Terms of Service

1. Who we are and what these terms cover
2. What TradesPortal does
3. Your account
4. Price and payment
5. Cancelling
6. Your responsibilities
7. Storage and fair use
8. Availability
9. Third party services
10. Data protection
11. Suspension and termination
12. Liability
13. Changes to these terms
14. General
15. Schedule 1: Data Processing Agreement

1. Who we are and what these terms cover

TradesPortal is provided by GC Software Systems of Office 4, 25 High Street, Rainham, Gillingham, Kent, ME8 7HX.

These terms form the agreement between us when you open an account. By using TradesPortal you accept them. "We" and "us" means GC Software Systems; "you" means the business holding the account.

TradesPortal is sold to businesses. It is not a consumer service, and the consumer cancellation rights under the Consumer Contracts Regulations don't apply. Your right to cancel is set out in section 5, and it's a generous one.

2. What TradesPortal does

TradesPortal gives your business its own branded portal. You add your customers and their jobs, upload certificates and documents, and add product guides. Your customers log in to see their own jobs, download their own paperwork and view the guides for the products you've fitted.

Things worth being clear about:

• Each customer can only see their own jobs and documents. They can't see anyone else's.
• If you connect ServiceM8, we fetch your jobs and invoices into the portal about once an hour. It runs one way only, from ServiceM8 into TradesPortal. Nothing is ever written back into ServiceM8.
• Connecting ServiceM8 is optional. You can run the portal entirely by hand.
• One subscription covers one business, with as many customers, jobs and staff logins as you need.

3. Your account

• You must give us accurate details and keep them current.
• You're responsible for keeping your password to yourself, and for everything done under your login and the logins of any staff you add.
• Tell us promptly through our contact form if you think someone else has got into your account.
• Accounts are for one business. Don't share a portal across separate businesses.
• You must be 18 or over and able to enter into a contract.

We may access your portal to help you with a support request. That access is logged.

4. Price and payment

£27 per month, per business.

• Payment is monthly in advance, by Direct Debit through GoCardless.
• Your Direct Debit is set up when you open your account. Because of how Direct Debit works, the first payment is collected a few working days later. After that it's collected on the same day each month.
• There is no free trial, no setup fee and no minimum term.
• We are not VAT registered, so no VAT is charged and the price above is the full amount.
• You're protected by the Direct Debit Guarantee.
• If a payment fails we'll try again and let you know. If it hasn't succeeded within 7 days we may suspend your portal. Nothing is deleted while it's suspended, and paying restores it.

5. Cancelling

Cancel whenever you want, through our contact form. No notice period, no exit fee, no explanation needed.

• Cancellation takes effect at the end of the month you've already paid for. Your portal keeps running until then.
• We don't refund part months, except where section 12 says otherwise or where the law requires it.
• When your account closes, your customers can no longer log in. It's worth letting them know, and downloading anything you want to keep, before then. If you need help getting your documents out, ask us and we'll help.
• Once your account closes we delete your portal, your customers' data and your uploaded files within 30 days.
• Anything in your own ServiceM8 account stays there. We never touch it.

6. Your responsibilities

The important one first, because it's the one people don't think about:

The data in your portal is mostly about other people. Your customers' names, contact details, home addresses and certificates are in TradesPortal because you've put them there. You are the data controller for that information. It's your responsibility to have a lawful basis for holding it, for giving your customers portal logins, and for emailing them their login details. Your own privacy notice should mention that you use a customer portal. We act only on your instructions. See Schedule 1.

You also agree:

• only to upload documents and content you have the right to share;
• to make sure each document goes against the right customer and job, as that decides who can see it;
• not to use TradesPortal for anything unlawful;
• not to try to break into it, overload it, reverse engineer it, or work around its limits;
• not to resell or white label it without our written agreement.

7. Storage and fair use

There's no limit on customers, jobs or staff. Uploads come with a generous storage allowance of 10 GB per business, far more than certificates and manuals will ever need. If you get close, we'll talk to you first. We'll never delete anything without warning.

8. Availability

We work to keep TradesPortal running and we monitor it, but we don't offer a guaranteed uptime figure or service credits at this price. It may be unavailable for maintenance, or because something upstream has broken.

