Privacy Policy | The Financial Smith

Last updated: October 5, 2026

This policy covers thefinancialsmith.com, our accounting and consulting services, and Voice Confirmations, the software we license to other accounting firms. Where those differ, we say so.

1. Two different roles

Our own clients. When we keep your books, we decide what we collect and why. We are the controller of that data.
Another firm's clients. When an accounting firm licenses Voice Confirmations, that firm decides what is collected and why. We only process it on their instructions. They are the controller; we are their processor. If you are a client of such a firm and want your data changed or deleted, ask your accountant — they instruct us, and we act on it.

2. What we collect

Transaction data from your ledger. Read from Digits with your accountant's authorisation: date, payee, amount, account, category and program. Where your accountant has authorised it, a change you confirm is recorded back to the ledger — the category or program on a transaction you were already shown. Nothing else is created, posted or deleted.
Your answers. The email reply you send, or the voice note you record, plus the transcript we make of it.
Contact details for the people who receive the weekly email: name and email address.
Your mobile number, only if you ask for texts. With it we keep a record of your consent: when you gave it to your accountant, how, the exact wording you agreed to, and when you opted out if you do.
Sign-in records for firm staff who use the application: email address, and the times a session was created or used.
Website usage. Our site sets no advertising or tracking cookies and does not profile visitors.

We do not collect bank login credentials, card numbers, or Social Security numbers, and we ask that you do not send them to us.

3. Why To ask you to confirm your own transactions once a week, to read your answer accurately, and to let your accountant act on it. Nothing is used for advertising, and nothing is sold. We do not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under US state privacy laws.

Text messages. If you ask for them, we text you each week's link and, if you have not answered after two days, one reminder — no more than two a week, and nothing else. Reply STOP to any text to stop them, or HELP for help. Message and data rates may apply. Consent to texts is never a condition of any service. No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging opt-in data and consent are not shared with any third party, other than the provider that delivers the messages.

4. Artificial intelligence

Your recording is transcribed by Deepgram. Your reply is read by Anthropic, which proposes which transactions you meant and quotes your own words as the evidence.
No client data is used to train any AI model. We opt out of model training on every transcription request, and our language model provider does not train on data submitted through its API.
Anything you did not clearly decide is returned to you as a question rather than guessed at.

5. Who else processes it We use these providers, all in the United States, and only for the purposes below:

Supabase — the database and file storage where the data lives.
Render — runs the application.
Postmark — sends the weekly email and receives replies. Message content is retained there for 45 days.
Deepgram — transcribes recordings.
Quo — sends text messages, only to people who asked for them.
Anthropic — reads replies into proposed changes.
Netlify — serves this website and the page where you record. It stores none of your data.
Digits — the ledger we read from, under your accountant's own agreement with them.

We do not transfer personal data outside the United States. A current list of providers is maintained here; firms licensing the software are notified before we add one.

6. How long we keep it

Recordings: 12 months, then deleted. The transcript, and the sentence quoted as the reason for each change, are kept. Once a recording has been transcribed and acted on, holding the audio adds little and risks more: a voice is among the most personal things we could hold.
Everything else — transactions, replies, transcripts and approvals — for as long as your accountant is our customer. A question about something from last year needs last year's data, so we do not delete it out from under the people who need it.
Mobile numbers: until you opt out or your accountant stops using the software. The record of your consent, and of opting out, is kept for four years, the period in which a question about it could be raised.
When a firm stops using the software: we give them an export and delete our copies within 60 days. Their own professional records stay with them, where they belong.
For our own accounting clients, where we are the accountant rather than the software provider, we keep the records for seven years after the engagement ends, as professional standards expect.

7. How it is protected Data is encrypted in transit and at rest. Firm staff sign in with a single-use link that expires in fifteen minutes; we store no passwords. Every request is limited to that firm's own clients, and that boundary is tested automatically on every change we make. Access to another firm's data by us is restricted to named administrators and is logged. Our access to your ledger is limited to the transactions in each week's confirmation and the categories and programs they can be assigned to.

8. Your rights Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal information, and to be told if it has been sold or shared — it has not been. To exercise any of these, email hello@thefinancialsmith.com. If you are a client of a firm that uses our software, ask that firm and they will instruct us. We do not charge for these requests and will not treat you differently for making one.

9. If something goes wrong If personal data is exposed, we will notify the affected firm without undue delay and within 72 hours of becoming aware, with what we know, what we are doing, and what they should do. We will support their own notification obligations.

10. Children The services are for businesses. We do not knowingly collect information from anyone under 18.

11. Changes We will post any update here with a new date, and will tell firms licensing the software in advance of a material change.

12. Contact The Financial Smith, Atlanta, GA 30314 · hello@thefinancialsmith.com