Privacy

BuilderNiche is software for running building jobs. A builder signs up, adds their staff, and puts their schedules, photos, documents and budgets in it. This page says what is stored, who can see it, and how to get rid of it.

The short version: we do not sell anything to anyone, there is no advertising and no analytics or tracking of any kind, nobody’s location is followed, and every company’s data is walled off from every other company’s.

What is stored, and why

Your account. Your name, email address, and optionally a phone number and job title. Your password is never stored — only a one-way hash of it, which cannot be turned back into the password.

Your work. Jobs, schedules, tasks, budgets, photos, documents, leads, and the trades you book. Some of that describes other people: a homeowner’s name and address on a job, a subcontractor’s phone number. It is there because a builder cannot run a job without it.

Hours, if you use the time clock. When someone clocks in and out, and which job they were on.

An activity log. Who changed what, and when. This is what makes a disputed change answerable months later.

Phones signed up for notifications. An address supplied by Apple or Google that lets us send a notification to one device, and a rough label like “iPhone · Safari” so you can tell your devices apart in a list.

Location

If you clock in or out with location turned on, BuilderNiche records a single position at that moment, with the accuracy the phone reports. That is the whole of it.

Nothing follows anyone around. There is no background tracking, no record of where anybody was between clocking in and clocking out, and no way for an employer to look up where somebody is now. A punch card that knows where it was punched is a fair record; following people is a different thing with different consequences, and this app does not do it.

Location can be refused, on the phone or in the browser, and the hours still record normally. A shift with no position on it is a complete shift.

Who can see it

Each company is sealed off. Every query the app makes is filtered by company before anything else is considered, so one builder’s jobs are not reachable from another builder’s account by any route, including by guessing an address.

Inside a company, what someone sees depends on their role and which jobs they have been given. A homeowner login sees only documents marked visible to them. A subcontractor sees only what they are booked on.

Who else touches it

Only the services needed to run the app, and only for that purpose. None of them are paid for data, and none of them are sent anything they do not need.

• The hosting provider runs the server and holds the database and the uploaded files.
• The email provider sends password resets, verification links and the messages that tell a trade their dates have moved. It handles the contents of those emails.
• The off-site backup storage holds encrypted copies of backups. The files are encrypted before they leave the server and the storage provider cannot read them.
• Apple and Google push services deliver notifications. Each message is encrypted for the one device it is going to, so they carry the notification without being able to read it.

Backups

The app takes a full backup once a day and keeps the most recent 14. If off-site backups are switched on, encrypted copies are also sent to separate storage so that losing the server does not lose the data.

This has a consequence worth being straight about: after you delete something, it can still exist in a backup taken before you deleted it, until that backup rolls off in the normal course of things. Backups are not searched or used for anything except restoring after a failure.

Deleting your account

Your own login can be deleted from Your account inside the app, at any time, without asking anyone. Your name, email, phone and password are erased and you are signed out everywhere, permanently.

What stays is the record of work: a photo still shows the date it was uploaded, a job still shows when it was created. Those are facts about a building, not about you, and they belong to the company that is still running that job. They show as having been done by a deleted user.

The whole company can be deleted by an owner, from the same page. Every job, task, photo, document, budget, lead, trade, shift and login goes with it. Because that is genuinely irreversible, it does not happen immediately: everyone with a login is emailed, and any owner can cancel for 7 days. After that it is destroyed, and there is no copy anyone can ask us to hand back.

Getting a copy of your data

If you want a copy of what is held about you, or you think something is wrong and want it corrected, write to the address below and it will be sorted out.

Children

This is a tool for running a building business. It is not aimed at children and is not designed for anyone under 13.

Changes

If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes and everyone with a login is told. It will not change quietly.

Getting in touch

Questions about any of this, including a request to see or delete what is held: privacy@builderniche.com.