Privacy Policy

1. Scope and responsible party

Kitchen Cost Pro, also referred to as KCP, is a business operations platform for food-service businesses. The KCP service provider identified in your order form, subscription agreement, invoice, or onboarding communication is the responsible party for personal information processed for its own business purposes.

Your employer, restaurant group, franchise, or other organisation may also be a responsible party for information entered into its KCP workspace. Where KCP processes information only on that organisation's instructions, KCP acts as an operator for that organisation.

This policy is intended to support compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013, commonly called POPIA, and other applicable South African laws.

2. Information we process

Depending on how you use KCP, we may process the following categories of information:

• Identity and contact information: name, business email address, telephone number, role, employer, and workspace membership.
• Account and security information: account identifiers, password hashes, authentication events, reset requests, session information, permissions, and security challenge results.
• Business and workspace information: business name, locations, suppliers, users, recipes, stock items, purchasing records, sales mappings, operational records, and configuration settings.
• Integration information: identifiers, catalogue data, order data, refund data, location data, webhook events, and access tokens from connected services such as point-of-sale, email, accounting, or storage providers.
• Technical and usage information: IP address, browser and device information, timestamps, request logs, error logs, audit logs, feature usage, and diagnostic information.
• Support information: messages, screenshots, files, feedback, and communications submitted to KCP support or administrators.
• Billing and commercial information: subscription plan, invoices, payment status, and related account records. Payment card details may be processed directly by a payment service provider rather than stored by KCP.

3. Sources of information

We obtain information from:

• you when you register, sign in, configure a workspace, contact support, or use the service;
• your organisation, workspace administrators, managers, or authorised users;
• connected third-party services and integrations that you or your organisation authorise;
• automated technical systems, including logs, cookies, local storage, and security tools; and
• public or commercial sources where lawful and reasonably necessary for account administration, fraud prevention, or business verification.

4. Why we process information

We process personal information for legitimate and lawful purposes, including to:

• create and administer accounts, workspaces, permissions, and user access;
• provide stock, recipe costing, purchasing, manufacturing, transfer, sales integration, reporting, scheduling, and related features;
• connect to authorised third-party services and process integration events;
• authenticate users, prevent fraud, detect abuse, investigate incidents, and protect the service;
• provide support, maintain the platform, diagnose errors, and improve reliability;
• send operational notices, security notices, reports, invitations, password resets, and service communications;
• manage subscriptions, invoicing, payment status, and contractual obligations;
• comply with legal duties, enforce agreements, and establish or defend legal claims; and
• analyse aggregated or de-identified information to improve KCP products and services.

We rely on consent where consent is required, performance of a contract, compliance with legal obligations, protection of legitimate interests, and other lawful grounds permitted by POPIA.

5. Required information and consequences

Some information is required to create an account, secure the platform, provide contracted services, or comply with law. If you do not provide required information, we may be unable to create an account, activate a workspace, complete an integration, provide a feature, or respond to a request.

Information marked as optional may be withheld, but this may reduce the usefulness or accuracy of certain features, reports, or workflows.

6. Sharing and operators

We may share information with:

• authorised users and administrators within your organisation or linked business group;
• hosting, infrastructure, security, email, support, analytics, storage, and professional service providers that assist KCP;
• third-party integrations that your organisation chooses to connect;
• auditors, accountants, legal advisers, insurers, and other professional advisers where reasonably necessary;
• law enforcement, regulators, courts, or public authorities where required or permitted by law; and
• a successor or purchaser in connection with a lawful merger, restructuring, financing, or sale of all or part of the business.

Operators are required to process information only for authorised purposes and to apply appropriate security measures. KCP does not sell personal information to advertisers.

6A. QuickBooks Online and other accounting integrations

If a workspace administrator connects Kitchen Cost Pro to QuickBooks Online, a service of Intuit Inc., KCP asks Intuit for authorisation through Intuit's standard sign-in and consent screen. KCP never sees or stores your Intuit password.

What KCP receives from QuickBooks Online:

• the identifier of the connected QuickBooks company, and the access and refresh tokens that Intuit issues so KCP can act for the connected company until access is disconnected or revoked;
• your chart of accounts, vendors, and tax settings, so that you can choose where KCP posts documents and so that suppliers can be matched to vendors; and
• the documents KCP created, read back only to confirm they still exist and to keep them up to date.

What KCP sends to QuickBooks Online: supplier bills and vendor credits built from goods received and credit notes, and journal entries that summarise daily sales, cost of sales, wastage, and stock-take variances. These contain business and accounting figures, supplier names, and document references. They do not contain customer names, payment card details, or other information about individual diners.

How it is used: only to post and maintain the accounting entries you have asked KCP to post, and to show you the status of that sync. KCP does not use QuickBooks data for advertising, does not sell it, does not send it to any artificial intelligence feature (see section 17), and does not share it with anyone other than the operators described in section 6.

Your control: a workspace administrator can disconnect QuickBooks Online at any time from the Integrations page, which stops KCP from posting anything further. You can also revoke KCP's access from your Intuit account. Documents already posted remain in your QuickBooks company, where you can manage them. Intuit's own handling of your data is described in the Intuit Privacy Statement.

