1.Who is responsible for your data
Abacist is operated by Fontainhas Brothers, Lda. You can reach us at hello@abacist.io for any question about this policy.
Two different relationships apply, and the distinction matters for your rights. We are the controller for data about your own account, including the address you sign in with, your name and profile details. For the production records you enter into the service, such as crew and vendor details, we act as a processor on behalf of the production company that holds the account; that company is the controller and decides what is stored and for how long.
If you are a crew member or supplier and want your details corrected or removed, contact the production you worked with first. We will help them action it, and we will respond directly if they cannot.
2.What the service holds
Abacist stores what a production accounting system needs to function. We do not buy personal data, and we do not collect anything for advertising.
- Account details: name, email address, and profile photo if you set one.
- Profile details you choose to add: telephone number, postal address, and a tax identification number.
- Crew and personnel records entered by a production: name, email, telephone, photo, postal address, tax identification number and country, and where a production records it, an identification document type and number.
- Supplier records: company or contact name, email, telephone, postal address, and tax identification number.
- Financial records: budgets, purchase orders, transactions, petty cash, and the bank details of the production's own accounts, including account and routing numbers.
- Documents: invoices, receipts and statements you upload, or send to a project's intake address. These frequently contain personal data placed there by whoever issued them.
- Email sent to and from a project's intake address, including attachments and sender details.
- Security and operational records: audit entries, sign-in events, and error reports.
- On this website, only if you accept its cookie notice: the pages you visit, how you reached them, your device and browser type, an approximate location, and a recording of how you used the pages with anything you type masked. If you reject it, the same without the recording, under an identifier that changes every day and with nothing stored on your device.
- Product usage data from the signed-in application, including session recordings that capture how pages were used.
3.What we use it for
To provide the service: authenticating you, showing you the productions you have access to, and running the accounting features you use.
To process documents you submit. Invoices, receipts and statements are read by an automated extraction step so their figures can be proposed to you. A person reviews and confirms the result before it becomes an accounting record. The extraction proposes; it does not post.
To validate tax identification numbers you ask us to check, against the relevant public registry.
To send transactional email: sign-in links, approval requests, reminders and notifications.
To keep the service secure and accountable by detecting abuse, rate-limiting sign-in attempts, and maintaining an audit trail of who changed what.
To understand how the application and this website are used, so both can be improved. This is the only purpose session recording serves, and on this website it happens only if you accept its cookie notice.
To arrange a call you request from this website. When you choose to continue, Apollo saves the details you entered: name, email, role, company, production and what you would like to improve. It then shows the next step, usually the booking calendar. We use those details to follow up and prepare for the conversation even if you do not select a time.
4.Our legal basis
Where we act as controller, we rely on performance of a contract for anything necessary to deliver the service you signed up for, and on our legitimate interests for security, abuse prevention, audit logging and product improvement. Where a purpose requires consent, we ask for it and you can withdraw it at any time.
Where we act as processor for production records, the legal basis is the controlling production company's to establish, and our processing follows their documented instructions.
Arranging a call you ask for relies on taking steps at your request before any contract is entered into.
Measuring how this website is used relies on your consent, asked in its cookie notice. If you reject it, we still measure the visit, without a recording and without storing anything on your device, relying on our legitimate interest in knowing how many people the site reaches and how they use it.
5.Who processes data on our behalf
We use a small number of sub-processors. Each is named here with what it actually does, rather than described in general terms.
- Google Cloud and Firebase: application hosting, authentication, the database, and file storage. This is where the service and your data live.
- Google Gemini and Google Document AI: automated extraction of figures from documents you upload or email in. Documents are sent for processing when this step runs.
- Resend: sending transactional email and receiving mail addressed to project intake addresses.
- PostHog (EU region): product analytics, session recording and error reporting for the signed-in application, and for this website if you accept its cookie notice. When you reject it, it still measures your visit to this website, without a recording and without storing anything on your device.
- The European Commission's VIES service: checking VAT numbers when a tax identification number is submitted for validation.
- Apollo: the enquiry intake and meeting scheduler on this website. When you choose to continue, its widget receives technical request data and the details you entered. Apollo saves the enquiry and shows the next step, usually the available meeting times.
- Google Workspace: our own email and calendar, where a booked call is held and where an enquiry you email us arrives.
