Privacy | Global Office: Sync

Who we are

One company, and a person reads your email

Global Office: Sync is a product of Senes Visual, a small company in the United States. When this page says "we", that's who it means.

Questions, requests and complaints about your information go to [email protected]. A person reads every one.

Global Office: Sync is for businesses in the United States, and your records are stored on servers in the United States.

What it collects

What the work needs, and not much else

Most of it you give Global Office: Sync on purpose:

Your account. Your name, email address and business details, and a password that's stored in a form nobody can read back.
Your paperwork. The receipts, invoices, bills, quotes, W-9s, 1099s, insurance certificates and donation receipts you photograph or upload, and the details read from them.
The people in your paperwork. Vendors, customers and subcontractors, and the contact details you save for them. A W-9 or 1099 carries a Social Security number or EIN, and that number is encrypted before it's saved.
Your trips. The addresses and distances you enter for mileage.
Bank activity, only if you connect a bank. Account names, the last four digits and transactions, through Plaid. Your bank password never reaches Global Office: Sync.
Your accounting software, only if you connect it. Its chart of accounts, and permission to send the records you approve to QuickBooks, Xero or FreshBooks.
Your purchase. Your email address and what you bought, from Stripe. Card numbers go to Stripe and never reach us.

Some of it is recorded as the work happens:

The audit trail. Every change to your records, with who made it, when, and the IP address it came from. That's the trail's job.
Sign-ins. Kept only while they're live. Within an hour of one ending, it becomes part of an anonymous count of how many people signed in that day.
Your time zone, as your device reports it, so a date lands on the right day.

What it's used for

Running the product you bought

Your information is used to read your documents, keep your records, check them against each other, send what you approve to your accounting software and keep your account secure. That's the whole list.

We don't sell it. We don't use it for advertising, and nobody pays us to see it. There are no advertising or marketing pixels, no session recording and no tracking across other websites.

Your browser may send a Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control signal. Nothing here responds to either one, because none of the tracking they switch off happens here.

Artificial intelligence

How your documents get read

Global Office: Sync uses Google's Gemini service to read your documents and propose what they say. The whole document is sent. A W-9 or 1099 goes with the tax ID on it, because that's part of what has to be read. Global Office: Sync encrypts that number before saving it.

Gemini also suggests categories, what kind of business a vendor is and matches to a chart of accounts.

Global Office: Sync uses Google's paid service. Under Google's terms for paid use, Google doesn't use what's sent to improve its products, though it may keep it for a limited time to look for abuse. Google decides where that processing happens, not us.

Nothing the AI reads reaches your books until a person accepts it. The photo check before an upload runs on your device, not in AI, and sends nothing anywhere.

What's learned

One thing is shared between accounts

When a receipt is read, the product wording on each line, like "2x4x8 stud" or "3/4 PVC elbow", goes into a list that helps read the next receipt, for everybody. Vendor names, and the kind of business each one is, are treated the same way.

That list holds the wording and nothing else. It doesn't say who bought it, what it cost or which account it came from, and no account can read another account's records.

Who can see it

You, the people you choose, and a short list besides

You. Global Office: Sync checks who you are on the server every time you ask for a record, and never takes the browser's word for it.
Your bookkeeper, only what you share. You choose how far back shared records go, and whether tax documents, insurance certificates and bank activity are included. Either of you can end the connection, and nothing new is sent after that. Copies already sent stay with your bookkeeper.
Us. We can see account information when it's needed to keep the service running or fix a problem, or when the law requires it. Every look through our admin console is logged. Global Office: Sync is built and maintained with AI coding assistants from Anthropic and Google, and they can read the database while they're working on it. They're there to build and repair the product, not to look through anybody's records. Tax IDs and bank and accounting sign-ins stay encrypted to them, because the keys aren't kept in the database.
The services below, each one only for its own job.
Anyone the law makes us give it to. If that happens, we'll tell you, unless the law forbids it.

If you're a bookkeeper using Global Office: Sync for your clients, the client records you keep in it are yours, and we handle them on your behalf. A client with a question about their records should start with you.

Outside services

Where your information goes

DigitalOcean hosts the servers, in the United States.
Cloudflare carries every request to and from Global Office: Sync and protects it from attack.
Backblaze keeps documents and backups in private storage, in the United States.
Google reads documents through Gemini, sends email through Gmail, and suggests addresses and draws trips through Google Maps. Maps loads when the app opens, so Google receives your device's IP address, and the addresses you type as you type them.
Stripe handles payments.
Plaid handles the bank connections you choose to make.
QuickBooks, Xero or FreshBooks receive the records you approve, once you connect one. After that, their own privacy policy covers them.
Telegram carries error alerts to us when an automated step fails, with the details masked.

Connecting one of these doesn't connect the others, and each gets only what its job needs.

Email

What goes out in email

Global Office: Sync sends email to set or reset your password, and to say something is waiting for you in the Information Center. That notice carries a count and nothing else. No names, no amounts, no file names, and never a document.

Document requests are the exception. When a bookkeeper asks a client for documents, the email carries the bookkeeper's name, the client's business name and the note the bookkeeper wrote, because the client needs to know who's asking and for what. Reminders about that request carry the same.

If you were sent a link

Sending documents without an account

If a bookkeeper sent you a link to upload documents, you don't need an account. What you send goes to that bookkeeper's account and nowhere else, and it's read automatically by the same Gemini service to fill in the details. The link only accepts documents. It never shows you anything that was sent before.

The bookkeeper decides what's kept, so questions about your documents start with them. You can also write to us.

Cookies and your device

No cookies of its own

This website sets no cookies. It counts page views with Cloudflare Web Analytics, which doesn't use cookies either. Cloudflare may set a cookie of its own when it checks whether traffic is coming from a bot.

The app sets no cookies and runs no analytics. It keeps your sign-in and a few preferences in your browser's own storage. Signing out ends the sign-in, but some things stay on the device, like your business profile and the trip addresses you've saved. If you use a shared computer, clear this site's data from the browser when you're done.

How long it's kept

Seven years, unless you ask sooner

Your records are kept for seven years. The IRS usually has three years to come back and ask, six if income was left off a return, and seven for a bad debt claim. Seven years covers the longest of those.

A record you delete leaves your books right away. The audit trail keeps a note of the change, and the deleted record stays with your account's history until the account itself is deleted.
A bank you disconnect has its imported transactions deleted right away, and Plaid is told to end the connection.
Backups keep recovery points for 60 days, and one a month for three years. Something deleted is gone from the backups when the last one holding it expires.
Sign-ins are gone within an hour of ending. Records of an automated step that failed are gone after seven days.

Your choices

Getting a copy, fixing it, or having it deleted

Write to [email protected] from the email address on your account and ask for any of these:

A copy of your records. Most of it you can export from the app yourself, any time.
A correction. You can correct nearly everything in the app yourself. The audit trail keeps what it said before.
Deletion. We delete your account and everything tied to it, the audit trail included, within 30 days, and tell you when it's done. Backups expire on the schedule above. Records of what you paid us are kept as long as the law requires.

We'll answer within 30 days, and we'll check the request really came from you before acting on it. Asking won't change how you're treated.

The rest

Security, children and changes

Security. What Global Office: Sync does to protect your information is on the Security page, checked claim by claim against the working product.

Children. Global Office: Sync is for businesses, not for anyone under 18. We don't knowingly collect information about children, beyond what's on a business document somebody uploads.

Changes. If this page changes in a way that matters to you, we'll say so in the app or by email before the change takes effect. The date at the top always shows the last change.

Questions go to [email protected].

What happens to your information