Privacy policy

Who this covers

Two different people read this page, and the answer is different for each.

• Cleaning companies. A company that signs up decides what it collects from its own customers and why. Grout holds those records and works on them for the company, under the company's instructions.
• Their customers. If a cleaning company booked you, that company is the one to ask about your details first. Write to us and we pass the request on to them, and help them answer it.

For the account itself — who signed up, what they pay, and how the service is kept running and secure — Grout decides, and this page is that decision written down.

What we hold

• Accounts and sign-in. Name, email address, a password held by our authentication provider, and the record of when and from where an account signed in.
• Subscription. The plan, the billing contact and the invoices. Card numbers are typed into the payment provider's own form and never reach Grout.
• A company's customer records. Names, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, notes, job history, quotes and invoices — whatever the company types in or a booking form collects.
• Jobs and crews. Schedules, clock-ins, working hours, time off, and — where the company turns tracking on — the location a crew's phone reports while a job is on the way.
• Messages. Email, text messages and chat with the front desk assistant, with what was sent and when.
• Files. Photos and documents uploaded against a job, a customer or a crew member.
• Devices. The token a phone gives us so the app can receive a notification.
• Technical records. IP address, browser, and the error reports and diagnostic logs a running service writes.

Why we hold it

To run the service and keep it running: take bookings, build schedules, send the confirmations and reminders a job needs, take payment, answer support, investigate abuse and security problems, and meet the record-keeping the law asks of us.

Grout does not sell personal information, and does not use one company's customer records to advertise to those customers or to anybody else.

Who else sees it

The service is built on other companies' services. Each is given only what its job needs, and none of them may use it for anything else:

• Hosting, and the network the site is served from.
• The database the records are stored in.
• Accounts, sign-in and subscription billing.
• Card payments a company takes from its own customers, which run through that company's own connected payment account.
• The AI model behind the front desk assistant, which sees what it is asked to work on.
• Email delivery, text messaging and push notifications.
• File storage, and error monitoring.

We also disclose information where the law requires it, and to a buyer if the business is ever sold — in which case this page says so before anything changes hands.

Separately, a company can add its own advertising and analytics tags to its booking, quote and tracking pages. Those tags are that company's choice and its responsibility, they report to the advertising company that issued them, and they never run in the admin workspace, the crew portal or the API.

Cookies

Grout sets the cookies it takes to sign you in, keep you signed in, and remember a preference such as the theme. It sets no advertising cookies of its own and follows you onto no other website.

Where it is kept, and for how long

Records are held on servers in the United States, and our providers may process them in other countries under contracts that carry the protections the law requires.

A company's records are kept while its account is open. When an account is closed we delete or anonymise them within 30 days, apart from what we have to keep for tax, accounting and fraud records, and from backups, which age out on their own schedule.

Your choices

You can ask for a copy of what we hold about you, for it to be corrected, for it to be deleted, and for us to stop a particular use of it. Depending on where you live you may have other rights, and where you do, they apply here.

A cleaning company can do most of this itself from its workspace. For anything else, write to support@getgrout.com, and we answer within 30 days. If a cleaning company holds your details, write to them first — and to us if they do not answer.

Keeping it safe

Traffic is encrypted in transit, access to live data is limited to the people who need it, and card numbers never touch our code. No service is immune, so if you find a weakness, report it to support@getgrout.com rather than anywhere public, and we will work with you on it.

Children

Grout is a tool for running a business and is not meant for children. We do not knowingly collect information from anybody under 16. If a child's details have reached us, write in and we will remove them.

Changes to this page

When this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. A change that affects what happens to your information is announced by email or in the workspace before it takes effect.

Contact

Privacy questions, requests and complaints go to support@getgrout.com. Nothing here takes away a right you have under the privacy law where you live, including the right to complain to your own data protection regulator.

The other half of the agreement is the terms of service.