Privacy Policy

WHO WE ARE AND SCOPE OF THIS POLICY

This Privacy Policy explains how AICOUNTLY Interactive Services Private Limited ("AICOUNTLY", "we", "us"), 3069-B, Third Floor, Ajanta Enclaves, Sector 51-D, Chandigarh – 160047, India, handles personal data collected through aicountly.com and the AICOUNTLY suite of applications on the web, iOS and Android, including Smart Books, Inventory, Billing, Notes, Drive, AICOUNTLY Auditor, Secretarial, Smart HRMS, Our People, Contacts, Calendar, Chat, Docs, Manage, Vault, and AI Pulse (each an "App", together the "Services"). It covers in particular our mobile apps on iOS and Android: AICOUNTLY Smart Books, AICOUNTLY Inventory, AICOUNTLY Billing, AICOUNTLY Notes and AICOUNTLY Drive. It applies to visitors of our website, registered users of our Services, and, where relevant, the employees and business contacts of our customers whose data our customers enter into the Services.

Where this policy says "personal data" it means any information about an identifiable individual. For personal data you give us about yourself, AICOUNTLY is the data fiduciary (controller) under India's Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 ("DPDP Act"). Contact us at support@aicountly.com.

This policy does not cover third-party websites, apps, or services that we link to but do not control.

SUMMARY

1. We collect what we need to run the Services you use: your account details, the content you create (books, inventory, bills, notes and files), and limited technical data for security.
2. Our apps use your camera or photo library only when you ask them to — to scan a barcode or to add a photo — and never in the background.
3. We do not sell personal data, show advertising, or track you across other companies' apps or websites. Our mobile apps contain no advertising, analytics or tracking SDKs.
4. We share data only with service providers that help us run the Services (bound to protect it at least as well as this policy does), with government systems such as the GST portal when you ask us to file or generate a document, and with AI model providers only when you ask AI Pulse a question in Smart Books or Notes and have allowed it.
5. You can access, correct and delete your data, withdraw consent, and delete your account at any time — in any AICOUNTLY app (open the app's settings and tap Delete account), on the web, or by email, as described at aicountly.com/delete-account.

INFORMATION WE COLLECT

1. Account and identity data — name, email address, mobile number (optional in the mobile apps), the user ID we assign to your AICOUNTLY account, company name, role/designation, and password (stored only as a one-way hash), when you or your employer registers on my.aicountly.com or within an App.
2. Sign-in provider data — if you choose to sign in with Apple, Google, LinkedIn or Microsoft, we receive your name, your email address (or Apple's private relay address) and that provider's stable identifier for your account. For Sign in with Apple we also keep, encrypted, a token Apple issues so that we can revoke your Apple sign-in when you delete your account, as Apple requires.
3. Business, HR and financial data you or your organisation enter — depending on the Service, this may include accounting entries, invoices and vouchers, ledgers, GST data, documents you attach, and details of your business's customers, suppliers and other contacts (names, addresses, GSTIN, PAN, phone numbers, email addresses), as well as employee records, attendance and leave, payroll status, approvals, secretarial filings, contacts, calendar entries, chat messages and documents you upload.
4. Content you create in the mobile apps — books, vouchers and the documents you attach to them (Smart Books); items, stock, stock counts and transfers (Inventory); bills, invoices, receipts and the customers on them (Billing); notes and the photos you add to them (Notes); and the files and photos you upload (Drive). This content is stored on AICOUNTLY's servers under your account or your company so that you can reach it from any device.
5. Government portal credentials — if you choose to connect your GST, e-way bill or e-invoice account, the user names and passwords you enter for those systems. They are stored encrypted and used only to perform the filings and document generation you ask for.
6. AI Pulse data — the questions you ask, the answers you receive, and any answer you report — see "AI features" below.
7. Support communications — what you send us when you contact support.
8. Payment and billing data — billing name, address, GSTIN and subscription/invoice details when you purchase a plan on the web. Card and bank details are handled by our payment processor; AICOUNTLY does not store full card numbers. The mobile apps contain no purchases.
9. Device and technical data — IP address, browser or device type, operating system, app version and access timestamps, collected for security, fraud prevention and diagnosing service issues.
10. Cookies and similar technologies — used on our websites for session management and essential functionality. See our Cookies Policy. The mobile apps do not use advertising identifiers.