6.Where data is held
The application, its database and its file storage run in Google Cloud's Netherlands region, and our analytics provider is configured to its European region. The service's data is stored in the European Union.
Some sub-processors are organisations that may access data from outside the European Economic Area for support purposes. Where that happens it is covered by the transfer safeguards in our agreements with them, including Standard Contractual Clauses.
Enquiry and booking details are the exception. Apollo processes them in the United States under its EU-US Data Privacy Framework certification, with Standard Contractual Clauses as a fallback.
Documents are the other exception. When the service extracts figures from a document, Google processes it on infrastructure that may be outside the European Economic Area, because the extraction models run on Google's global endpoints. That processing is covered by our data processing terms with Google, including Standard Contractual Clauses. The document itself, and what is read from it, are stored in the European Union.
7.How long it is kept
Production records are kept for as long as the production's account is active, and then according to the instructions of the production company that controls them. Accounting records carry statutory retention periods that outlast the account.
Closing an account archives it rather than erasing it. Access ends and memberships are deactivated, but the underlying records are retained, because most of them are the accounting records above. Pending invitations are deleted at that point.
Sign-in and security events are kept for 90 days. The audit trail over accounting records is kept for as long as the records themselves, because its purpose is to show who changed what.
Enquiry and booking details are kept while we are in conversation with you, and removed when you ask.
This website's analytics are kept for up to seven years, the period our analytics provider applies to our plan. Session recordings, from this website or the application, are deleted after 30 days.
8.Your rights
Under the General Data Protection Regulation you can ask for access to your personal data, correction of anything inaccurate, erasure, restriction of processing, portability, and you can object to processing based on legitimate interests.
Erasure has limits, and we would rather be plain about them than quiet. Where a record is one we are required by law to keep, especially an accounting record, we cannot erase it while that obligation lasts. We will tell you what is held, what we can remove, and what we must keep and why.
Write to hello@abacist.io and we will respond within one month. Requests are handled by a person; there is no self-service delete. If your data was entered by a production company, we will route the request to them and support them in answering it.
You also have the right to complain to the data protection supervisory authority in the country where you live or work.
9.How it is protected
Access is enforced in the database itself rather than only in the interface, so a request that is not entitled to a record cannot read it regardless of where it came from. Sensitive operations are checked a second time on the server.
Data is encrypted in transit and at rest by our hosting provider. Sign-in attempts are rate-limited, and changes to accounting records are recorded in an audit trail.
No system is beyond compromise. If a breach affects your personal data and is likely to present a risk to you, we will notify you and the relevant supervisory authority as the law requires.
10.Cookies on this website
When you first visit, a notice asks whether we may use cookies to measure how this website is used. Nothing is measured until you choose, and the site works the same either way.
If you accept, PostHog, our analytics provider in its EU region, sets a first-party cookie that lasts a year and records how you use the pages, including session recordings in which anything you type is masked. We use this only to improve the website.
If you reject, or your browser sends a Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track signal, nothing is stored on your device except a note of that choice. We still count the visit and how the pages are used — where you click and scroll, how quickly the pages load and any errors they hit, and whether you send an enquiry, with the role you pick in it — under a daily identifier that PostHog derives on its own servers from your IP address and browser details, using a key it discards every day, so a visit on one day cannot be linked to a visit on another.
Your choice is kept in your browser so the notice does not return, and you can change it at any time with Cookie settings at the foot of every page.
The booking form loads Apollo's meeting widget only when you choose to continue, so it can save your enquiry and show available times. Apollo's privacy and cookie terms apply to that widget. If it cannot open, the form offers to send your details to us by email instead.
The signed-in application at app.abacist.io is different: it sets a session cookie so you stay signed in, and it runs the product analytics described above. That is a working application rather than a brochure, and it tells you so when you sign in.
If you accepted this website's cookie notice and sign in to the application, we link your visits to this website from that browser to your account — the ones before you signed in and the ones after — so we can see how you found us. Rejecting later, or turning on a browser privacy signal, stops further visits being linked; it does not undo a link already made. If you rejected, nothing is linked.
11.Changes to this policy
When this policy changes we update the date at the top of the page. If a change materially affects how we handle your personal data, we will tell account holders by email rather than relying on you to notice.
12.Contact
Email hello@abacist.io. Questions about this policy reach a person, not a queue.