Privacy Policy

Porchlight ("Porchlight", "we", "us", "our") is appointment-booking software for New Zealand service businesses. We are committed to protecting personal information and complying with the Privacy Act 2020 and its 13 Information Privacy Principles (IPPs). This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, how we use and disclose it, and the rights you have.

1. Who this policy applies to, and our two roles

Porchlight serves two groups of people, and our responsibilities differ for each:

• Businesses that use Porchlight (account holders and their staff). For your information, Porchlight is the "agency" under the Privacy Act and is responsible for how we handle it.
• Clients of those businesses (people who book appointments). When a business uses Porchlight to take bookings, that business is the agency responsible for its own clients' personal information. Porchlight holds and processes that information on the business's behalf and only as needed to provide the service. If you are a client, please also read the privacy policy of the business you booked with, and direct access or correction requests about your booking to them in the first instance.

2. Information we collect

From businesses and their staff:

• Account and contact details — name, email address, phone number, business name and address, role;
• Login credentials (passwords are stored only as salted hashes) and any two-factor authentication settings;
• Billing information — subscription plan and payment details, which are processed and stored by our payment provider (see section 6); we do not store full card numbers.

From, or about, a business's clients (entered by the business or by clients when booking):

• Name, email address, phone number;
• Appointment history, service preferences, deposits and payment records, and any notes the business records;
• Responses to intake or consultation forms the business creates. These may include health information (for example for physiotherapy, massage, beauty or wellness services). Health information is subject to additional protection — see section 9;
• Communication and consent records — whether a client has agreed to receive SMS or email reminders, and the messages sent.

Automatically, when you use our website or app:

• Device and usage data such as IP address, browser type, pages viewed and timestamps, from essential cookies and from website analytics (see section 12). We do not use advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

3. How we collect it (IPP 1–4)

We collect personal information directly from you where we can — when you create an account, make a booking, complete a form, or contact support — and from the business you booked with. We collect only what we need for the purposes in section 4, by lawful and fair means, and we tell you what we are collecting and why at the point of collection.

4. Why we use your information

We use personal information to:

• Provide, operate and maintain the Porchlight service and your account;
• Take and manage bookings, deposits and payments, and — where a business has enabled it and the client has been told at booking time — charge no-show or late-cancellation fees under the business's policy;
• Send transactional messages such as booking confirmations, reminders and account notices by email and, where consented, SMS;
• Provide customer support and respond to your enquiries;
• Keep the service secure, prevent fraud and abuse, and meet our legal obligations;
• Improve the service (using aggregated or de-identified data wherever possible).

We do not use client personal information for our own marketing, and we do not sell personal information to anyone.

5. Marketing and reminder messages (consent)

Appointment reminders and confirmations are transactional messages sent on behalf of the business you booked with, based on the consent recorded at booking time. Any marketing or promotional electronic messages are sent only with consent and always include a way to unsubscribe, consistent with the Unsolicited Electronic Messages Act 2007. You can opt out of non-essential messages at any time; some transactional messages are necessary to deliver the service.

6. Who we disclose information to (IPP 11)

We do not sell personal information. We disclose it only:

• To service providers who help us run Porchlight, under contract and only for that purpose — including Stripe (payment processing), TNZ Group (SMS delivery in New Zealand), Cloudflare (content delivery, security and spam protection on our forms), Sentry (error and crash reporting), our transactional email provider, and our cloud hosting and infrastructure providers;
• To the business you booked with, for clients' booking information;
• Where required or authorised by law, or to establish, exercise or defend legal claims, or to protect the safety of any person;
• In connection with a business sale or restructure, in which case the recipient is bound to protect the information consistently with this policy.

7. Sending information overseas (IPP 12)

Some of our service providers (for example Stripe and other infrastructure providers) store or process information outside New Zealand. Before disclosing personal information overseas we take reasonable steps to ensure the recipient is required to protect it with safeguards comparable to those under the Privacy Act 2020, or we rely on another basis permitted by IPP 12 (such as your authorisation).

