Privacy Notice

POPIA (South Africa) · UK GDPR · US state privacy laws · last updated 14 July 2026 · terms · refunds

Who we are

WhatInvoice is operated by SANDZ, Cape Town, South Africa (www.sandz.co.za) — the responsible party under POPIA and the data controller under UK GDPR for your account data. Contact / Information Officer: [email protected].

For your customers' details (the people you invoice), you are the responsible party/controller — we process that data only on your instructions, to create and deliver your documents.

What we collect, and why

Your account: WhatsApp number, name, email — to identify you, deliver one-time login codes and your documents. Your number is your login; we never store passwords.
Your business vault: business name, address, VAT number, logo, payment terms, and the banking details you choose to print on your invoices.
Your documents & customers: the invoices and quotes you create, and the customer names, emails, phone numbers and addresses you attach to them.
Your messages to the bot: processed to build your documents. Confirmed messages are kept as examples so the assistant learns your phrasing — used only for your account, never shared across users.
Voice notes: transcribed to text on our own server — audio is not sent to any third-party speech service. Audio files are retained briefly for processing, then removed.
Payments: we receive payment confirmations and a billing token from our payment providers — we never see or store card numbers.
Team members: if you invite a teammate, we store their number and name, and tag the documents they create.
Technical logs: security events (login attempts, blocked requests) including IP addresses, kept to protect the service.

AI processing — said plainly

When a message can't be read by our built-in parser, its text may be processed by third-party AI providers (for example Google Gemini, or free-tier providers via our routing layer) solely to extract the invoice details. What's sent is the message text and recent example pairs from your own account — never your banking details and never your customer database. Where providers offer the control, they are not permitted to train on this data.

Who we share data with (operators / processors)

Provider	What	Why
Meta (WhatsApp Business)	your messages to/from the bot	the WhatsApp channel itself
Resend	recipient email, document PDF	emailing your invoices & codes
PayFast (ZAR) / international payment partner (GBP·USD·EUR)	billing details you give them	subscription payments
Cloudflare	web traffic	security & delivery of the site
AI providers (Google et al.)	message text needing AI parsing	reading messy messages

We never sell your personal information, and we don't share it for advertising. Marketing messages only with your consent — reply MUTE to stop them any time.

Where your data lives

Your account and documents live on our own servers in South Africa, with encrypted nightly backups (retained up to 30 days on a separate server). The processors above may handle data in the UK, EU or USA under their own safeguards.

How it's protected

Passwordless login (one-time codes); revoke every session instantly by replying STOP.
Each business's data lives in its own isolated vault — one tenant can never read another's.
Banking-detail changes need a fresh WhatsApp code even inside a valid session, and alert you immediately.
Encrypted transport everywhere; a firewalled server that can't be used to reach anything else; cryptographically verified payment callbacks.

How long we keep it

While your account is active. Delete your account (Settings → Delete) and everything — account, vaults, documents, learning examples — is removed immediately and permanently; backups age out within 30 days. Security logs are kept up to 12 months.

Your rights

Everyone: access & export (Settings → Download my data — a full ZIP), correction (Settings), deletion (Settings → Delete my account), and marketing opt-out (MUTE).

South Africa (POPIA)

Complaints: the Information Regulator — [email protected].

United Kingdom (UK GDPR)

Legal bases: contract (running your account), legitimate interests (security, improvement), consent (marketing — withdrawable any time). You also have rights to restriction and portability, and may complain to the ICO (ico.org.uk).

United States

We do not sell or "share" personal information as defined by the CCPA and similar state laws, and we honour access/deletion requests from all US users via the same Settings tools or by email. No cross-context behavioural advertising.

Children

WhatInvoice is a business tool, not intended for anyone under 18.

Changes

Material changes will be announced on WhatsApp or by email before they take effect.

WhatInvoice · a SANDZ product · www.sandz.co.za · [email protected]