Privacy Policy

Who we are

Vault is built and run by the team behind the app you are reading about. If anything here is unclear, email us at explato.hq@gmail.com. This policy covers the Vault app, the booking widget it places on storefronts, and this website.

Three groups of people appear in this policy:

• Merchants are the store owners and team members who install Vault and manage services.
• Staff members are the practitioners, specialists, and team members added by merchants to perform appointments.
• Customers are the people who book appointments at a store that uses Vault.

What we collect from merchants

When you install Vault and sign in, Shopify hands us what the app needs to work, and you add the rest in settings:

• Your store domain and the access credentials Shopify issues, so the app can talk to your store.
• Your staff account details that Shopify passes along when you sign in, such as your name, email, and language preference.
• Your contact and alert email addresses and your store timezone, so confirmations and operational warnings land in the right inbox at the right time.
• Your service settings: which products are bookable, duration, buffer times, weekly schedules, capacity, and cancellation policies.
• If you set up staff scheduling: team member profiles you create, including names, optional email addresses, optional phone numbers, role titles, avatar image links, weekly working hours, date overrides, and internal merchant notes.
• Product data we read from your store for those services, like titles, variants, prices, and images. We also create and update the products that represent your services and publish them to your online store.
• Order details for bookings, such as the order number, amounts, and refund outcomes, delivered by Shopify webhooks.
• Your billing state: which plan you are on, trial dates, and subscription status. The charge itself runs on Shopify Billing. We never see your card.
• If you connect Google: the email of the Google account you link, and access tokens for it. We ask only for the Calendar Events permission, we encrypt the tokens at rest, and we use them to create meeting rooms and calendar events for online bookings.

What we collect from customers who book

When someone books an appointment at a store that runs Vault:

• The details the booking form needs: name, email, and, if the store asks for it, a phone number.
• The chosen service, appointment time, number of guests, and the preferred or assigned staff member.
• The emails we send on the store’s behalf: a confirmation when the booking lands, reminders 24 hours and 2 hours before the appointment, and notices if it is cancelled or moved. Each email carries a signed link the customer can use to manage the booking.
• For online services, a Google Meet room link, shared with the other guests booked into the same time.
• While a hold is live, the cart reference Shopify uses, so the reserved time can travel with the cart and be checked at checkout. It expires with the hold.

What we collect from staff members

For stores using staff scheduling, we store the profile details and schedules provided by the merchant. When staff members use their private mobile schedule link, we record that the schedule was accessed to show sharing status in the admin, without tracking unnecessary device data.

Storefront error reports

If the booking widget hits an error in a customer’s browser, it sends us a short report: the error text, the page address with query parameters removed, and the browser type. Before anything is stored we strip emails, long digit sequences that could be card numbers, tokens, and cookie references. These reports let us fix problems and alert the store when booking stops working.

Bookings CSV export

Merchants on supported plans can download their booking records into a spreadsheet file for scheduling, accounting, and reporting. The export includes booking times, customer names, emails, phones, and assigned staff. When a customer has been erased under a privacy request, the export reflects that erasure by showing redacted placeholders.

Payments

Vault never receives or stores card numbers. Payment happens in Shopify checkout, and the app subscription is billed by Shopify. If you are a customer with a payment question, contact the store. If you are a merchant with a billing question, Shopify support handles charges, and we handle everything the app itself does.

How we use the data

• To run the booking flow: reserve a chosen time, carry the hold through checkout, validate it there, and confirm the booking.
• To coordinate staff schedules, allocate appointments to team members, deliver booking notices and calendar invites to assigned staff, and provide staff with mobile schedule views.
• To allow merchants to download booking records into spreadsheet files for business operations.
• To send customer notification and reminder emails.
• To create calendar events and Meet rooms when Google is connected.
• To keep the service healthy: regular checks on each store, incident records, operational notices to merchants, and technical alerts when something breaks.
• To answer support questions and protect the service from abuse.

Who we share it with

We do not sell personal data, and we do not run advertising trackers of our own. Data is shared only with people and service providers who need it to run the service:

• Assigned staff members receive customer names, contact info, and booking notes so they can perform scheduled appointments.
• Shopify, the platform your store and checkout run on.
• Google, for Calendar and Meet, and only for stores that connect it.
• Resend, which delivers notification emails to customers, staff, and merchants.
• Railway, which hosts the app and its database.

We may also share data when the law requires it.

Where it lives

The app and its PostgreSQL database run on Railway. Depending on where a store and its customers are, data may move between countries. We rely on the protections each provider offers for such transfers and move as little as the service allows.

How long we keep it

• Booking, staff, and store data stay as long as the app is installed and the account is active, so history and reports remain useful.
• When you uninstall Vault, we delete the access sessions and reset billing state right away.
• When a merchant deactivates a staff member, that person stops appearing for new bookings immediately. If a staff member is deleted, their profile is removed while past booking records remain with the staff link detached.
• Merchants can regenerate staff portal link tokens at any time, which immediately revokes access through old schedule links.
• When Shopify sends the store erasure signal, we purge the stored access sessions for that store.
• When Shopify sends the customer erasure signal, we anonymize that person’s bookings: name, email, and phone are removed.
• Diagnostic records, such as error reports, incidents, and health checks, are kept only as long as they help us keep the service working.

Your choices and rights

Merchants can uninstall Vault at any time, disconnect Google in settings, change or remove alert emails, update or delete staff members, regenerate staff portal links, export bookings to CSV, and delete services and bookings inside the app.

Staff members can ask the store merchant to update their profile, adjust working hours, or regenerate their private schedule link, or contact us for assistance.

Customers can change or cancel a booking through the store or the signed manage link in their confirmation email, and can ask the store for anything else. You can also write to us at explato.hq@gmail.com and we will help.

Where privacy law grants rights of access, correction, deletion, portability, or objection, we honor them, through the store or directly, and we support Shopify’s customer data request process. For stores in the European Union or serving people there, we rely on these legal bases: performing the service you asked for, our legitimate interest in keeping that service secure and working, and complying with legal duties.

Security

Traffic moves over HTTPS. Access to the production database is restricted. Google tokens are encrypted at rest. Storefront error reports are scrubbed before storage, as described above, and rate limits protect the endpoints and staff schedule links. No system is perfect; if something ever goes wrong we will tell the affected stores and fix it.

Children

Vault is a business tool for stores, and the booking form asks only for booking details. We do not knowingly collect data from children. A store that serves minors does so under its own policies and local law.

Changes to this policy

As Vault changes, this policy may change with it. The date at the top of this page always reflects the current version, and material changes get announced to affected merchants.

Contact

Questions, requests, or concerns are welcome any time. We are a small team and a person reads every message.

Email explato.hq@gmail.com and we will get back to you.