Privacy Policy

1. Information We Collect

• Email addresses submitted through the Handbuilt Lab waitlist.
• Registration details, including payer and participant names, email addresses, church name when provided, and payment status.
• Information you provide when booking a call or corresponding with us.
• Basic technical information such as browser type, device information, IP address, and page interactions.
• For any early-access or preview workflow, the ministry context, writing samples, notes, or examples you choose to provide.
• If your church uses the Finance pilot, church and member information used to control access.
• QuickBooks connection details and encrypted access credentials, company information, account names and identifiers, Balance Sheet reports, Profit and Loss reports, budgets, classes, and accounting preferences.
• For the few accounts Finance flags for a closer look, such as uncategorized spending or Opening Balance Equity, that year's transactions in those accounts: the date, type, amount and other account of each, and the payee and memo on spending. Finance does not keep the name or memo on a gift, deposit or other money received.
• Finance report settings, source captures, account mappings, generated reports and exports, and records about each Finance job.
• If your church uses Finance, the answers you give to its monthly review questions and the written reviews produced for you.

To prepare a Finance report for a selected month, the service reads each month of the report year through the selected month and the year before it, year-end figures for the three years before that, and month-end cash balances for up to five years, so the report can compare this year with earlier ones. For up to six flagged accounts, it also reads that year's transactions through the selected month from a General Ledger report, so the monthly review can say what is in them.

2. How We Use Your Information

• To contact you about the Handbuilt Lab waitlist, launch timing, and cohort details.
• To schedule and prepare for calls you request.
• To confirm payment, manage enrollment and refunds, and send purchased session and support details.
• To improve the site, cohort materials, and workflow examples.
• To provide any early-access tools, coaching, or workflow support you explicitly request.
• To connect your church's QuickBooks account, organize accounts for reporting, prepare monthly Finance reports, preserve their source records, and let church members review and export the results, and to write a plain-language monthly review of the church's books with questions for the people who keep them.

We do not sell your personal information.

3. AI and Ministry Content

If you participate in a cohort, call, or early-access workflow, you may choose to share sermon drafts, newsletter examples, administrative tasks, theological preferences, or other ministry material. We use that material only to help you build and improve your own workflow.

When AI tools are used to support that work, relevant context may be sent to third-party AI providers. We choose providers with serious privacy and security practices, but you should not submit confidential pastoral care information, sensitive personnel details, or anything you are not allowed to process with outside services.

Finance uses an AI model to help pastors understand their church's books. Each month, after Handbuilt prepares the report, it uses Anthropic's Claude to write questions about what the books cannot show on their own and a short, plain-language summary for the vestry or council. A person in your church answers the questions and approves the summary. Using Finance means your church's saved report reaches that model; there is no version of Finance without it.

To do this, we send Anthropic the saved report for that month: the church and company name, account and group names, balances, monthly and year-to-date totals, budget comparisons, earlier years' totals, the church's watch list and readiness notes, and any answers your church gives to the review's questions. For up to six accounts Finance flags, we also send up to 20 of that year's most recent transactions in each: the date, type, amount and other account, with the payee and memo on spending only. We never send the name or memo on a gift, deposit or other money received. We never send your QuickBooks sign-in or access credentials. The AI cannot connect to QuickBooks and cannot change anything in it. It works only from what Handbuilt has already read and prepared, and every figure comes from your books, not from the AI. It may suggest changes for your treasurer to make in QuickBooks; it makes none itself.

Account names sometimes include a person's name, such as a memorial fund. That name is sent along with the account. If your church would rather it was not, rename the account in QuickBooks. A payee on spending in a flagged account, such as a contractor or a person reimbursed, is sent the same way.

Under its Commercial Terms of Service, Anthropic may not train its models on what we send. Anthropic deletes it within 30 days, except where it is flagged under Anthropic's Usage Policy or must be kept by law.

AI-written reviews can be wrong. Anything worth checking is written as a question for your finance people. Finance does not give financial, accounting, tax, or legal advice, and decisions stay with your vestry or council.

4. Third-Party Services

We may use services such as Supabase for waitlist storage, Vercel for site hosting, Google Analytics for understanding site usage, Notion Calendar for booking, Stripe for payment processing, and AI providers such as Anthropic or OpenAI during coaching or workflow support.

You enter payment details on Stripe's hosted checkout. Handbuilt receives the registration and payment information needed to deliver the Lab and handle refunds. Our website does not collect or store your full card number. We keep payment and enrollment records separate from expressions of interest on the waitlist.

Google Analytics may collect information about pages viewed, interactions, device and browser details, and approximate location. We use that information to understand traffic and improve the site. Analytics stays off until you allow it. You can change your choice at any time.

Each provider has its own privacy and security practices.

The Finance pilot uses Intuit QuickBooks Online to connect to a church's books and retrieve company and accounting report data. Supabase provides authentication, database storage, and private file storage. Vercel hosts the application and runs the isolated Finance worker. Anthropic provides the AI model that writes the monthly Finance review, using the saved report described in section 3. GitHub Actions runs backup maintenance. Cloudflare R2 stores encrypted backups and separate encrypted deletion receipts. Resend delivers account emails and minimal operator backup alerts. Those alerts contain a reason and date, without church names, financial figures, report files, or credentials.

5. Data Retention

We keep waitlist and correspondence information as long as it is useful for launch communication, cohort operations, or legal recordkeeping. You can ask us to delete your information at any time unless we are required to retain it.

We keep published Finance history, including saved reports and published source captures, until the church requests deletion. Temporary files from completed Finance jobs that were not published as Finance artifacts become eligible for removal through the controlled operator process after 30 days. Encrypted report backups expire 30 days after creation. Finance reviews written by the AI, and your church's answers to its questions, are saved with the church's Finance history and are deleted with it, as are the transactions read for flagged accounts.

Disconnecting QuickBooks immediately stops Handbuilt from using that connection and requests removal of the authorization in Intuit. If removal cannot be confirmed, the app blocks reconnection and explains the support step needed. Disconnecting does not delete saved Finance history. Contact us at hello@gethandbuilt.com to request deletion of a church's Finance history. Stephen Setzer verifies and approves church-wide Finance deletion requests. Minimal approval records and a nonfinancial connection counter remain after deletion. We retain a separate encrypted deletion receipt indefinitely so a backup cannot restore deleted reports. The receipt contains internal church and request identifiers, a format version, and the deletion cutoff date and time, without financial figures or report files.

6. Your Choices

• You can ask what information we have about you.
• You can ask us to correct or delete your information.
• You can opt out of non-essential launch or cohort emails.
• You can allow or refuse analytics cookies without losing access to the site.

Each member of a church workspace can use the Finance pilot and view that church's Finance connection status and reports. Your church is responsible for deciding who it invites or keeps as a member. A church member can disconnect QuickBooks while preserving the saved Finance history described above.

Finance's AI review cannot be turned off separately. If your church does not want its books to reach an AI model, do not connect QuickBooks to Finance, or disconnect it in Finance Settings. Disconnecting stops every new read; to delete what was already saved, contact us as described in section 5.

7. Contact

Questions about this Privacy Policy? Contact us at hello@gethandbuilt.com