MOBILE APP PERMISSIONS AND ON-DEVICE DATA (SMART HRMS)

The AICOUNTLY: Smart HRMS mobile app is a companion to the Smart HRMS web platform and is intentionally limited in what it accesses on your device:

1. The app does not access your camera, photo library, or microphone.
2. The app does not collect precise or background location.
3. The app stores your sign-in session token in the device's secure, encrypted local storage so you stay signed in between visits; this token is not shared with third parties.
4. The app requires an internet connection to communicate with the Smart HRMS API (hrms.aicountly.com) and does not function offline.
5. The app does not include third-party advertising or analytics SDKs, and does not sell or share your data for advertising purposes.

Other AICOUNTLY apps may request additional device permissions where the feature genuinely requires it (for example, a document scanner requesting camera access); where that is the case, the specific permission and its purpose are disclosed at the point the app requests it and in that app's store listing.

MOBILE APP PERMISSIONS AND ON-DEVICE DATA (SMART BOOKS, INVENTORY, BILLING, NOTES, DRIVE)

The AICOUNTLY Smart Books, Inventory, Billing, Notes and Drive mobile apps (iOS and Android) are companions to the same AICOUNTLY Services on the web, and use one AICOUNTLY account.

1. Camera and photo library — only on demand. No app uses the camera or photo library in the background, and none records audio. An app that uses the camera or photo library asks for permission the first time you use the feature, and you can refuse or later withdraw it in your device settings; the rest of the app keeps working.

   App	Camera	Photo library / files
   Smart Books	Not used.	When you attach a document to a voucher, you choose the file with your device's own file picker; the app sees only the file you pick.
   Inventory	Only when you tap scan, to read an item's barcode. Nothing is photographed or stored.	Not used.
   Billing	Only when you tap scan, to read an item's barcode onto a bill. Nothing is photographed or stored.	Not used.
   Notes	Only when you choose Take a photo, to add the photo to a note.	Only when you choose a photo to add to a note; the app receives only the photos you pick.
   Drive	Only when you choose Take a photo, to upload the photo to your documents.	Only when you choose photos or files to upload; the app receives only what you pick.

2. The apps do not access your microphone, contacts or location.
3. Each app keeps your sign-in token in the device's secure, encrypted storage (iOS Keychain / Android Keystore) so you stay signed in, and removes it when you sign out. The apps may also keep your name and email address, your selected company, your AI Pulse choice and recently viewed data in the app's private storage on the device so they open quickly; Notes keeps a copy of your notes there so you can keep working offline until they sync, and removes it when you sign out. None of this on-device data is shared with third parties.
4. The apps need an internet connection to communicate with the AICOUNTLY Services (for example books.aicountly.com) and the AICOUNTLY sign-in service (my.aicountly.com).
5. The apps contain no third-party advertising, analytics, tracking or crash-reporting SDKs, do not use advertising identifiers, do not track you across other companies' apps or websites, and do not sell or share your data for advertising.
6. The apps contain no in-app purchases.
7. You can delete your account from within any of the apps — open the app's settings and tap Delete account (Smart Books: Menu; Inventory and Billing: More; Notes: Settings; Drive: Account). See Delete your account.

AI FEATURES (AI PULSE)

Smart Books and Notes offer optional AI features through AI Pulse, AICOUNTLY's AI service: in Smart Books it answers questions about your books, and in Notes (Ask your notes) it answers questions from your notes. Inventory, Billing and Drive do not send your content to AI Pulse. AI Pulse works only on your request — when you ask a question — never in the background:

1. What is sent. In Smart Books, your question and the accounting data from the selected company needed to answer it (for example ledger balances, vouchers, party names and GST figures). In Notes, your question and the passages of your notes that match it (only notes you are allowed to read, never notes in Trash).
2. Who receives it. AI Pulse passes it to a third-party AI model provider (a large language model provider) — currently Anthropic (Claude), Google (Gemini) or OpenAI — to generate the answer. These providers may process the data outside India.
3. How it is used. The data is used only to answer your question. AICOUNTLY does not sell it or use it for advertising. We engage these providers through their business APIs as service providers, on terms that bind them to protect the data and to use it only to provide the service to us.
4. Your permission first. In the Smart Books and Notes mobile apps, nothing is sent to AI Pulse until you have read a disclosure of what is sent and to whom, and tapped Allow. You can withdraw that permission at any time — in Smart Books from Menu → Help & privacy → AI data sharing, in Notes from Settings → AI in Notes; nothing more is sent until you allow it again. The rest of the app does not depend on it, and signing out clears the permission.
5. What is kept. In Smart Books, your AI Pulse conversation history is kept with your account so you can refer back to it, and is deleted with your account. For Notes, AI Pulse keeps a record that a request was made, not your question, your notes or the answer.
6. AI answers can be wrong; check important figures before relying on them. You can report any answer as offensive, harmful or inaccurate using Report under the answer. The answer is hidden and the report, with the answer's text, is reviewed by AICOUNTLY.

