Privacy Policy

01Your business records stay with you

Your sales, your customers, your prices, your costs, your stock counts and your takings are written to a database on the device you recorded them on. We do not hold a copy, and there is no central book of anybody's trade on our servers. The app only ever contacts BMan for the short list of jobs below. Everything else it does, it does on your device, with or without the internet.

02Your account and subscription

To have an account at all we hold what you gave us when you registered and what your business puts on its paperwork.

• Your name, email address and phone number, and your password, which is stored hashed
• Your business name, business email, phone, TIN, physical address, tax rate and currency. The app sends these to your account so every device and the website print the same details
• Your plan, its billing cycle, your payments and your invoices
• If you choose to save a card for renewals, our payment provider gives us a token for it plus the brand, last four digits and expiry. The card number, the CVV and the PIN never reach us
• Anything you write to us: support messages, contact forms and the emails that follow

03Devices, for the licence

When you sign in on a computer or a phone, that device is registered on your account: an identifier for the machine, the name it calls itself, and the platform it runs on. This is how a plan's device limit is counted and how your dashboard can show you which machines are signed in, and remove one. Every later call from that device carries the identifier so we can check it is still trusted.

04Emails the app asks us to send

The app never talks to an email provider itself. When you switch on an alert or schedule a report, the app posts what happened to us, and we render the message and send it. What travels is what the email needs to say.

• Alerts: the sale code and total, how it was paid, the number of items and the item lines, the customer's name if the sale has one, stock received, products that are low or out, and security events such as a PIN being changed
• Reports: the figures for the period (sales, cost, profit, expenses, purchases, credit outstanding), your top products, payment methods and low stock, and any PDF or spreadsheet the schedule attaches
• Who receives it: the account owner always. A report can also go to your administrators and to up to three addresses you type in yourself
• We keep a record of each event (the account, the device, the app's event id, the type and whether it was sent) for seven days, so a retry is not sent twice and the sending limits can be counted. That record is then deleted. The figures and the attached files are not kept after the email goes out
• Emails leave through our email provider, which handles them for delivery

05Work passed between your own devices

When your staff work on their own machines, their work has to reach the person they report to. It travels through us in a sealed packet that only the receiving computer can open. We hold the public half of each device's keys so the devices can seal packets to each other. The private halves never leave the devices, so we cannot read what is inside. A packet waits only while the other computer is offline: it is deleted the moment that computer collects it, and one still waiting after 48 hours is dropped and its sender told to send it again.

06The supply network, only if you turn it on

Supplying is off until you switch it on. If you do switch it on, you are asking to be found by other businesses, so some of what you carry becomes visible to them.

• Your entry: what you deal in, where you are, your phone number, your postal address and your branch names
• Your catalogue: the name, category and unit of each product, and how many you have in stock. Your prices, your costs, your customers and your takings are not sent and are not part of matching
• A search sends the names of what you are short of, so we can say who carries them
• A request you send carries what you are asking for, the quantities, your reference and your note, to the one business you addressed it to
• A request is deleted from our server as soon as both sides hold it, and the moment it is cancelled or declined. Each business then keeps its own copy on its own machine. One that nobody collects is swept up after 30 days
• Switch supplying off and your entry stops being searched

07Backups go to your own Google Drive

A backup is written on your device and uploaded straight from there to a private folder in your own Google Drive that belongs to this app alone. It does not pass through us and we cannot read it. Connecting Drive opens Google's own sign-in page, so the app never sees your Google password; we hold what Google hands back for the few seconds it takes the app to claim it, and the token is then kept on your device. A backup holds your business (products, stock, sales, purchases, customers, suppliers, expenses, documents, reports, settings and branding) and not your sign-in, your licence, your PIN or your devices' keys. You can also write a backup to a file on your own machine instead.

08This website

Signing in here keeps you signed in until you sign out. Your browser also remembers small things for you, such as whether you chose the light or dark theme. There is no advertising on this site, and no third-party tracking scripts. Our servers keep ordinary technical logs of requests so we can keep the service running and investigate problems.

09How long we keep things

• Account, business and billing details: while the account exists, and afterwards where tax or accounting law requires it
• Device registrations: until you remove the device or close the account
• Notification event records: seven days
• Relayed work packets: until collected, and 48 hours at the very most
• Supply requests: until both sides hold them, and 30 days at the very most
• Supplier entry and catalogue: until you switch supplying off or send an update, which replaces the last one

10Sharing

We do not sell your data and we do not pass it to advertisers. It reaches others only where the job requires it: our payment provider, so you can pay; our email provider, so the messages you asked for are delivered; Google, when you connect your own Drive; and the business you address a supply request to. Beyond that, only where Rwandan law obliges us.

11Your choices

• Ask us what we hold about you, and have anything wrong put right
• Switch off the email alerts and reports, and the app stops sending those events
• Switch off supplying, and your entry stops being searched
• Remove a device from your dashboard, and it can no longer reach the relay or the supply network
• Disconnect Google Drive at any time. The backups already there stay in your Drive and are yours to delete
• Close the account and ask us to delete what we hold. Your own records are on your own machines, so deleting them is yours to do

12Contact us

Questions about your data, or a request about it? Write to support@bman.rw, or call +250781121117. BMan Ltd, Kigali, Rwanda.