The same principles apply to other accounting integrations that your organisation chooses to connect, such as Xero.

7. Cross-border processing

KCP and its service providers may process or store information outside South Africa. Where information is transferred across borders, we take reasonable steps to ensure that the recipient is subject to a law, agreement, corporate rule, or other arrangement that provides an adequate level of protection as required by POPIA.

8. Security

We use reasonable technical and organisational safeguards designed to protect personal information against loss, unauthorised access, interference, alteration, disclosure, or destruction. Measures may include access controls, authentication, encryption in transit, logging, tenant separation, least-privilege access, secure development practices, backups, and incident response procedures.

No internet service can guarantee absolute security. You are responsible for using strong passwords, protecting account credentials, limiting access to authorised users, and promptly reporting suspected compromise.

9. Retention

We retain personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, meet contractual and legal obligations, resolve disputes, maintain audit trails, protect against fraud, and enforce agreements. Retention periods depend on the type of information, the purpose of processing, legal requirements, workspace configuration, and whether an account remains active.

Information may be deleted, anonymised, or securely isolated when it is no longer required. Backup copies may remain for a limited period until overwritten through normal backup cycles.

10. Your rights

Subject to POPIA and applicable exceptions, you may have the right to:

• ask whether we hold personal information about you;
• request access to your personal information;
• request correction, updating, deletion, or destruction of inaccurate, excessive, outdated, incomplete, misleading, or unlawfully obtained information;
• object to processing in appropriate circumstances;
• withdraw consent where processing is based on consent;
• object to direct marketing; and
• submit a complaint to the Information Regulator.

We may need to verify your identity before acting on a request. Where your organisation controls the relevant workspace information, we may refer your request to that organisation or require its instructions.

11. Marketing communications

We may send marketing communications only where permitted by law. You may opt out using the unsubscribe method in the communication or by contacting KCP. Opting out of marketing does not stop essential service, security, billing, legal, or operational communications.

12. Cookies and local storage

KCP may use cookies, browser storage, and similar technologies to maintain sessions, remember preferences, improve security, support authentication, and operate the service. Disabling required storage may prevent sign-in or other essential functionality.

13. Children

KCP is intended for business users and is not directed to children. A person who is not legally able to enter into a binding agreement may use KCP only through an authorised organisation and with any consent required by law.

14. Security compromises

If we have reasonable grounds to believe that personal information has been accessed or acquired by an unauthorised person, we will investigate and provide notifications to affected responsible parties, data subjects, and the Information Regulator where required by law.

15. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy to reflect changes to the service, law, security practices, or business operations. The updated version will display a new effective date and version number. We may provide additional notice where a change is material.

16. Contact and complaints

Privacy requests and legal notices should be sent through the KCP support contact identified in your account, order form, subscription agreement, invoice, or onboarding communication. Please include your name, organisation, workspace, contact details, and a clear description of the request.

17. United States

This section applies to individuals in the United States, including residents of states with comprehensive privacy laws such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). It supplements the rest of this policy. If it conflicts with another section for a US resident, the more protective term applies.

Categories of personal information and purposes

KCP may collect the categories described in section 2 (identifiers and contact information, account and security information, business and workspace information, integration information, technical and usage information, support information, and billing and commercial information), from the sources in section 3, and for the purposes in section 4. This includes business-to-business information about people acting for a business, such as a name, work email, and role.

No sale or sharing

KCP does not sell personal information and does not share personal information for cross-context behavioural advertising. We do not knowingly sell or share the personal information of anyone under 16.

Service providers and processors

We disclose personal information to service providers and processors, such as hosting, infrastructure, security, email, and support providers, and to integrations your organisation connects, only for the business purposes described in this policy. Where we process workspace data for a customer organisation, we do so as that organisation's service provider or processor, on its instructions.

AI features

Some KCP features use artificial intelligence services. The KCP Assistant uses Llama models hosted by Groq. Invoice and photo extraction uses Google Gemini, with Groq as a fallback. These services process the text, images, and related context that a user submits to those features in order to return a result. Do not submit information to these features that you do not want processed in this way. Data obtained from QuickBooks Online is never sent to these AI features.

Hosting

KCP is hosted on Cloudflare's global network, so information may be processed and stored in data centres in more than one country.

Retention

As described in section 9, we keep personal information for as long as reasonably necessary to provide the service, meet legal and contractual obligations, resolve disputes, and maintain audit trails. After that it is deleted, anonymised, or isolated, subject to normal backup cycles.

Rights of US state residents

Depending on the state where you live, you may have the right to:

• know and access the personal information we hold about you, and the categories of sources and recipients;
• request deletion of personal information we collected from you;
• request correction of inaccurate personal information;
• opt out of the sale or sharing of personal information (we do not sell or share it, as described above); and
• not be discriminated against for exercising these rights.

To make a request, email info@kitchencostpro.com with your name, organisation, and a description of the request. We will verify your identity before acting, which may include confirming details held on your account. You may use an authorised agent, and we may ask for proof of the agent's authority. We aim to respond within 45 days, and will tell you if we need more time as the law allows. Where your employer or organisation controls the workspace information, we may direct your request to that organisation.