YOUTUBE API SERVICES

AICOUNTLY uses YouTube API Services to publish its own product and marketing videos and Shorts to AICOUNTLY's own YouTube channel, either directly from our marketing system (Reach) or through our social publishing provider. By interacting with our YouTube content, you are also subject to Google's Privacy Policy and the YouTube Terms of Service.

1. What we access, use and store. We do not access, collect or store YouTube data of visitors to our website or of our customers. The only YouTube data we handle is our own channel's: its channel ID and title, the IDs of the videos we publish, their publishing status, and basic statistics for those videos, which we use in our own reports.
2. How long we keep it. We store this data only for as long as we need it for our reporting, and refresh or delete it as the YouTube API Services Developer Policies require: data we store from YouTube API Services is refreshed or deleted within 30 days.
3. Who we share it with. We do not share this data, except with the service providers that publish on our behalf.
4. Revoking access. You can revoke any authorisation granted to our apps at any time from Google's security settings page at security.google.com/settings/security/permissions (also available at myaccount.google.com/permissions).

HOW WE USE INFORMATION

1. To provide, operate and maintain the Services you or your organisation use, including creating your account, signing you in and keeping your books.
2. To perform actions you ask for, such as generating e-way bills and e-invoices, filing returns, sharing documents and answering AI Pulse questions.
3. To authenticate sign-ins, keep sessions secure, and prevent fraud, abuse and unauthorised access.
4. To process approvals, notifications and workflows you initiate.
5. To bill for subscriptions purchased on the web and send related transactional messages.
6. To provide customer support and respond to requests.
7. To diagnose problems and improve the reliability and performance of the Services.
8. To comply with applicable law and lawful requests from authorities.

We process personal data on the basis of your consent (which you may withdraw at any time, without affecting processing already done), to provide a Service you have asked for, and for the other legitimate uses permitted by the DPDP Act, such as complying with law. We do not use your data for third-party advertising, and we do not sell personal data.

WHO CONTROLS EMPLOYEE AND BUSINESS DATA

When an organisation (your employer, or a business whose books are kept in the Services) enters personal data about other people — its employees, customers, suppliers or other contacts — that organisation is generally the data fiduciary (controller) for that data, and AICOUNTLY acts as its data processor, processing it only on the organisation's instructions. If you want to access, correct or delete data an organisation has entered about you, please contact that organisation first; we will support it in responding.

For data you provide to us directly (registration, sign-in, billing, support requests), AICOUNTLY is the data fiduciary.

HOW WE SHARE INFORMATION

We do not share personal data with third parties for their own marketing or advertising. We share it only with:

1. Service providers who help us run the Services — cloud hosting and storage, email and SMS delivery (for example sign-in codes), payment processing, and, for AI Pulse only, the AI model providers named above.
2. Sign-in providers you choose — Apple, Google, LinkedIn or Microsoft receive what is needed to complete a sign-in you start with them, and Apple receives our request to revoke your sign-in when you delete your account.
3. Government systems, on your instruction — when you file a GST return or generate an e-way bill or e-invoice, the required data and your credentials for those systems are sent to the Goods and Services Tax Network (GSTN) and the National Informatics Centre (NIC) systems through our GST Suvidha Provider, which is licensed for that purpose.
4. Your organisation, where you use a Service made available to you by it (for example an administrator managing users, or a colleague with access to the same company's books).
5. Authorities, only where required by law; except where legally prohibited, we will try to notify the affected customer first.
6. A successor entity, in a merger, acquisition or asset sale, subject to this policy or one giving at least the same protection.

Every service provider we share personal data with is bound by contract to keep it confidential, to protect it at least as well as this policy does, and to use it only to provide its service to us.

