Privacy policy
This policy explains how Bright Engineering LLC (“Bright Engineering”, “we”) collects, uses, keeps and protects information on this website and in Meerkat, the bookkeeping application we build and run. NeighborhoodShare and DailyStockPick have their own privacy policies on their websites.
1. Who we are
Bright Engineering LLC, 2935 Webb St, Detroit, MI 48206. Contact for anything in this policy: Victor Brechbill, [email protected], 614-680-5968.
2. This website
This website has no accounts, sets no cookies and uses no analytics or advertising trackers. Cloudflare, which delivers it, processes standard connection data (such as IP address and browser type) to deliver and protect the site. If you email or call us, we use what you send only to reply to you.
3. Meerkat
Meerkat keeps the books of the companies owned by Victor Brechbill. It is not offered to the public: its users are people at those companies whom an administrator has invited, and they sign in through Cloudflare Access.
Information Meerkat collects
- User information: name, email address and role, and a record of the actions each user takes (an audit log).
- Bank and card account information, through Plaid, only when a user connects an account and agrees to it: account names and types, the last four digits of account numbers, balances and transactions. Meerkat never receives or stores bank login credentials; those are entered with Plaid.
- Property-management records from RentVine, read-only: properties, units, leases, tenants and payments as recorded in the companies' RentVine account.
- Business records users enter or upload, such as tax identification numbers, bank statements and other accounting documents.
How Meerkat uses it
Only to keep the companies' books: recording and categorising transactions, reconciling accounts, preparing reports and tax information, and keeping the service secure and working. We do not sell this information, use it for advertising, or use it to train artificial intelligence models.
Consent
Before a user connects a bank or card account, Meerkat explains what it will read and why, links to this policy, and records the user's agreement and the policy version. Plaid then shows its own consent screens; see Plaid's end user privacy policy. When this policy changes in a way that affects bank data, Meerkat asks for agreement again before the next connection.
Service providers
We share information only with the providers that run parts of the service, each of which processes it only to provide that service:
- Plaid connects bank and card accounts and supplies their data.
- RentVine is the property-management system Meerkat reads from.
- Cloudflare provides sign-in and the secure connection to Meerkat.
- Amazon Web Services hosts Meerkat's servers in the United States.
We add a provider to this list before it receives any Meerkat data. We may also disclose information when the law requires it.
Security
All connections use HTTPS. Bank access tokens, integration credentials and tax identification numbers are encrypted at the application level before they are stored. Access requires an invited account, and each user sees only the companies they are given access to. Bright Engineering's information security policy describes these controls in detail.
How long we keep it
- Financial records, and the provider data behind them, are kept for 7 years, the record-keeping period for tax purposes, and then deleted.
- Disconnecting a bank or card account immediately ends Meerkat's access at Plaid and deletes Meerkat's access token. Transactions already imported stay part of the books for the 7 years above.
- Backups are kept for 14 days.
- When a user leaves, their access is removed and their personal details are deleted on request. The audit log of their actions is kept with the books.
We review this retention schedule at least once a year.
Your choices
A user may ask us to see, correct or delete the information Meerkat holds about them by contacting us at the address above. We will answer within 30 days. Records the law requires us to keep are deleted when that period ends.
4. Children
This website and Meerkat are not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect their information.
5. Changes to this policy
We post each new version here with its version and effective date.