Terms of service

1. About these terms

WITTCO LLC (“WITTCO”, “we”, “us”) provides TBKit. WITTCO is headquartered in Lacombe, Louisiana. “The Service” means the TBKit web application at app.tbkit.com and its API at api.tbkit.com, the TBKit Windows app when we provide it to you, and the support we give for them. These terms also cover the public website at tbkit.com.

“You” means the bookkeeping firm or business that holds a TBKit account and, where the context fits, the people it asks us to give access (“your users”). If you accept these terms for a firm or business, you confirm that you have authority to bind it. If you are a user and not the account holder, you agree to the parts of these terms that apply to a person using the Service, including sign-in, acceptable use and confidentiality. The account holder remains responsible for the account and for its users. “Customer Data” means the books, records, files and other information you or your users put into TBKit, including the books of businesses whose bookkeeping you do (“your clients”). “Account contacts” are the people you name to WITTCO to receive notices and to request access changes.

You agree to these terms by signing a separate agreement that incorporates them, or by signing in or continuing to use the Service after this version’s effective date. The web sign-in page, and the Windows app’s welcome screen before sign-in, state that continuing agrees to these terms and our privacy policy. If you have signed a separate written agreement with WITTCO for TBKit, such as a pilot agreement, that agreement controls where it conflicts with these terms. No update to these terms or the privacy policy reduces a right you have under a signed agreement while that agreement is in effect.

2. Who can use TBKit

TBKit is a business service for bookkeeping firms and the businesses they serve. It is not offered to consumers for personal, family or household use, and users must be at least 18. There is no public sign-up. Anyone can complete Google sign-in, but that gives no access to books: WITTCO opens accounts by invitation only, and gives access only as section 3 describes.

Bookkeeping firms. A firm’s account covers the client organizations it asks us to set up and the staff it asks us to give access. Until a later version lets a client business keep its own books when a firm leaves, the firm’s account holds each client organization.

Client businesses. A business whose books a firm keeps in TBKit gets access to its own books only when its bookkeeping firm asks us to provide it. The firm’s own agreement with that business governs the firm’s bookkeeping services. These terms govern use of TBKit.

3. Accounts, sign-in and access

Signing in does not by itself give anyone access to books. At your request, WITTCO links each person’s sign-in to their access and grants that person read-only, read-and-write, or period-closing access to the specific organizations you name. Until TBKit offers self-service user management, ask us by email to add, change or remove a user’s access. Anyone may ask us for access, but we give access to your or your clients’ books only at the request of your account contacts, and we may confirm a request through a channel we already trust before acting on it. We remove access within one business day after an account contact asks us to.

Sign-in requirements for firm staff. Your staff may sign in only with:

• a Google Workspace account on a domain whose administrator enforces 2-Step Verification, or
• a TBKit sign-in we create for them, which requires a password of at least 15 characters and a code from an authenticator app (TOTP).

Personal Google accounts, such as consumer Gmail addresses, are not accepted for firm staff. This is your obligation and ours to enforce when we know; completing a Google sign-in does not by itself prove the account is a Workspace account. If you use Google Workspace sign-in, you confirm that your domain enforces 2-Step Verification, and you agree to keep it enforced and tell us promptly if that changes. We may set sign-in requirements for client business users too. Amazon Cognito requires the authenticator code for TBKit sign-ins. It does not enforce 2-Step Verification on Google sign-ins; your Workspace administrator does.

Keeping access safe. Each sign-in is for one person. Do not share sign-ins, passwords or authenticator devices. Tell us promptly when someone leaves or no longer needs access, and when you suspect a sign-in or device has been compromised. You are responsible for activity under your users’ sign-ins until you ask us to remove their access, and for the access you ask us to give. When we remove someone’s access, TBKit stops accepting their later requests to those books. A request already in progress is refused if the grant is gone before it finishes.

4. Your data and your clients’ data

You own your data. As between you and WITTCO, you and your clients own Customer Data. You give WITTCO permission to host, copy, process, transmit and display Customer Data only as needed to provide, secure and support the Service for you, to follow your instructions, to use the service providers named in our privacy policy, and to comply with law. We do not sell Customer Data or use it for advertising, and we do not use it to train artificial intelligence models.

Processing on your behalf. For personal information in Customer Data, WITTCO acts as your service provider, also called a processor. We process it only to provide the Service under these terms and your instructions. We do not sell or share it; retain, use or disclose it for any other purpose or outside our direct business relationship with you; or combine it with personal information from other sources, except as the law allows a service provider to do. We will tell you if we can no longer meet these obligations. If you are subject to the FTC Safeguards Rule or a similar duty to oversee service providers, these terms are the written service-provider terms for the Service, and the security measures in our privacy policy are the safeguards we maintain. They are not a certification that those measures satisfy a particular audit or regulation.

