Terms of service

The service

Margin Pulse provides AI-assisted bookkeeping software, dashboards and related support (the "Services"). With your permission, the Services connect to your accounting software, bank and card accounts, email inboxes and business tools (your "Connected Accounts"), read the data you authorize, and use automation and artificial intelligence to categorize transactions, reconcile accounts, prepare entries and present reports.

Bank and card connections made through Plaid are read-only. We do not initiate payments or move money. Where the Services post entries to your accounting software, they do so according to the approval settings you choose.

The Services use automation and AI, and their output can contain errors. You agree to review output, including entries awaiting approval, before relying on it.

We may improve, change or retire features. We will not materially reduce the core Services during a paid billing period without notice.

Your authorizations and responsibilities

Authorization. You authorize Margin Pulse to access, retrieve, store and process data from your Connected Accounts on your behalf, and to act through them as needed to provide the Services.

Authority. You confirm that you have the right to give this authorization, including for data about your employees, customers and vendors, and that your use of Connected Accounts complies with their terms.

Revocation. You may disconnect any Connected Account at any time in the portal or in that account's own settings. Disconnecting may limit the Services.

Users and credentials. You are responsible for the people you allow to use the Services, for keeping their login credentials confidential, and for activity under their accounts. Tell us promptly at admin@marginpulse.io if you suspect unauthorized access.

Accuracy and review. You are responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the information you provide, for your own books and records, and for your tax, payroll and regulatory filings.

Acceptable use. You will not misuse the Services, interfere with their security, reverse engineer them, resell them (except as a bookkeeping or advisory firm under the section on firms below), or use them to break the law.

Fees and free trial

You will pay the fees for the plan you choose at signup or in your order form. Fees are billed monthly in advance by card through Stripe, are non-refundable except where the law requires, and exclude taxes.

A free trial converts to a paid plan at the end of the trial only if you have agreed to the plan. Otherwise it ends. Either party may end a trial at any time.

We may change fees on 30 days' written notice, effective at the next billing period. You may cancel before then. If a payment is overdue, we may suspend the Services after notice until you pay.

Your data

Ownership. As between you and Margin Pulse, you own the data you submit to the Services and the data the Services obtain from your Connected Accounts on your behalf ("Customer Data"). We receive only the rights stated in these terms.

Our use of Customer Data. We use Customer Data only to provide, secure, support and improve the Services for you, including improving categorization and reconciliation for your own account. We do not sell Customer Data. We do not disclose it except to our subprocessors, to your authorized users, as you direct, or as the law requires.

De-identified data. You grant Margin Pulse a perpetual, worldwide, royalty-free license to create de-identified data from Customer Data and to use it to develop, train and improve the Services. De-identified data is information processed so that it does not identify, and cannot reasonably be used to identify, you, your owners, employees, customers, vendors or any individual. It takes the form of patterns, category mappings, benchmarks, statistics or model parameters rather than copies of your records. We do not attempt to re-identify it, and we never include data received through Plaid, Google or Microsoft in it. We may keep and use de-identified data after these terms end.

Business transfers. We may transfer these terms and Customer Data to a successor in a merger, acquisition, financing or sale of all or part of our business. The successor must honor the commitments in these terms and our privacy policy, and we will give you notice of a transfer of Customer Data where practicable.

Legal requests. If a government or court requires disclosure of Customer Data, we will, where legally permitted, give you notice so you can object, and we will disclose only what the request requires.

Access and deletion. You may export your Customer Data through the Services or by written request. Deletion on request or at the end of these terms is described below. De-identified data is not Customer Data and is not subject to deletion.

Security, subprocessors and incidents

We maintain reasonable administrative, technical and physical safeguards designed to protect Customer Data. These include:

• encryption of data in transit (TLS) and at rest;
• storage of Connected Account credentials and access tokens in an encrypted secrets vault, read only by our server-side systems and never sent to a user's browser;
• access controls that limit each user to the data of the customer they belong to;
• multi-factor authentication on administrator accounts for our hosting, code and database providers;
• automated daily database backups; and
• an application audit log of postings and approvals.

Subprocessors and incidents

No system is perfectly secure. We do not promise that the Services or Customer Data will be free from unauthorized access, loss or interruption.

You authorize us to use subprocessors to host and process Customer Data. They are listed in our privacy policy, and we remain responsible for them under these terms. We give at least 30 days' notice of a new subprocessor. You may object in writing on reasonable grounds, and if we cannot resolve the objection you may cancel without penalty.

If we confirm that Customer Data was accessed or disclosed without authorization, we will notify you without undue delay and no later than 72 hours after confirmation, describe what we know, and cooperate reasonably in the response. Notice is not an admission of fault.

You will use reasonable security for your own systems and Connected Accounts, including strong passwords and multi-factor authentication where available, and will promptly revoke access for users who leave.

Third-party services and AI

The Services work with services we do not control, such as Plaid, Intuit QuickBooks, Google, Microsoft, banks, and CRM and job-management tools. Your use of them is governed by their own terms and privacy policies, and you are responsible for complying with them. We are not responsible for their outages, changes, errors or data.

Your bank and card accounts connect through Plaid. By connecting an account, you agree to Plaid's end user privacy policy and terms shown at connection. When these terms end, we revoke the Plaid connections made on your behalf.

We use third-party AI model providers to process data, for example to read bills and categorize transactions. They act as subprocessors. AI output may be inaccurate or incomplete, and you are responsible for reviewing it.

