Privacy policy

Fidell is a tender management service for residential builders. It is operated by [LEGAL ENTITY] (ABN [ABN]) in Melbourne, Australia. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, how we look after it, who we share it with and how to reach us about it. It covers the Fidell website at fidell.ai, the Fidell application at fidell.app, and any email you exchange with us. It is written to meet the Australian Privacy Principles in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) and, because Fidell works through your Google account, Google’s API Services User Data Policy, including its Limited Use requirements.

1. What Fidell does

Fidell reads the tender pack a builder uploads, sorts what it finds into a scope trade by trade, drafts a request for quote to each trade, sends it from the builder’s own email address once the builder has reviewed it and pressed send, matches the replies and quotes that come back to the right tender, drafts chases for the ones that go quiet, and lays the quotes side by side. It shows your day’s calendar beside the work and adds each tender’s dates to it. It files documents into your cloud drive as they come in. It sorts your mail by job and by what it is for. Your inbox, Gmail or Outlook, is how it does this, which is why most of this policy is about email.

2. Information we collect

Account details. When you sign in with Google or Microsoft we receive your name and email address, and from Google your profile picture. You can add a role and a phone number.

Your business. Business name, legal name, ABN, timezone, the signature that goes on your RFQs, your preferences for chasing quotes, and the senders and subject words you ask Fidell to skip.

Your contacts. The subcontractors, suppliers and consultants Fidell finds in your mail: their names, companies and email addresses; phone numbers, street addresses and ABNs where they appear in a signature, letterhead or quote; any mobile numbers you add; the trade they work in; and how often you have dealt with them, including how many RFQs you sent them and how many they quoted on. Fidell suggests each one, and nothing joins your contact book until you approve it.

Your project records. The tender documents you upload and everything Fidell builds from them: scopes, RFQs, quotes, worksheets and submissions, and the decisions you make about where a scope line belongs.

People you invite. If you invite colleagues to your Fidell workspace, we hold each person’s name, email address and role, and what they do in Fidell. Each connects their own mailbox, so section 3 applies to each of them.

Google user data. The mail Fidell reads through your Google account, and the drafts it writes there, plus, if you connect them, your calendar events and the files Fidell files for you. Section 3 is about this in full.

Microsoft user data. The same, if you connect a Microsoft 365 or Outlook account instead. Section 4 is about this in full.

Messages you send us. If you write to support@fidell.ai, we keep your message and our reply so we can help you and follow up.

Pilot applications and calls. If you apply for the pilot on fidell.ai we collect your name, company and email address, and which page you applied from. If you book a call, we also collect your phone number and the time you chose. We also note which email service your business uses, looked up from your email address in public internet records. We use them only to talk to you about the pilot. They are held in our own records and in HighLevel, the system we use to book calls and keep track of who we are talking to (section 7).

Phone calls. Our phone line runs through HighLevel. It keeps a record of each call: the number, the time and how long it lasted. We don’t record what’s said.

Payment details. Your card is collected and held by our payment processor, Stripe. Fidell never sees the full card number: we receive the card’s brand, its last four digits and its expiry, and a record of each charge you confirm.

Technical information. Server logs, including the IP address your requests come from and the browser that made them.

How you use Fidell. Which setup steps you finish and how long each takes, when a tender’s RFQs are ready to send, and how long your inbox scan took. These are counts and times only, never your mail, contacts or documents. They are kept in our own database and used only to improve Fidell.

Visit counts. fidell.ai counts how many times a day it is visited and its forms are started and sent. Each is a daily total and nothing else: no cookie is used and no IP address, browser or identifier is kept with it, so a count can never be traced back to you. A browser that sends Do Not Track or Global Privacy Control isn’t counted at all.

We do not use advertising identifiers, analytics cookies or any form of cross-site tracking. You can read this site and apply for the pilot without an account. Fidell itself works through your mailbox, so you sign in with your Google or Microsoft account and cannot use it anonymously or under a pseudonym.