WHERE DATA IS PROCESSED

AICOUNTLY is based in India and primarily serves Indian businesses, CA firms, company secretaries and HR teams. Data is primarily processed and stored in India. Some service providers — in particular the AI model providers used by AI Pulse, and the sign-in providers you choose — may process data in other countries, subject to the safeguards described above and to any restrictions notified under the DPDP Act.

DATA RETENTION

1. We keep your account and the data in it for as long as your account and the relevant Services are active.
2. If a paid subscription is cancelled or expires, we keep the data in that Service in a restricted account for 45 days, in which you can view and export it or renew, but not add or change records; it is then deleted. Your account, and your data in other Services you still use, are not affected.
3. When you delete your account, it is closed immediately and you are signed out everywhere. You can reopen your account any time in the next 45 days by signing in and choosing Keep my account. After 45 days your account and its data are deleted permanently. Backup copies are overwritten on our normal backup rotation after that. See Delete your account.
4. We keep some records for longer only where the law requires it: tax invoices and payment records for paid subscriptions, for the period Indian tax and company law requires (currently up to 8 years); and system and security logs for 180 days, as required by CERT-In directions.
5. Documents already filed with or generated on government systems (GST returns, e-way bills, e-invoices) are held by those authorities under their own rules and cannot be deleted by AICOUNTLY.

DATA SECURITY

We use encryption in transit (HTTPS) and at rest, access controls and monitoring to protect data against unauthorised access, loss or misuse. Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes, and government portal credentials and sign-in tokens are encrypted. Full detail is in our Security Policy. No method of transmission or storage is 100% secure; if a personal data breach affects you, we will notify you and the authorities as the law requires.

YOUR RIGHTS AND CHOICES

Subject to the DPDP Act and other applicable law, you can:

1. Access and correct your data — most of it directly in the Services; for anything else, write to us.
2. Delete your data or your whole account — in any AICOUNTLY app (open the app's settings and tap Delete account), on the web at manage.aicountly.com/account, or by email, as described at aicountly.com/delete-account. You can also delete individual companies, vouchers and other records in the Services without deleting your account.
3. Withdraw consent you have given, for example to AI Pulse sharing (Smart Books: Menu → Help & privacy → AI data sharing; Notes: Settings → AI in Notes). Withdrawing consent does not affect processing already carried out.
4. Nominate another person to exercise these rights on your behalf in the event of your death or incapacity.
5. Opt out of non-essential marketing messages using the unsubscribe link in them; transactional and account-security messages cannot be switched off while your account is active.
6. Raise a grievance with our Grievance Officer (below) and, if it is not resolved, complain to the Data Protection Board of India.

To exercise a right, write to support@aicountly.com from the email address on your account (or include your registered mobile number). We may need to verify your identity, and we respond within 30 days. Where the data belongs to an organisation's account, we will route the request through that organisation, as described above.

CHILDREN'S PRIVACY

The Services are business tools for working professionals and are not directed at children. We do not knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 18. If you believe a child has provided us personal data, contact us at support@aicountly.com and we will delete it.

CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

We may update this Privacy Policy to reflect changes in our practices, Services or legal requirements. We will update the "Last updated" date above; material changes will be communicated through the Services or by email before they take effect.

GRIEVANCE OFFICER / CONTACT US

For any question about this policy, or to exercise your rights, e-mail support@aicountly.com.

Our Grievance Officer, who also answers questions about the processing of your personal data on our behalf, is Vikram Rana — grievance@aicountly.com. You can write to the Grievance Officer directly about any complaint concerning your personal data. Our Principal Nodal Officer is Rahul Gupta — pno@aicountly.com.

We handle questions and complaints in three levels. Start at Level 1; you can move to the next level if your complaint is not resolved in time or you are not satisfied with the answer. Every complaint gets a reference number, and we tell you the outcome in writing.

Postal address for all levels: Aicountly Interactive Services Private Limited, 3069-B, Third Floor, Ajanta Enclaves, Sector 51-D, Chandigarh – 160047, India.

To help us act quickly, include: the product or app, your registered email or mobile number, your ticket number (if any), what happened and when, and what you would like us to do. If we need more information we will ask for it; we do not close a complaint for missing details without telling you.

If you are still not satisfied after Level 3, you may approach the National Consumer Helpline (1915, consumerhelpline.gov.in) or, for complaints about your personal data, the Data Protection Board of India. See also how to raise a complaint.