Not professional advice; disclaimers; limits on liability

Not professional advice. Margin Pulse is software. We are not a certified public accounting firm and do not provide accounting, tax, audit, legal or financial advice. You, with your own advisors, remain responsible for your books and records, financial statements, tax returns, payroll and decisions. Output of the Services supports those responsibilities and does not replace them.

THE SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE." TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, MARGIN PULSE DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SERVICES WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE OR SECURE, OR THAT OUTPUT WILL BE ACCURATE OR COMPLETE.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, MARGIN PULSE WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, LOST REVENUE, LOST DATA, LOSS OF GOODWILL, TAX PENALTIES, INTEREST OR LATE FEES, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THEIR POSSIBILITY.

TO THE FULLEST EXTENT THE LAW ALLOWS, OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR ALL CLAIMS ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS, INCLUDING ANY SECURITY INCIDENT OR DATA LOSS, WILL NOT EXCEED THE FEES YOU PAID TO MARGIN PULSE IN THE 12 MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO THE CLAIM, OR $100 IF YOU PAID NOTHING. THIS IS A SINGLE AGGREGATE LIMIT, NOT A PER-CLAIM LIMIT.

These limits do not apply to fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct, or to any liability that cannot be limited by law. They do not limit your obligation to pay fees. We are not liable for losses caused by your failure to review output, by inaccurate or incomplete information from you or your Connected Accounts, by outages or changes at third-party services, or by access obtained through your or your users' credentials. The fees reflect this allocation of risk.

Indemnification

You will defend and indemnify Margin Pulse against third-party claims, and resulting losses and reasonable legal fees, arising from your Customer Data (including a claim that you lacked the right to provide or connect it), your breach of these terms, or your violation of law.

Margin Pulse will defend you against third-party claims that the Services, as we provide them, infringe a United States intellectual property right, and will pay damages and costs finally awarded or agreed in settlement. This does not apply to claims caused by Customer Data, by combination with other products, or by your misuse. If a claim arises, we may modify the Services, obtain a license, or end the affected Services and refund prepaid fees for the unused period. This paragraph states your only remedy for infringement claims.

The indemnified party will give prompt notice of the claim, let the indemnifying party control the defense and settlement (but no settlement may admit fault for the other party without its consent), and cooperate at the indemnifying party's expense.

Ending the service and returning your data

These terms continue month to month. You may cancel at any time through the Services or by emailing admin@marginpulse.io, effective at the end of the current billing period. We may cancel on 30 days' notice.

Either party may end these terms immediately on written notice if the other materially breaches them and does not cure within 15 days of notice. We may suspend or end the Services immediately if needed to protect the Services, other customers or Customer Data, or to comply with law.

When these terms end, we disconnect your Connected Accounts, including revoking Plaid connections. You may export your Customer Data for 30 days after the end date. Within 60 days after the end date, we delete Customer Data from our production systems, or irreversibly de-identify it as described above. Data received through Plaid, Google or Microsoft is always deleted, never de-identified. Copies in backups expire in the ordinary backup cycle. We may keep Customer Data we must keep by law, and we keep it protected and do not use it for other purposes. You may also ask in writing for earlier deletion of specific Customer Data, and we will honor reasonable requests, subject to the same exceptions.

The sections on unpaid fees, de-identified data, business transfers, access and deletion, disclaimers and liability, indemnification, data return and these general terms survive termination.

Bookkeeping and advisory firms

This section applies if you are a bookkeeping, accounting or advisory firm ("Firm") using the Services for your own clients ("Firm Clients").

• Authority. You represent that you have written authority from each Firm Client to connect that client's accounts and data to the Services and to agree to these terms on the client's behalf. You will give us proof on request.
• Firm Client data. Data of Firm Clients is Customer Data, and you are responsible for it as these terms describe. You grant the data license above for yourself and, as authorized, for each Firm Client.
• Disclosures. You are responsible for giving Firm Clients any privacy notices and obtaining any consents the law requires, including that their data is processed by Margin Pulse and its subprocessors.
• Your own terms. We are not a party to your agreements with Firm Clients, and you will not make promises on our behalf beyond these terms.
• Access. Your users may access only the Firm Clients they are authorized to serve. Remove a user's access promptly when the user leaves or the client relationship ends.
• Offboarding. When a Firm Client leaves, disconnect its accounts or tell us to do so. The data return and deletion terms above then apply to that client's data.
• Contact. We may contact a Firm Client directly about security incidents or legal requests involving that client's data. Your indemnity above applies to claims by Firm Clients arising from your acts or omissions, including a lack of authority.

General

Entire agreement. These terms, your order form or plan details, and the privacy policy are the whole agreement on their subject and replace earlier discussions. If they conflict, the order form controls, then these terms.

Changes. We may update these terms on 30 days' written notice. Continued use after the notice period is acceptance. If a change materially harms you, you may cancel before it takes effect.

Assignment. You may not assign these terms without our written consent. We may assign them as described under business transfers.

Governing law and venue. North Carolina law governs, without regard to conflict of law rules. The state and federal courts located in North Carolina have exclusive jurisdiction, and each party consents to them. Before filing suit, the parties will try in good faith to resolve a dispute informally for 30 days after written notice.

Notices. Notices go by email to the contacts you give us at signup or in your order form, and to admin@marginpulse.io for us, and are effective when sent.

Other terms. Neither party is liable for delays caused by events beyond its reasonable control. If a provision is unenforceable, the rest stays in force. No waiver is effective unless in writing. The parties are independent contractors, and there are no third-party beneficiaries. Electronic signatures and click acceptance bind the parties, and each party may keep a record of acceptance.