1. Who we are
Bean Proof is provided by Elastic Bean Software Limited, a company registered in Ireland (company number 814004), with its registered office at Ballinastoe, Roundwood, Co. Wicklow, A98 YV67, Ireland ("we", "us").
Contact for anything in this policy: privacy@beanproof.com.
2. Two different roles — this matters
We handle two kinds of personal information, and our responsibility is different for each.
| Information about you (the people who use Bean Proof, visit our website or talk to us) | Information about your employees (the payroll and HR data you upload to prepare your report) | |
|---|---|---|
| Our role | We decide how it is used (controller) | We act only on your instructions (processor) |
| Who is responsible to the employees | — | Your organisation, as their employer |
| Covered by | This policy | Your contract with us — the Data Processing Terms in our Terms and Conditions |
So: if you are an employee whose employer uses Bean Proof, your employer is responsible for your information and you should contact them first. We will help them answer you. Section 5 explains what we do with employee data and the limits we put on ourselves.
3. Information about you, and why we use it
| What | Examples | Why we use it | Legal basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account details | Name, work email, job title, organisation, password (stored securely hashed) or sign-in through Microsoft | To create your account and let you sign in | Contract |
| Billing details | Billing contact, company address, VAT number, invoices, payment status | To take payment and keep tax records | Contract; legal obligation (tax) |
| How you use the product | Pages visited, actions taken, device and browser, time, IP address | To keep the service secure, fix problems and improve it | Legitimate interests |
| Your conversations with the Guide | Questions you ask the assistant and its answers, seen only by you | To answer you; each question and answer is kept for 7 days unless you pin it (section 8) | Contract |
| Records of decisions | Who fixed, excluded, approved or published what, and when | To keep the evidence trail you rely on to show how your figures were produced | Contract; legitimate interests |
| Support messages | Emails and call notes | To help you | Contract; legitimate interests |
| Reminders | Your work email and your report's dates | To remind you of your own report's dates, a few weeks and a week before each one; you can turn them off in Settings | Contract |
| Data readiness check | Your email and the file you upload to the free check | To show you the findings and follow up with you | Consent |
| Adviser list | Your firm, your work email and how many clients you have, from our advisers page | To write to you once to help set up your firm's account | Consent |
| Website visits | Pages visited, approximate location from IP, referrer | To run the website and understand what is useful | Legitimate interests |
Card details are collected and held by our payment provider, Stripe. We never see or store your full card number.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for advertising profiles.
4. The AI assistant
Bean Proof uses AI to read files, spot problems, explain figures and draft text. Every time you are working with the AI, the product tells you so.
- The AI suggests; people decide. Nothing it suggests changes your data until a person accepts it, and the acceptance is recorded under that person's name.
- The statutory figures are never produced by AI. They come from a fixed calculation engine.
- The AI runs on Microsoft's Azure OpenAI service in the EU. Your data is sent only for the task in hand, is not used to train any AI model, and is not shared with other customers.
- We keep a log of what was sent to the AI and what came back, for your organisation only, so suggestions can be reviewed later. The copy of a Guide answer in that log goes when the answer leaves your chat (section 8); suggestions that changed your data stay with your report's evidence.
- The AI does not make decisions about any individual employee.
5. Your employees' data — what we do and don't do
Your organisation uploads payroll and HR data (for example: payroll number, gender, hours, pay, bonus, extras like a company car, contract type, start and leave dates) so we can prepare its gender pay gap report. We:
- use it only to prepare, calculate, publish and keep the evidence for your organisation's report, and for nothing else;
- keep it separate from every other customer's data, enforced by the database itself;
- store it in the EU (Microsoft Azure);
- never publish it — public report pages show only the statutory figures and your statement, never individual pay;
- show individual people inside the product only when one of your users asks, a few at a time;
- never use it to train AI, to benchmark, or to market anything.
Gender as recorded on payroll is not a "special category" under GDPR, but we treat pay data with the same care as if it were. We ask you not to upload information we do not need (for example health details, nationality, or ethnicity) and our import ignores columns it does not use.
