Privacy policy
What we collect, why, who else sees it, and how to get it back.
Last updated 5 September 2026
This policy is a draft under review by counsel. It is published now because it describes what the software actually does today, and an accurate draft is more use to you than no policy at all. The substance will not change quietly — material changes are announced on this page.
This policy explains what we collect, why, who else sees it, and how to get it back or have it deleted. It is written to be read, not to be survived. The plain-English version of how your data moves through the product — with a diagram — is on our security page.
Who we are
Cost Intelligence provides a hosted service that reads financial exports you send us and answers questions about them. In data-protection terms, for the business data you upload we are a processor acting on your instructions — it is your data, not ours. For your own account details (your name, email, sign-in records) we are the controller.
What we collect
What you send us
- Financial exports you upload — an accounting ledger, revenue records, a bank or payment feed, cloud or software bills. Whatever is in the file you choose to send.
- Your questions and the answers produced for them, so a conversation can continue and you can return to earlier answers.
- Workspace settings — your organisation name, industry, chosen preferences.
What we collect about your account
- Your name and email address, and an encrypted form of your password. We never store the password itself.
- Sign-in and session records, so we can keep you signed in and detect misuse.
- Basic operational logs — which pages were requested and whether they worked.
What we do not collect
- We do not use advertising trackers or third-party analytics on the product.
- We do not buy data about you or your business from anyone.
- We do not ask for, or want, banking credentials. We read files; we do not connect to accounts.
What we do with it
- To answer your questions — the whole purpose of the service.
- To run and secure the service — keeping it working, preventing abuse, diagnosing faults.
- To contact you about your account: invitations, reminders you asked for, and notices that materially affect you.
We do not sell your data. We do not share it with advertisers. We do not use your financial data to build a profile of you for anyone else's benefit.
Artificial intelligence, specifically
The service uses an AI model in two places, and it is worth being exact about both.
- Understanding your question. The words you type are sent to our AI provider so the system can work out what you are asking for. No figures from your books are included.
- Writing the answer. Once our own code has calculated the result inside your workspace, the finished totals are sent so the model can phrase them in a sentence. Individual transactions are never sent, because the calculation adds them up before anything leaves.
Your data is not used to train AI models. We do not send it to an AI company for training, and our provider does not train on it. If that ever changes, we would tell you before it happened, not after.
Anonymous industry comparisons — optional
If you choose to take part, your business can contribute to anonymous comparisons that let every participant see how their costs compare to similar businesses.
- What contributes is a percentage, never an amount — for example "personnel is 50% of income". No amounts, no transactions, no supplier or customer names.
- A figure is published only when at least five different businesses have contributed to it, and a small amount of statistical noise is added, so no single business can be identified or worked backwards out of the result.
- It is off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off. If you withdraw or close your workspace, your contribution is removed and the figures are recalculated without you.
We may use these anonymous statistics to improve the service, including to develop features that recognise patterns across industries. Because a published statistic contains no customer data by construction, this is not a use of your books.
Who else processes your data
We rely on a small number of established providers. Each is bound by its own data-protection terms. This is the complete list:
| Provider | Purpose | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Anthropic | the AI model | your questions, and calculated totals |
| Railway | hosting and the primary database | your workspace and its data |
| Databricks | storage for cloud-billing data, where used | cloud cost records |
| Resend | transactional email | your email address |
We will keep this list current. Adding a provider that handles your financial data is a change we will publish here.
Where your data is held
Data is stored and processed in the United States. If you are outside the United States, using the service involves your data being transferred there.
How long we keep it
While your workspace is open, and for 30 days after you close it. After 30 days your uploaded data and its derived results are deleted.
The 30 days is deliberate rather than arbitrary: it is long enough that closing a workspace by mistake, or changing your mind, is recoverable — and short enough that we are not holding your books indefinitely for no reason. You can ask us to delete sooner and we will.
Operational logs and records we must keep for legal or accounting reasons — such as billing records — are kept for as long as the law requires, and contain no financial data from your uploads.
Your rights
- Export. You can export your data at any time.
- Deletion. You can delete your data, or your whole workspace. Deleting the workspace deletes the data in it.
- Access and correction. Ask us what we hold about you and we will tell you, and correct anything wrong.
- Withdraw from comparisons. At any time, with your contribution removed from published figures.
Depending on where you live you may have further rights under laws such as the GDPR or the CCPA. We will honour them; ask and we will explain how.
Security
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our infrastructure providers. Access is limited by role, each customer's data is stored separately from every other customer's, and the AI has no ability to write to, move, or delete your data. The detail is on our security page.
We do not hold a security certification such as SOC 2, and we do not claim one.
Children
This is a service for businesses. It is not intended for anyone under 18 and we do not knowingly collect their data.
Changes
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will say so on this page and, for changes that affect how your data is used, tell you directly.
Contact
Questions, requests, or a complaint: reply to any email from us, or use the contact address shown in your workspace. We would rather hear it than have you wonder.