) and the providers listed below. When QuickBooks returns an error, we log only Intuit's error code and request ID, never the data. The company ID can appear in our hosting provider's request logs.

Disconnecting in Ledgental asks Intuit to end Ledgental's access and deletes the connection, the month reviews and every stored line that isn't on a question list. Lines the firm already put on a question list stay: the question list keeps them with the firm's other data, and Ledgental's own copy of the line is deleted 18 months after its date. If someone removes Ledgental inside QuickBooks instead, Ledgental can no longer read the company, and the lines it already read stay until the firm disconnects in Ledgental or they reach 18 months. Intuit's own privacy statement covers QuickBooks itself.

What do we collect from visitors to ledgental.com?

• The free tools run in your browser. What you type into them is saved in your browser's local storage on your device, so it is still there next time, and it isn't sent to us. Clearing your browser's data for ledgental.com removes it.
• If you send a message from a “Missing something?” box, we receive the message, the tool's name and the page address. The box doesn't ask for your name or email.
• If you send a message from the contact box, we receive the message and the page address. If you leave your email address for a reply, we receive it too and use it only to reply to you.
• If you click a button that opens a tool's work in the Ledgental app, the content travels inside the link, after the “#”, a part of a link that browsers don't send to servers. The app keeps it in your browser for up to 24 hours, until you sign in and choose to create the document; only then is it saved to your account.

What is collected automatically?

• Hosting logs kept by Vercel: IP address, browser type and the pages requested. We use them to keep the service running and secure.
• Error reports sent to Sentry when something breaks. What they contain is in the table below.
• To block someone trying link addresses at random, we count wrong client-link addresses per visitor. We count them against a one-way scrambled (hashed) form of the IP address, never the address itself.
• Product usage records in the app: which setup steps a firm user finished (account, email confirmation, firm details, first client, first link sent) and when, and when client links were sent, opened and finished. They come from records the service already keeps. We don't record what you type.

How do we use it?

• To run the service: store your work, make client links, and record views, acceptances, signatures, answers and uploads.
• To send the emails Ledgental sends: sign-in and account emails; a firm's links, reminders, weekly reminder emails, invoices and overdue invoice reminders to its clients, in the firm's name and only as the firm set them up; and notifications to firm users when a client acts.
• To do what a firm turned on, such as sending the engagement letter when a client accepts a proposal.
• To read a client's QuickBooks Online transactions after the firm connects it, so the firm can check the categories and ask the client about them.
• To remember how a client explained a vendor, so the firm doesn't ask that client the same question again. This memory is kept per client and never shared with other firms.
• To keep the service secure, stop abuse, fix problems and answer support requests.
• To see where firm users get stuck, in totals and per firm, so we can make Ledgental easier to use.
• To email a firm user who stopped partway through setup, at most twice, to offer help finishing it. These emails contain no advertising. To stop them, reply “stop”.
• To comply with the law.

We don't use firms' or clients' content for advertising, and we don't sell or rent it.

Who else gets it?

These providers run parts of Ledgental and ledgental.com for us, under their contracts with us:

The app has no third-party analytics, advertising pixels or session recordings. Usage records and feedback stay in our own database.

Inside a firm, everyone on that firm's team can see the firm's data. If a firm turns on email copies, its reply-to address gets a copy of each email sent to its clients. A client sees only what the firm sent them, through a private link. Anyone who has that link can open it, so it must be shared only with the intended person.

We may also disclose information if the law requires it, to protect the rights and safety of our users or others, or as part of a merger or sale of our business; this policy then still applies to it.

What about cookies, local storage and “Do Not Track”?

The app sets the cookies that keep firm users signed in, one that remembers “Not now” on two-step verification for 14 days, one that holds a QuickBooks connection request for up to 10 minutes while the firm owner signs in to Intuit, and one that carries a short confirmation such as “Settings saved.” to the next page and expires after 15 seconds. It keeps a few things in your browser's local storage: an import from ledgental.com for up to 24 hours, and which “What's new” items and hints you've seen. Client links work without cookies. ledgental.com sets no cookies; its tools use local storage as described above.

We don't track you across other websites, and we don't let other companies collect information about your activity across websites through Ledgental or ledgental.com. So we treat every visit the same way whether or not your browser sends a “Do Not Track” or Global Privacy Control signal.

How long do we keep it?

How do we protect it?

• Pages and data travel over HTTPS. Supabase stores the database and files encrypted.
• Each firm's data is separated in the database, so one firm can't read another firm's records.
• Client links use long random codes, end on a date the firm sets, and a firm can turn a link off at any time.
• QuickBooks access keys are encrypted by the app (AES-256) before they are stored; the key is kept only on the app's servers.
• Every firm user can turn on two-step verification with an authenticator app, and a firm owner can require it for the whole team.
• No system is perfectly secure. If we learn of a breach that affects your information, we tell the affected firms without undue delay.

What can you do about your information?

• Firm users: see and update your account and firm information in Settings, and choose which notifications reach you by email.
• Clients: stop reminder emails with the “Stop these reminders” link in any reminder.
• Anyone: to get a copy of your data, correct it or have it deleted, email support@ledgental.com. A firm's client is asked to contact the firm first (see the first section).

Depending on where you live, including California, you may have more rights to know, access, correct or delete personal information and not to be treated differently for using them. We answer within the time the law requires. We don't sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Where is data processed?

Ledgental is built for firms in the United States. Our providers process data in the United States and in other countries where they run their services.

Is Ledgental for children?

No. Ledgental is a business tool and isn't directed to anyone under 18. We don't knowingly collect children's information.

How will we tell you about changes?

Each change gets a new date at the top and a line below. Before a significant change takes effect, we tell firm users by email or in the app, and the app asks each firm user to accept the new version.