6. Where your information is kept
All customer data is stored and processed in Microsoft Azure data centres in the European Union.
A small number of our own staff may, when you ask for support, need to look at your account. That access is granted per customer, for a limited time, recorded, and shown to you.
7. Who we share information with
We use a small number of trusted service providers ("sub-processors"). Each is bound by a written contract that requires them to protect the information and use it only to provide their service to us.
| Provider | What they do | Where |
|---|---|---|
| Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd | Hosting, database, file storage, AI (Azure OpenAI), sign-in with Microsoft | EU |
| Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd | Card payments and subscriptions: the payer's email, the employer's name, the billing address and any tax number (never employee data) | EU; Stripe may transfer these details to the United States under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and Standard Contractual Clauses |
| Microsoft Ireland Operations Ltd (Azure Communication Services) | Sending account and reminder emails (your users' email addresses only) | EU |
This list is always kept up to date on this page. We give customers at least 30 days' notice before adding a new sub-processor that will handle employee data.
We also share information where the law requires it (for example, a court order), or to protect the security of the service. If our business is ever sold, the buyer would take on this policy.
8. How long we keep information
| Information | How long |
|---|---|
| Uploaded files and data that were never frozen into a report | 90 days after the upload, then deleted. While it is still the file your report is being prepared from, 90 days after that year's publish-by date instead, if that is later |
| Frozen snapshots, figures, evidence trail and the Preparation Record | Four years from the publish-by date — the three years the law asks your report to stay public, plus one year — then deleted, with a record of the deletion. Closing your account does not shorten this |
| Published report pages | At least three years from publication, even if you stop subscribing or close your account (see our Terms) |
| Data readiness check | The file you upload: 24 hours. Your email and the findings: 12 months, so the results link keeps working, then deleted |
| Adviser list | Until you ask us to delete it |
| Your conversations with the Guide | Each question and its answer: 7 days, then deleted, with the AI log's copy of the answer, unless you pin them. Pinned ones stay until you unpin or remove them, or close your account. You can remove any message, or clear the chat, at any time |
| Account details | While your account is open, then 12 months. If you are removed from an account and are on no other, 12 months after the removal |
| Invoices and billing records | Six years, as Irish tax law requires |
| Service and security logs (never employee-level data) | 90 days |
Not renewing does not delete anything early: your data follows the periods above. You can ask us to close your account at any time. Closing ends every sign-in at once, so download anything you need first. We keep a closed account for 30 days in case you change your mind, and can reopen it in that time. After the 30 days we delete what you uploaded and everything worked out from it that was never frozen; frozen data, the evidence trail and published pages are kept for the periods above. Deleted data leaves our backups within a further 35 days.
9. How we protect information
In short: data is encrypted in transit and at rest; each customer's data is walled off from every other customer's at database level; secrets are kept in a managed vault; access by our staff is limited, time-bound and logged; our isolation is tested automatically on every software change and independently tested each year. The full list is in part 6 of the Data Processing Terms.
If a security incident affects your information, we will tell you without undue delay and, where required, the Data Protection Commission.
10. Your rights
You can ask us to:
- give you a copy of your information;
- correct it;
- delete it;
- limit how we use it, or object to our use of it;
- give it to you in a portable format;
- stop reminder emails (you can also turn them off yourself in Settings).
Where we rely on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time.
Email privacy@beanproof.com. We will reply within one month. There is no charge.
Employees: please contact your employer first. If you contact us, we will pass your request to them and help them respond.
If you are not happy with how we have handled your information, you can complain to the Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie). We would appreciate the chance to put it right first.
11. Cookies
We use only the cookies needed to sign you in, keep the product secure and remember your settings. We do not use analytics or advertising cookies. If we ever add analytics cookies to our website, they will load only if you agree, through a banner, and you will be able to change your choice at any time from a link in the footer.
Public report pages and the document verification page set no tracking cookies.
12. Children
Bean Proof is a business service and is not meant for anyone under 18.
13. Changes to this policy
If we change this policy in a way that matters, we will tell account holders by email at least 30 days before the change applies. The date at the top always shows the current version.