8. Storage and security (IPP 5)

We store information using reputable cloud providers and protect it with encryption in transit and at rest, access controls, and monitoring. Payment card data is handled by Stripe, a PCI-DSS Level 1 certified provider; Porchlight does not store full card numbers. No system is perfectly secure, but we take reasonable steps to protect personal information against loss, misuse and unauthorised access.

9. Health information

Where a business uses intake or consultation forms that collect health information, that information is also protected by the Health Information Privacy Code 2020. We treat it as sensitive: it is only accessible to the business that collected it and to Porchlight to the extent needed to provide the service, and it is subject to the security and retention measures in this policy.

10. How long we keep it, and disposal (IPP 9)

We keep personal information only for as long as it is needed for the purposes above or to meet legal, tax or dispute-resolution obligations. When a business closes its account we delete or de-identify its data within a reasonable period, except where we must retain records by law. A business can export its client list and booking data at any time (CSV), and clients can ask the business to delete their information.

11. Your right to access and correct (IPP 6 & 7)

You have the right to ask for confirmation of whether we hold personal information about you, to access it, and to request correction of anything inaccurate. To make a request, contact our Privacy Officer (section 15). We will respond as soon as reasonably practicable and within the timeframes the Privacy Act requires (generally 20 working days). There is normally no charge. If you are a client of a business that uses Porchlight, we will usually direct your request to that business, as they are the agency responsible for your booking information.

12. Cookies

Our websites (porchlight.co.nz and the booking pages at book.porchlight.co.nz) use Google Analytics 4, loaded through Google Tag Manager, to count visits and see which pages are used. It tells us how the site is used in aggregate; we do not use advertising cookies, and we do not track you across other websites. The signed-in app uses only essential cookies, to keep you logged in and remember your preferences. A booking page embedded in a business's own website, and pages reached from a booking link, load no analytics at all.

Our mobile apps contain no analytics at all — see section 17.

13. Privacy breaches (Part 6, Privacy Act 2020)

If a privacy breach occurs that is likely to cause serious harm, we will notify the Office of the Privacy Commissioner and affected individuals as soon as practicable, in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020. Where a breach affects a business's client information, we will inform the business so it can meet its own obligations.

14. Children

Porchlight is intended for businesses and their adult clients. Where a booking is made for a minor, it should be made by a parent or guardian. We do not knowingly collect information from children except as part of a booking made by a responsible adult.

15. Contact us, and complaints

Our Privacy Officer is responsible for privacy at Porchlight. If you have a question, want to access or correct your information, or wish to make a complaint, contact us at [email protected].

If you are not satisfied with our response, you can complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner — the independent regulator under the Privacy Act 2020 — at privacy.org.nz or 0800 803 909.

For help using Porchlight, see our support page.

17. Our mobile apps

This section covers the Porchlight app for clients and the Porchlight Business app for businesses and their staff.

• No analytics or advertising tracking. The apps contain no analytics or advertising software and do not track you across other apps or websites.
• Crash reports. If an app stops working it sends a report to Sentry: device model, operating system version, app version and the technical detail of the error. Reports are not linked to your name or email address.
• No purchases in the app. The apps sell no plans or subscriptions. Where a business takes a deposit for a booking, that payment is processed by Stripe on that business's own Stripe account; we do not store your card details.
• No push notifications are sent by the current versions of the apps. Booking confirmations and reminders come by email, and by text where that was consented to.
• Permissions. The current versions ask for no camera, photo or location access.
• Stored on your phone: your sign-in token, held in the phone's secure storage. Signing out or deleting the app removes it.
• Deleting your account. A client can delete their account from the Porchlight app. Staff accounts are removed by the business that created them. You can also email us (section 15) and we will action it.

18. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. We will post the updated version here with a new "last updated" date and, where changes are significant, notify account holders by email.