3. Your Google data

Fidell connects to your Google account only when you choose to connect it, on Google’s own consent screen. This section describes each permission we ask for, what we read and store, how we use it, who can see it, and what we will never do with it.

This section is the complete account of what Fidell does with data it receives from Google — message bodies, attachments, headers, addresses and metadata, and anything Fidell derives from them. If anything elsewhere in this policy, or in our terms, seems to allow more, this section wins.

3.1 The permissions we ask for

In Settings you can name senders and subject words for Fidell to skip. From then on, Fidell looks only at the sender and subject of new mail to check it against your list, and discards a match without opening or storing it. Mail Fidell read before you added a sender stays until you ask us to erase it.

3.2 What we read and what we store

When you connect your inbox, Fidell reads mail from the last 24 months, your sent mail first and then the rest, and after that new mail as it arrives. For each message it reads, Fidell stores the headers and addresses, a text copy of the body, the attachments, and a verbatim copy of the message, on servers in Sydney.

It keeps them because the features need them. Your contact book, and the trade each contact works in, are built from two years of your own correspondence; a quote that arrives months after its RFQ can only be matched to it if the RFQ thread is still there; and every contact Fidell proposes shows you the exact words it was found in.

Calendar events are read to show your day and are not stored, except the events Fidell creates for a tender, which it keeps with that tender. Documents Fidell files into your Drive are copies of documents it already holds; it records where each one was filed, and it does not read the contents of the other files in your Drive.

Mail can hold sensitive information — about health, money or family, yours or the people who write to you. Fidell does not look for it and does not use it; the only uses of your mail are those in 3.3. To keep a sender or subject out of Fidell from now on, add it to your skip list in Settings, and ask us to erase anything it has already read.

3.3 How we use it

• To build and maintain your contact book, with your approval of every name.
• To match replies, quotes, revisions and questions to the tender they belong to.
• To read quote totals out of the quotes you receive.
• To have Fidell’s AI model read the quotes you receive, so each one’s inclusions, exclusions and line items can be lined up against your scope (section 6).
• To sort your mail by job and by what it is for, inside Fidell.
• To show your day on the Desk and add each tender’s dates to your calendar.
• To file documents into the right folders in your Google Drive as they come in.
• To share the messages Fidell files to a project with the colleagues working on that project (3.5).
• To draft RFQs, chases and replies for your review, and to send the ones you approve.
• To show you, for anything Fidell inferred, the evidence it inferred it from.

That is the whole list. Google user data is used only to provide these features to you, inside Fidell.

3.4 What we will never do with it

• Advertising. Never used to serve, target or measure advertising.
• Selling or transferring. Never sold. Never transferred to anyone except the providers in section 7 who need it to run the service for you, for security, or where the law requires it.
• AI. Never used to train or improve an AI model, ours or anyone else’s. Fidell’s AI model reads the quotes you receive only to do the work in 3.3. See section 6.
• Credit and lending. Never used to assess creditworthiness or for lending.

3.5 Who can see it

Colleagues. If you invite colleagues to Fidell, each connects their own mailbox. A message Fidell files to a project — an RFQ thread, an architect’s query — becomes part of that project, and the colleagues working on it can see it. Nothing else in your mailbox is visible to them, and no colleague can open or search your inbox.

People at Fidell do not read your mail. The only exceptions are the ones Google’s policy allows: when you ask us to and agree — for example, to investigate a problem you have reported — in which case we keep a record of your agreement and of which messages it covers; when it is necessary for security or to investigate abuse; when the law requires it; or when the data has been aggregated and anonymised.

3.6 Disconnecting, revoking and erasing

You can withdraw Fidell’s access at any time from your Google Account permissions. Google stops Fidell’s access at once, so it can no longer read or send anything through your account. The access credentials Fidell held for your mailbox are destroyed rather than kept, the next time Fidell tries to use them — a credential Google has refused is of no use to us and we do not store it.