TradesPortal is not your only record. Keep your own copies of certificates and important documents. If you use ServiceM8, it remains your source of truth.

9. Third party services

The ServiceM8 connection depends on the ServiceM8 API. If ServiceM8 changes, restricts or withdraws it, the sync may stop working. We'll adapt as quickly as we reasonably can, but we don't control ServiceM8 and can't be responsible for its decisions, outages, pricing or terms. ServiceM8 is used under your own agreement with them.

Product guides can show YouTube videos. These are played by YouTube under YouTube's own terms.

10. Data protection

Our Privacy Policy explains what we hold about you. Where we handle personal data on your behalf, Schedule 1 applies. That's our data processing agreement under Article 28 of UK GDPR, and it forms part of these terms. You don't need to sign anything separate.

11. Suspension and termination

We may suspend or close your account if:

• payment fails and stays unpaid after 7 days;
• you materially breach these terms and haven't put it right within 14 days of us asking;
• your use is causing damage to the service or to another customer;
• we're required to by law.

We may also discontinue TradesPortal entirely on 60 days' written notice, refunding any period you've paid for but not received. We'd help you get your documents out so you could keep them.

12. Liability

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for:

• death or personal injury caused by our negligence;
• fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;
• anything else that can't lawfully be limited.

Subject to that:

• Our total liability to you in any 12 month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period.
• We're not liable for lost profits, lost business, lost goodwill, or for documents or data that have been lost or corrupted where you haven't kept your own copies.
• We're not liable for anything caused by ServiceM8, or for a document being shown to the wrong customer because it was uploaded against the wrong customer or job.

These limits don't affect our obligations under Schedule 1 or under data protection law.

13. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. For anything that materially affects you, including a price change, we'll give you at least 30 days' notice by email. If you don't want to accept it, cancel before it takes effect and you won't be charged the new amount.

14. General

• These terms and the documents they refer to are the whole agreement between us.
• If a court finds part of them unenforceable, the rest still stands.
• Not enforcing something immediately doesn't mean we've given up the right to.
• You may not transfer your rights under these terms without our written agreement. We may transfer ours if the business is sold, and we'd tell you.
• Nobody who isn't a party to these terms can enforce them.
• These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.

Schedule 1: Data Processing Agreement

This Schedule applies where we process personal data on your behalf, and satisfies Article 28(3) of the UK GDPR. It takes effect automatically when you open an account; there's nothing to sign. If your own compliance process needs a signed copy, contact us and we'll provide one.

1. Roles

You are the controller. We are the processor. Each of us complies with our own obligations under UK data protection law.

2. Details of the processing

3. Our obligations

We will:

• process personal data only on your documented instructions (what you add, upload, sync and send through your portal are those instructions) unless the law requires otherwise, in which case we'll tell you first unless we're prohibited from doing so;
• make sure anyone with access is bound by confidentiality;
• apply appropriate technical and organisational security measures, including encryption in transit, separation of each business's data, access logging and access control;
• not engage a sub-processor without telling you first, as set out below;
• help you respond to requests from individuals exercising their rights;
• help you with security, breach notification and data protection impact assessments, so far as is reasonable given the nature of the processing and what we have access to;
• delete the personal data we hold on your behalf within 30 days of your account closing, unless the law requires us to keep it;
• make available the information you need to demonstrate compliance with Article 28, and allow for audits, in practice by answering your questions in writing.

4. Breach notification

If we become aware of a personal data breach affecting data we process for you, we'll notify you without undue delay and in any event within 48 hours, with what we know at the time, and keep you updated as we learn more.

5. Sub-processors

You authorise the following:

We'll give you at least 30 days' notice before adding another, and you may cancel without penalty if you object.

ServiceM8 is not our sub-processor. It's your own system, held under your own agreement. We access it using the API key you supply, at your instruction.

6. International transfers

Data we process for you is held in the United Kingdom. We won't transfer it outside the UK unless an appropriate safeguard, such as the UK IDTA, is in place, and we'll tell you first.

7. Precedence

If anything in this Schedule conflicts with the rest of these terms, this Schedule wins for matters concerning personal data processed on your behalf.