We use the service providers listed in our privacy policy. We will email account contacts at least 30 days before a new provider processes Customer Data, including any provider that would process records in customers’ books with artificial intelligence. If you object in writing on reasonable data-protection grounds before that change, we will not use that provider for your Customer Data unless we can reasonably address the objection. If we cannot, you may stop using TBKit under section 9, and that stop is not a breach by you.

Authority over client books. If you are a bookkeeping firm, you represent and promise that you have, and will keep, the authority, permissions and any consents you need from each client to put that client’s books and records into TBKit, to have WITTCO process them as these terms describe, and to give your staff and the client’s users access to them. If you prepare tax returns, you are responsible for any consent required by 26 U.S.C. § 7216 before tax return information is put into TBKit. You are responsible for following your clients’ instructions, for telling us when a client relationship ends, and for any professional, contractual or legal duties you owe your clients about their information.

Artificial intelligence. TBKit’s features do not use artificial intelligence on Customer Data. Before any product feature processes Customer Data with artificial intelligence, we will update our privacy policy and email account contacts at least 30 days in advance, unless the change is required sooner to address a security risk. Our privacy policy also describes the AI tools WITTCO uses to build and support TBKit. Those tools are not used to read journal entries, bank transactions or other records in customers’ books.

Information you should not enter. TBKit does not offer payroll, payment processing or tax filing. Do not enter full payment-card numbers or security codes, passwords or other sign-in credentials, Social Security numbers or other government identification numbers, or employee payroll or health information in memos, descriptions or other free-text fields. If that information is entered by mistake, tell us and we will help you correct or remove it where the Service allows.

5. Acceptable use

Use TBKit only for lawful bookkeeping and accounting work for your own business or for clients who have authorized you. Do not:

• try to get around access controls, use another person’s sign-in, or access books you have not been given access to;
• probe, scan or test the security of the Service without WITTCO’s written permission in advance;
• upload malicious code or files, or interfere with or overload the Service or the systems it runs on;
• use TBKit to record or conceal fraudulent, illegal or deceptive transactions;
• copy, resell or provide TBKit to others as a service, or use it to build a competing product; or
• reverse engineer the Service except where the law permits it despite this restriction.

If you notice a possible security vulnerability, report it to harry@getwittco.com without accessing more data than needed to describe it, and without including passwords or other secrets in the message.

6. Your books remain your responsibility

TBKit is software that helps you keep books. WITTCO does not provide accounting, bookkeeping, tax, payroll, legal or investment advice or services, and nothing in TBKit is a substitute for professional judgment. You decide what to record, and you are responsible for reviewing what TBKit produces, including reports, reconciliations and exports, before relying on it.

You and your clients remain responsible for the accuracy and completeness of your books, and for every tax return, filing, payment and other obligation based on them. Keep your own copies of important records, using the export described below.

7. Availability, support and changes

We work to keep TBKit available and to protect your data, including by keeping automated database backups. During a pilot, and unless a signed agreement says otherwise, we do not promise any level of availability or response time. The Service may be unavailable for maintenance, updates or reasons outside our control. We try to give notice of planned maintenance that will interrupt your work.

Support is by email to harry@getwittco.com. We aim to answer within one business day during Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Central Time, excluding U.S. federal holidays. That is a target, not a promise of availability. To help with a problem, we may need to look at the affected records. We do this only to the extent needed and, where practical, with your permission.

TBKit is under active development. We may add, change or remove features. If we plan to remove a feature you rely on, or to make a change that materially reduces the Service, we will email account contacts at least 30 days in advance when we reasonably can. A change required by law or to address a security risk may take effect sooner. Features we describe as planned are not promises.

8. Exporting your data

You can take an organization’s books out of TBKit. The export is a ZIP file of plain CSV files, with a manifest, taken at a single committed point in time: the chart of accounts, journal entries and their lines, bank and card accounts, bank imports and imported bank lines with their review state, and finished reconciliation reports. The manifest lists what the export does not include, such as original bank files, earlier versions of records and report outputs. Reports such as the trial balance can be downloaded separately from the Reports page when that download is available in the account. Bank and card accounts appear in the export with their institution name and last four digits only.

Anyone with current access to the organization, including read-only access, can download the export from the organization’s Settings page when that control is available. You can also email us and ask for it. We will not refuse a reasonable request, and we will not end an account or delete Customer Data under section 9 until the export has been available to you for the export window in that section. The Windows app does not produce this export. Copies you have already downloaded, and books the Windows app keeps on your PC, stay on that PC.

9. Suspension and ending your use

You may stop using TBKit at any time by telling us. We may end your account for any reason with at least 30 days’ written notice, or sooner if you materially breach these terms and do not fix the breach within 30 days after we tell you about it. Ending for convenience does not shorten the export window below. A signed agreement may set different notice periods. It does not remove the export window unless it gives one at least as long and says so expressly.