Withdrawing access stops Fidell reading any more of your mail. It does not, by itself, erase the mail already collected. That is deliberate: the correspondence attached to a tender is the record of that tender — the questions your trades asked, the quotes they sent, the revisions — and it is your record as much as ours. Withdrawing access at Google usually means “stop syncing”, and is sometimes accidental, so we do not read it as an instruction to delete your history.

To have it erased, email support@fidell.ai from the address you sign in with. We will confirm your request, erase the mail and attachments Fidell collected from your inbox within [N] days, and tell you when it is done. Our database backups roll over in about a week, so any copy in them is gone a week after that. There is no button for this in Fidell yet, so for now we do it by hand.

3.7 Other services

If you connect a Microsoft account instead of Google, section 4 applies.

4. Your Microsoft data

This section applies if you connect a Microsoft 365 or Outlook.com account. Fidell connects to it only when you choose to, on Microsoft’s own consent screen. If your business’s Microsoft 365 is run by an administrator or an IT provider, they may need to approve Fidell for your business first. That approval lets Fidell act only for the people who sign in to Fidell themselves, never for anyone else in your business.

4.1 The permissions we ask for

4.2 How it is handled

Everything sections 3.2 to 3.6 say about Google data applies to Microsoft data in the same way: what Fidell reads and stores, the only things it uses it for, what it will never do with it, who at Fidell can see it, and how disconnecting and erasure work. Microsoft data is stored in Sydney, is never sold, is never used for advertising, and is never used to train an AI model.

You can withdraw Fidell’s access at any time from the app permissions in your Microsoft account, or, for a work account, through your administrator. As with Google, withdrawing access stops Fidell reading any more of your mail; to have what was already collected erased, ask us as section 3.6 describes.

5. How we use information

This section is about information generally. Google and Microsoft user data are used only as sections 3 and 4 describe.

• To provide the service described in section 1 and support you in using it.
• To run and secure the service: authentication, fraud and abuse prevention, debugging.
• To write to you about your account and the service — security notices, changes to this policy or to our providers, and answers to your questions. These are not marketing.
• To enforce our terms, meet legal obligations and deal with legal claims.
• To improve the product, including its AI, using de-identified information about how it is used and about what you create and upload in it (section 6). Nothing from your mailbox is used for this, and we never try to re-identify it.

We do not send marketing email. If you apply for the pilot, we write back about the pilot.

6. How Fidell uses AI

What the AI reads. Fidell uses an AI model provided by Anthropic to read the tender documents you upload — drawings, specifications, schedules — and sort what they describe into a scope, trade by trade. It also reads the quotes that arrive in your inbox, so each one’s inclusions, exclusions and line items can be lined up against that scope. The model receives the text of those documents and quotes, and nothing else. Tender documents often name the client, the architect and the engineers and give their contact details, so that information goes with them.

What it never reads. Apart from the quotes above, nothing from your inbox is sent to an AI model — not your other mail, your contacts, your calendar or your files.

Where, and for how long. Anthropic processes the text in the United States. Under its commercial terms it keeps what it receives only for a limited period and does not train its models on it.

Never your mailbox. Nothing from your mailbox — your mail, its attachments, the quotes and figures read from them, or anything else Fidell derives from them — is ever used to train or improve any AI model, ours or anyone else’s. Sending a quote to our AI model so it can be read for you is not training it.

Improving Fidell’s AI. What you create and upload in Fidell — the tender documents, the scopes you arrange, the corrections you make, your worksheets and your submissions — is used to improve Fidell’s AI: today, to test and refine the instructions our AI model follows; in future, to train Fidell’s own models. Before it is used this way we remove what identifies you, your business, your clients and your trades. It is never sold, and never given to another company to train its models.

Learning from you. When you move an item in a scope to a different category, Fidell remembers the item’s code and files it the same way when it appears on your next tender. De-identified, those corrections also help Fidell sort scopes better for every builder.

