Terms of Service

These terms are between you, the person or business using kBooks, and the operator of kBooks(“we”, “us”). By creating an account you accept them. If you are accepting on behalf of a business, you are confirming you are allowed to bind that business.

kBooks is bookkeeping software: a general ledger, invoicing and bills, bank-feed review, reconciliation, reporting, and a document vault. We provide it as a service over the internet, we keep it running, and we improve it. We do not provide accounting, tax, legal or financial advice, and nothing the software produces is a substitute for a qualified accountant.

Some features depend on services you hold with someone else, most obviously the bank feed and online payments through Stripe. Where that is the case the feature depends on that relationship continuing, and it is not ours to guarantee.

Everything you put into kBooks stays yours. We claim no ownership of your ledger, your documents, your customer list or anything else you enter or upload. We use it to run the service for you and for nothing else: we do not sell it, we do not rent it, we do not mine it to build a product for someone else, and we do not train models on it.

You can download all of it at any time, in formats other software can read, and that works whether your account is paid, unpaid, or closed. It is a read, and reads never stop.

You are responsible for what happens under your login, so choose a password you do not use elsewhere and do not share it. Tell us promptly if you think someone else has got into your account. You are responsible for the people you invite and for the access you give them.

What you may and may not use kBooks for is in the next clause. It is short, and it is the part of this agreement we will actually enforce.

You agree not to use kBooks to break the law, to keep books for a business you do not own or represent, to store someone else’s data without the right to, to attack or overload the service, or to resell access to people who are not part of your own business without agreeing that with us first.

You also agree not to use kBooks, and in particular not to use online payments, for any business or activity on Stripe’s list of prohibited and restricted businesses, as it stands from time to time. That list is written by Stripe, not by us, and it is part of this agreement by reference: if a business is on it, we cannot take payments for it, and we will not keep books for the part of it that is prohibited.

If we reasonably believe an account is being used for any of the above we may suspend it, disconnect its online payments, and answer questions about it from Stripe, a bank, or a lawful authority. We will tell you what we did and why unless the law prevents us, and clause 8 still gives you the chance to export your books first.

When you turn on online payments, your customers pay through Stripe. The Stripe account that receives the money is yours: you open it, you agree to Stripe’s Connected Account Agreement, Stripe checks your identity, and Stripe pays the money into your bank. We are the software that hands the payment to Stripe and records it in your books. We are not the merchant, we never hold your customers’ money, and we cannot move it.

Because the Stripe account is yours, its consequences are yours too: Stripe’s processing fees, refunds you owe your customers, chargebacks and disputes, and anything Stripe asks of you to keep the account open. If Stripe closes or restricts your account, online payments stop in kBooks until it is restored, and your books are unaffected.

You can disconnect Stripe from kBooks at any time from Books settings. Doing so stops new payment links; it does not touch your Stripe account or the money already in it.

Paid plans are billed in advance for the period you choose. Prices, what each plan includes, and any usage limits are shown before you buy and inside the product. If we change a price, the change applies from your next renewal and never mid-term, and we tell you before it happens.

If you are unhappy with kBooks, tell us within 30 days of a charge and we will refund it in full. No form, no argument, and you keep your data either way. If you cancel an annual plan part-way through, we refund the unused months rather than keeping them.

If a payment fails we will tell you and try again before anything changes. If it keeps failing, the account moves to a read-only state rather than a locked door: you can still read and export everything, you just cannot post new entries until it is settled.

You can cancel at any time, from inside the product, without talking to anyone. Cancelling stops the next renewal.

When an account is closed we keep its books for 90 days and then delete them. That window exists so leaving is reversible and so you can still export after you have stopped paying, which is exactly when most people discover they need to.

We may suspend or close an account that is being used to break the law, to attack the service, or in a way that puts other customers at risk. Except where we are legally prevented, we will tell you why and give you the chance to export first.

We work to keep kBooks available and we monitor it, but we do not offer a contractual uptime guarantee, and we would rather say so than publish one we could not stand behind. Planned maintenance is announced in advance where it will be noticeable.

The service is provided as it is. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted or error free, or that it will meet a particular regulatory requirement of your business. Your accountant, not your software, signs your return.

This is the clause that exists to protect us, and here it is in the open. To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for lost profits, or for loss caused by data you entered incorrectly. Our total liability for any claim is limited to what you paid us in the twelve months before it arose.

Nothing here limits liability that cannot legally be limited, including for fraud or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. If you have paid us nothing, our liability is limited to nothing, which is the honest consequence of a free plan rather than a trick.

How we handle personal data is set out in the privacy policy, and where we process personal data on your behalf, in the data processing agreement. Both are published alongside these terms and form part of this agreement.

If we change these terms in a way that matters to you, we tell you at least 30 days before the change takes effect, and the date at the top of this page always says when it was last reviewed.

If you do not accept a change, cancelling before it takes effect is the remedy, and the refund promise above still applies.

Before anyone involves a court, write to us. We answer within one business day. Most things that look like a dispute are a misunderstanding about a number, and those are quicker to fix than to argue about.