We may suspend a user’s or your account’s access immediately if we reasonably believe it is needed to protect the Service, Customer Data or others, to stop misuse, or to comply with law. We will tell you why when we can, and restore access once the issue is resolved. Suspension is not deletion.

Your data when an account ends. The export stays available for 30 days. Those 30 days start when the download works in the account, or when we send you the file, whichever we do. They do not start merely because we said the account ended. If the in-product download is not available, we will send the export. Your users can download during that window, and we will send another copy on request. Your clients own their books: you are responsible for giving each client its export, and during that period we will also give a client business the export of its own organization at its verified request. After that period, we will delete Customer Data from the live Service within 30 days. There is not yet a self-serve delete button. WITTCO performs the deletion and, on request, confirms it in writing. We will not confirm a deletion that has not been done in the live database.

Deleted data remains in our automated database backups until those backups expire, which takes no more than 35 days, and in any manual snapshot taken before maintenance until that snapshot is deleted. We delete a manual snapshot within 90 days after it was taken, unless the law or an open security investigation requires us to keep it longer. We use backups and snapshots only to recover the Service. If a recovery brings back data we had already deleted, we delete it again. We do not restore an ended account’s data for any other use. Operational logs, which can include organization names, sign-in identifiers, IP addresses, requested addresses (including search text and one-time sign-in codes) and, in database error messages, values from records, expire on the schedule in our privacy policy.

You can also ask us to delete a single client organization, for example when a client leaves you. We do that on this same timetable once you confirm that the client has its export or has agreed in writing to the deletion. We remove access as soon as you ask, even if deletion comes later.

Copies you have downloaded, and data kept on your own computers by the Windows app, are under your control. We cannot delete them for you. We may keep information when the law requires us to, and we will continue to protect it under these terms.

10. Confidentiality

WITTCO treats Customer Data as confidential. We access it only as needed to provide, secure and support the Service, to follow your instructions, or to comply with law. If the law requires us to disclose Customer Data, we will tell you first when we are allowed to, so you can seek protection. We will not delay that notice to suit ourselves.

Each party will also keep confidential any non-public business or technical information the other shares in connection with TBKit and marks or reasonably should understand to be confidential, using at least reasonable care, for 3 years after the account ends. Customer Data and trade secrets stay confidential for as long as the receiving party holds them. This duty does not cover information that is or becomes public through no fault of the receiving party, that it already knew or receives from someone else without a duty of confidence, or that it develops independently. Those exceptions do not apply to personal information in Customer Data.

If we confirm that Customer Data has been accessed, altered, destroyed, lost or disclosed without authorization, we will tell account contacts without undue delay, and no later than 72 hours after we confirm it. We will not delay confirmation to put off the notice. The notice will say what we know, and we will update it as we learn more. We will not notify your clients, affected individuals or regulators on your behalf unless you agree or the law requires us to notify them ourselves.

11. Fees

There is no charge for TBKit unless you have agreed to a price in a written agreement. An agreed price is exclusive of taxes, which you pay, other than taxes on WITTCO’s net income. We will email account contacts at least 30 days before any new fee or price increase takes effect. You may stop using TBKit and export your data instead of accepting the new price. We will not charge a fee you have not agreed to, and we will not condition the export window on payment of a new fee.

12. Ownership of TBKit and feedback

WITTCO and its licensors own TBKit, including its software, design, documentation and the TBKit name and branding. Apart from your right to use the Service under these terms, these terms do not transfer any rights in TBKit to you. While your account is active, we give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to install and use the TBKit Windows app, when we provide it, to use the Service.

If you send us suggestions or feedback, you give us a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free license to use that feedback to build and improve TBKit, without any other obligation to you. Feedback does not include Customer Data. You keep your pre-existing materials and your Customer Data. Do not include confidential client information in feedback.

13. Other services

TBKit runs on Amazon Web Services and offers optional sign-in with Google. Your use of a Google account is also subject to Google’s terms. Bank files you import come from your financial institutions; we are not responsible for their content or accuracy. Links to other sites do not mean that WITTCO operates or endorses them. WITTCO’s managed IT services at getwittco.com are a separate service with their own terms.

14. Disclaimers

Except as expressly stated in these terms or a signed agreement, and to the fullest extent the law allows, TBKit is provided “as is” and “as available”. WITTCO disclaims all other warranties, express or implied, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, title and non-infringement. We do not promise that TBKit will be uninterrupted or error-free, that it will meet every requirement you have, or that its results will be accurate in every case. Pilot and pre-release features may contain errors and change without notice. Nothing in these terms excludes a warranty, right or responsibility that cannot be excluded under applicable law.

15. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither party is liable to the other for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, revenue, goodwill or business opportunities, arising out of or relating to TBKit or these terms, even if it was told they were possible. This waiver does not apply to a party’s fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct, or to amounts an indemnifying party must pay on a third-party claim covered by section 16.

To the fullest extent the law allows, each party’s total liability arising out of or relating to TBKit or these terms is limited to the greater of the fees you paid WITTCO for TBKit in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or one thousand U.S. dollars ($1,000).

That limit does not apply to a party’s fraud, gross negligence or willful misconduct; to death or bodily injury caused by a party; to a party’s infringement of the other party’s intellectual property; to your payment obligations; or to a party’s defense obligations under section 16. For a breach of section 10, or for unauthorized use or disclosure of the other party’s Customer Data, liability is limited to direct damages and the cap in the previous paragraph is replaced by the greater of those fees or twenty-five thousand U.S. dollars ($25,000).

These limits do not apply where the law does not allow them. Under Louisiana Civil Code article 2004, a clause that excludes or limits liability for intentional or gross fault, or for physical injury, is null. The limits in this section are read so that they do not do that.

16. Responsibility for claims

You will defend WITTCO and its personnel against a third-party claim, including a claim by your client, arising from Customer Data you lacked the authority to put into TBKit, from your use of TBKit in breach of these terms, or from your own bookkeeping, tax or payroll services, and you will pay the damages and reasonable attorneys’ fees finally awarded, or agreed in a settlement you control. WITTCO will promptly tell you about the claim, let you control the defense and settlement, and cooperate reasonably at your expense. You may not settle a claim in a way that admits fault by WITTCO, imposes an obligation on WITTCO, or fails to obtain a full release of WITTCO, without WITTCO’s prior written consent, which WITTCO will not unreasonably withhold.

WITTCO will defend you and your personnel against a third-party claim that the unmodified Service, as WITTCO provides it, infringes a United States patent, copyright or trademark, and will pay the damages and reasonable attorneys’ fees finally awarded, or agreed in a settlement WITTCO controls. You will promptly tell WITTCO about the claim, let WITTCO control the defense and settlement, and cooperate reasonably at WITTCO’s expense. WITTCO may not settle a claim in a way that admits fault by you, imposes an obligation on you other than ceasing the allegedly infringing use, or fails to obtain a full release of you, without your prior written consent, which you will not unreasonably withhold.

WITTCO has no obligation under the previous paragraph for a claim arising from Customer Data, from your combination of the Service with something WITTCO did not provide, from a modification WITTCO did not make, or from your continuing the allegedly infringing use after WITTCO notified you to stop and offered a reasonable non-infringing alternative. WITTCO may, at its option, procure the right for you to keep using the Service, modify the Service so it does not infringe, or end the affected part of the Service. If WITTCO ends it, you still receive the export window in section 9. This section states each party’s exclusive remedy for the third-party claims it covers.

17. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Louisiana, without regard to its conflict-of-laws rules. Each party agrees to the exclusive jurisdiction of the state courts located in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, and of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana, for disputes arising out of or relating to these terms or TBKit. Before starting a lawsuit, each party will first try in good faith to resolve the dispute by discussion for at least 30 days after written notice describing it, except where urgent relief is needed to protect data, intellectual property or confidential information, or to stop a breach of acceptable use. These terms do not require arbitration.

18. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms as TBKit develops. We will post the new version on this page with a new effective date, and we will keep the previous version available on request. For a material change, we will email account contacts at least 30 days before it takes effect, unless the change is required by law or to address a security risk sooner. If you continue to use TBKit after a change takes effect, the updated terms apply. If you do not agree to a change, you may stop using TBKit and export your data as described above. A signed agreement still controls where it conflicts, as section 1 says.

19. General

These terms, our privacy policy and any signed agreement with WITTCO for TBKit are the whole agreement between you and WITTCO about TBKit and replace earlier discussions about it. Neither party may assign these terms without the other’s consent, except to a successor in a merger, acquisition or sale of substantially all of its relevant business or assets, after notice to the other party. The successor remains bound by these terms, including the limits on use of Customer Data. Neither party is responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond its reasonable control. If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest remains in effect, and the unenforceable part is modified to the minimum extent needed to make it enforceable. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver. The parties are independent contractors. These terms create no rights for anyone else, including your clients. Sections that by their nature should survive the end of your account do survive, including those on Customer Data still held, export and deletion, confidentiality, fees owed, intellectual property, disclaimers, liability, claims and governing law.

Notices to you are effective when sent to the email address of an account contact. Notices to WITTCO are effective when sent by email to harry@getwittco.com. A notice of breach or termination is also effective when mailed to WITTCO LLC, Lacombe, Louisiana 70445. Email is enough for every other notice.

20. Contact

Questions about these terms or TBKit can be sent to WITTCO LLC, Lacombe, Louisiana 70445, at harry@getwittco.com or (985) 370-9488.