Decisions. Software alone makes no decision about you, or about anyone in your mail. Fidell’s software makes suggestions: whether a contact is a subcontractor, supplier or consultant, and which trade they work in; which tender a reply or quote belongs to; a quote’s total; and what a tender pack’s scope contains. You approve every contact before it joins your contact book, every message before it is sent, and which quote you carry. These suggestions are made from names, email addresses, company details, the text of messages and quotes, and the tender documents you upload.

7. Who we share it with

We do not sell personal information — yours, or that of anyone in your mail. We share it only with the providers below, each of which processes it on our instructions, under written terms, to run Fidell. We use no advertising networks, data brokers or analytics providers.

We keep this list current. Before a new provider starts handling personal information we update this page and email account holders at least [N] days ahead — or, in an emergency, as soon as we can. When we stop using a provider, we require it to delete what it holds for us. If your business needs formal data processing terms, they are in section 8 of our terms of service, and we can provide them as a signed agreement.

Some of these providers handle information outside Australia. Anthropic, in the United States, receives the text of the tender documents you upload and of the quotes you receive, including any names and contact details printed on them. Google, in the United States and other countries where it operates, handles sign-in, your Gmail connection, new-mail notifications and our own email. HighLevel, in the United States, holds pilot applications, call bookings and call records. Microsoft handles your Microsoft account wherever it is hosted, which for most Australian businesses is Australia. Stripe handles card payments in the United States and other countries where it operates. Before information goes to any of them, we take reasonable steps to make sure it is handled in line with the Australian Privacy Principles, including contract terms that limit each provider to doing its job for us. Under Australian privacy law we remain accountable for how they handle it.

Our professional advisers — lawyers, accountants, auditors and insurers — may see personal information when they need it to advise us, and they must keep it confidential. That never includes Google user data except as section 3.4 allows.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, to protect the rights or safety of a person, or, with notice to you, to a successor if Fidell’s business is transferred. That paragraph is about information generally. Google user data is transferred only as section 3.4 describes, and in a merger, acquisition or sale of assets only with your explicit prior consent.

8. Where it is stored and how it is protected

• Your account, your documents, your quotes and your mail are stored in Australia, in Amazon Web Services’ Sydney region. The one exception is the text of the tender documents you upload and of the quotes you receive, which is sent to Anthropic in the United States to be read — see section 7.
• Everything between your browser and Fidell, and between Fidell and Google, Microsoft and Anthropic, travels encrypted over TLS. Plain-HTTP requests are redirected to HTTPS.
• The storage that holds Fidell’s database, files and backups is encrypted at rest.
• Google and Microsoft access credentials are encrypted a second time, with a key held outside the database, so a copy of the database on its own cannot be used to reach your mailbox.
• Each customer’s data is isolated in the database itself, so one account cannot read another’s. We test that boundary against a real database on every change to Fidell.
• The database is backed up nightly, and each backup is kept for about a week, on the same infrastructure.

No system is perfectly secure, and we cannot promise that your information will never be reached by someone who should not see it. If that happens, we will tell affected account holders as soon as we reasonably can, without waiting to finish our investigation if there is something you should do to protect yourself. If a data breach is likely to result in serious harm, we will also notify the people affected and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme requires.

9. How long we keep it

After you close your account we keep your records for 30 days, so you can still ask for a copy. Then we delete everything, including anything Fidell built from your mail and documents, within a further [N] days, and our database backups roll over a week after that. If the law makes us keep something — tax records, once we charge for Fidell — we keep only that, and only for as long as the law requires.

10. Your choices and rights

Your choices

• What Fidell reads. In Settings you can name senders and subject words for Fidell to skip from then on, and ask us to erase mail it has already read (3.1).
• Contacts. Nothing joins your contact book until you approve it. You can correct a contact’s details, or remove a contact, at any time.
• Messages. Fidell writes drafts. Nothing reaches a trade until you have reviewed it and pressed send.
• Chasing. Automatic chase drafts are off until you turn them on in Settings, where you also choose when they are written.
• Your profile. Change your name, company, role and phone number in Settings.
• Google access. Withdraw it at any time from your Google Account permissions (3.6).
• Your team. You choose who to invite. Each colleague connects their own mailbox, and sees only the mail filed to the projects they work on (3.5).
• Microsoft access. Withdraw it at any time from the app permissions in your Microsoft account, or through your administrator (section 4).
• Cookies. You can block or clear cookies and local storage in your browser. If you block the session cookie, you will not be able to sign in.

