Privacy Policy

What this policy covers

This Privacy Policy explains how Money Yarns collects, uses, stores and shares your personal information when you use the Money Yarns app. Money Yarns is an Aboriginal-owned and led Australian business. We aim to handle your information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).

This policy is written in plain English on purpose. If anything is unclear, contact us using the details at the end.

Information we collect

Account details: your name, email address and a securely hashed password (we never store your password in readable form). If you sign in with Apple, we receive the identifier and email Apple shares with us.

Budget information you enter: income, expenses, savings, goals, debts, What if? questions and Help requests (unless you ask anonymously).

Bank statement transactions you choose to upload — see the section below.

Usage information: when you last used the app, which features you used, and technical details needed to run the service.

Payment information: if you subscribe to Money Yarns Plus, payment is handled by Square. Money Yarns receives a subscription status and payment reference, not your full card number.

Bank statement uploads

Bank statements contain personal and financial information — your name, account details, balances and a record of what you spend and receive. You can upload an ordinary, unredacted statement. You do not need to black anything out.

Why we collect it: to identify your transactions so Money Yarns can build your budget, categorise your spending, and generate your Money Yarns Report. That is the only purpose. We never ask for, and have no way to use, your internet banking password, PIN or login details.

What we take from your statement

For each transaction we keep the date, the description as printed, the amount, and the category Money Yarns assigns (plus any category you teach it). We also keep the file name you uploaded, a small summary (pages read, rows flagged for checking) and the time you ticked the upload acknowledgement.

We do not keep your account number, BSB, name, address or running balances from the statement. Balances are used only during processing to check that money in / money out was read correctly and that the transactions add up, then discarded.

If a statement can't be read reliably, nothing from it is saved and you're told so on the spot.

Is the original PDF or CSV stored?

No. The file arrives as part of your upload request and is held in our server's working memory only for as long as it takes to read it — typically a few seconds. Once the transactions have been extracted (or the read fails) the file is discarded. It is not written to disk, saved to a database, or kept for any later use. Because of this we can't retrieve or re-send a statement for you.

Like any internet upload, the file passes through our hosting provider's network on its way to our server; we don't control that provider's internal logging.

How your statement is read

CSV files and PDF statements that contain text are read entirely on the Money Yarns server. The file contents do not leave our server for this step.

Scanned or photographed PDF statements (image-only, with no readable text) are NOT currently processed. If you upload one, Money Yarns tells you it couldn't read it and nothing is sent anywhere or saved. External AI reading of scanned statements is available to us as a feature but is switched off until we're satisfied the provider's data-handling arrangement is appropriate for sensitive financial information. If we switch it on, this policy and the in-app notice will describe the provider, where processing occurs and what is sent.

Money Yarns Report Engine: when you generate a Money Yarns Report, your transaction rows (date, description, amount and category), your budget entries, goals and debts, together with your name and email address, are sent to Money Yarns' own report engine, which runs on Google's Apps Script and Google Sheets platform under Money Yarns' account. Your email is used to file the report under your account there. The engine may also be asked to categorise transactions when you import a statement (date, description and amount only). Google may process this on servers outside Australia. No bank account numbers, BSBs or running balances are sent.

How transaction data is stored and protected

Extracted transactions are stored in Money Yarns' database, linked only to your account. They are never shown to other Money Yarns users, including members of your household. Admin screens show only counts (for example, how many statements you've added) — never your transactions or amounts.

Data travels between your device and our servers over HTTPS (encrypted in transit). Access to the database is restricted to the Money Yarns service and its operators. Our hosting provider's servers may be located outside Australia.

We don't write the contents of your statement or your transactions to our server logs; we log only technical events such as errors.

No system is completely secure. We take reasonable steps to protect your information, but we can't guarantee that unauthorised access will never occur. Please keep your password private and use a password you don't use elsewhere.

How long we keep your financial data

Imported transaction data — CSV uploads, money details you enter by hand and (when available) PDF statements — is kept for 12 months from the day you add it, then deleted automatically. The same 12-month limit applies to each Money Yarns Report and its PDF, counted from the day the report was generated. You'll see the deletion date next to each item in the app.

You can delete any of it sooner. Removing an imported statement or set of money details from the Import screen permanently deletes its transactions from our database; deleting a report removes the report and its PDF.

Your live plan — budget items, savings goals, debts and What if? scenarios — isn't imported history, so it stays in your account for as long as you keep the account (or until you delete the item).

Deleting your account: you can permanently delete your Money Yarns account yourself from Settings → Delete my account. This removes your login details and all financial information linked to the account — imported transactions, money details, reports and report PDFs, budget items, savings goals and contributions, debts, What if? scenarios, help requests sent with your account attached, and the categories Money Yarns learned from you. If you're in a household, you leave it; anything you added to the shared budget stays with the remaining members with your name removed.

What we keep after deletion, and why: records of payments you've made to Money Yarns (kept for 5 years under Australian tax law — these show what you paid us, never your own bank transactions or budget), a referral record with your email removed if you joined through a referral, our admin change log (which refers to accounts by an internal id only), and a note that the account was deleted, holding only the date and a scrambled version of the email so we can prove the deletion happened.

We never ask for your banking login

Money Yarns will never ask for your internet banking password, PIN or banking login details — not in the app, by email or by message. We do not connect to your bank. If anything claiming to be Money Yarns asks for these, don't provide them and let us know.

Other ways we use your information

To run the app and its features (budgets, goals, debts, households, reports, What if?, Help).

To send account emails such as password resets, welcome emails and referral codes. Transactional email is sent through our platform's managed email service.

To operate Money Yarns Plus subscriptions, discounts and referrals.

To keep the service secure, fix problems and understand which features are used (in aggregate).

We don't sell your personal information, and we don't use your transaction data for advertising.

Who else receives your information

Service providers we rely on to run Money Yarns: our hosting and platform provider (Emergent), our database host, Anthropic (the AI behind What if? and Help answers, reached through Emergent's integrations proxy; these requests carry your budget figures and questions, not your statements), OpenAI (only if external reading of scanned statements is switched on — see the bank statements section), Google (the Apps Script recognition engine, only when connected), Square (subscription payments), and our email delivery provider. Some of these process information outside Australia.

Your household: if you join a household, entries, goals and debts you mark as shared are visible to the other members. Personal items and your transactions are not.

The law: we may disclose information where required or authorised by Australian law.

Your rights

You can view and correct most of your information in the app. You can ask us for access to the personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or delete your account and data yourself from Settings → Delete my account (or ask us to do it for you). You can also make a complaint about how we've handled your information; we'll respond within a reasonable time, and if you're not satisfied you can contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) at oaic.gov.au.

Contact us

Questions about your personal information, access or deletion requests, or privacy concerns: email money.yarns@outlook.com.

We may update this policy as Money Yarns changes. The date below tells you when it was last updated.