Your rights

• Access and correction. Ask us at support@fidell.ai for a copy of the personal information we hold about you, or to correct it. It costs nothing. We may first need to confirm who you are, usually by replying to the email address on your account. We will respond within 30 days. If we cannot give you something, or do not agree to a correction, we will tell you why in writing and how to complain.
• Deletion. Ask us to delete your account and everything in it, or just the mail collected from your inbox (3.6). We will do it within [N] days and tell you when it is done. If the law requires us to keep something, we will tell you what and why.
• A copy of your records. Ask us for a copy of your project records — the scopes, RFQs, quotes and submissions for your tenders — at any time, and for 30 days after you close your account.
• Complaints. Write to support@fidell.ai and tell us what happened. We will acknowledge your complaint within [N] business days, look into it, and give you our answer in writing within 30 days. If you are not satisfied, you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.

If a builder has your details

If you are a subcontractor, supplier or consultant who deals with a builder that uses Fidell, we hold information about you because that builder connected their inbox. It is the information listed under “Your contacts” in section 2, plus the emails, quotes and attachments you have exchanged with that builder.

We use it only to run Fidell for that builder. We do not contact you ourselves: anything you receive about a builder’s tender comes from the builder, from their own address. The requests for quote Fidell drafts are plain text and carry no tracking. We never share one builder’s information with another, and we never sell it.

You have the same rights as anyone else in this section: ask us what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or complain. We will tell you what we hold about you. We will not hand over the builder’s own records, such as other trades’ quotes, because they belong to the builder and contain other people’s information. Where your request concerns the builder’s own correspondence with you, we may refer it to them, and we will tell you when we do. If we refuse any part of a request, we will tell you why.

If you are outside Australia. Fidell is offered to building businesses in Australia and is run from Australia. We handle everyone’s information under this policy, wherever they are. If the privacy law where you live gives you rights this policy does not mention, write to us and we will respond as that law requires.

11. Cookies and local storage

Fidell sets three kinds of cookie: a session cookie that keeps you signed in for up to 30 days; a cookie that remembers your light or dark theme for a year; and short-lived cookies that exist only during a sign-in or inbox connection, to protect that exchange, and expire within ten minutes. It also uses your browser’s local storage to remember display preferences on your device, such as your theme and how you last arranged a tender’s scope; that stays in your browser and is never sent to us. There are no advertising, analytics or third-party cookies, and nothing on fidell.ai loads from anyone else’s servers: its call booking is our own form, which passes your booking to HighLevel from our server. fidell.ai keeps daily visit counts without any cookie (section 2), and honours your browser’s Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control settings by not counting you at all.

Fidell links to other sites, such as your Google Account settings and your Gmail drafts. Their own privacy policies apply there, and Google’s privacy policy governs your Gmail account itself, as Microsoft’s governs your Microsoft account.

12. Children

Fidell is a business service for people running a building business. It is not directed at anyone under 18 and we do not knowingly collect their information. If you think someone under 18 has given us their information, tell us and we will delete it.

13. Changes to this policy

When this policy changes, we post the new version here with its date. If a change is significant, we email account holders at least [N] days before it takes effect. We will not use your Google data in a new way, or for a new purpose, until we have told you what is changing and you have agreed to the updated policy. Any new Google or Microsoft permission is asked for separately, on the provider’s own consent screen.

14. Contact

Questions, requests and complaints about privacy: support@fidell.ai. Postal address: [ADDRESS]. If you would like this policy in another format, ask us and we will send it.