Privacy policy

Next Layer Works (“Works”) is made by Next Layer AI LLC (“Next Layer”, “we”, “us”), a company based in Michigan, USA. Works is run from the United States, and what it keeps is stored there.

This policy covers:

• this website;
• the Works app, in a web browser and on a phone;
• the emails and web pages that Works sends or shows for the businesses that use it.

Questions about privacy: support@nextlayer.works.

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• People with a Works account: business owners, managers and workers who sign in. For your account details, Next Layer decides how the information is used, as this policy describes.
• The people a business works with: its customers, and the workers it keeps records about. The business decides what it records about them and why. We keep that information for the business, so that Works can run for it.

In the words privacy laws use: for the people a business works with, the business is in charge of the information (its “controller”), and we handle it for the business as its service provider (its “processor”).

If you are a customer of a business that uses Works, start with that business. It decides what is recorded about you, and we help it answer you.

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When you visit this website

• This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics, advertising or tracking tools.
• Like any website, the company that hosts it receives the technical details of each visit, such as your internet address and your browser type. It uses them to deliver the page and keep the service secure.
• If you write to us, for example to ask for an invitation, we keep your message and your email address so that we can answer you.

When you have a Works account

• Name, email address and password. We store the password only as a one-way scramble (a hash), which can’t be turned back into the password.
• Two-step sign-in, if you turn it on: the key for your authenticator app (stored encrypted) and your one-time backup codes (stored only as hashes).
• Your sign-ins: when each one started and was last used, and the description your browser gives of itself. “Sign out other devices” ends them all but the one you’re using.
• A sign-in history, kept for security: each sign-in, sign-out, failed attempt and password change, with its time and the browser’s description. A failed attempt is recorded against a scrambled form (a hash) of the email address that was typed, not the address itself.
• On the phone app (for iPhone and Android, coming soon): each sign-in on a phone. If you allow alerts, we also keep the phone’s push address (its “push token”), whether it’s an iPhone or an Android phone, and which alerts you chose. Signing out clears the push address. So that it works without a signal, the app keeps the day’s work on the phone itself for a few days.
• Your businesses: which businesses you belong to, your role (owner, manager or worker), and invitations.
• Three cookies in the app, all needed for it to work: one keeps you signed in, one remembers which business you’re working in, and one holds your place during two-step sign-in. The app uses no analytics, advertising or tracking cookies.

What a business keeps in Works

The business types or imports this information, or its customers give it through the business’s own pages.

• Customers: names, email addresses, phone numbers, service and billing addresses, and notes, including access notes (for example a gate code). Also whether the customer agreed to receive email or texts and when, and preferences such as getting invoices as a PDF or as a link only.
• Customer sign-up pages: whatever the customer fills in. That can be contact details, addresses, the services wanted, how often, a preferred day, access notes, a message, and how they heard about the business. When the customer signs the business’s agreement online, Works keeps a record of the signature: the name they typed, the time, a fingerprint of the agreement document, and their browser’s description. It also keeps a keyed scramble (a hash) of their internet address, never the address itself.
• Work: agreements and prices, schedules, crews, who goes where, and visits done or skipped, with notes and hours.
• Billing: charges, quotes, invoices, statements, credits and late fees, and recorded payments (method, amount, date and a reference such as a check number).
• Messages: the address each was sent to, its subject and words, and whether it was delivered.
• Card payments (coming soon): Stripe will handle the payment, in the business’s own Stripe account. Works never receives or stores full card numbers. It keeps the amount, the status, Stripe’s reference, the card’s brand and last four digits, and whether the card was credit or debit. Refunds and disputes are recorded as Stripe reports them. Stripe may set its own cookies on the page where a customer pays, to prevent fraud.
• Workers: names, phone numbers, email addresses and notes. Also crews, pay terms (by the hour, by the job or a fixed amount), hours, earnings, pay batches, and how each payment was made. Works does not ask for Social Security numbers, tax IDs or bank details.
• Activity log: who did what in Works, and when. It is kept as the business’s record.
• Bookings from services the business connects: a connected service (for example a booking service) can add booked jobs and look them up. It can also see how many visits each day has, but never who the visits are for or where.
• The business’s Works plan: its free time, its price, whether it is paid, and when it renews or ends. When an owner pays for the plan, Stripe takes the card on its own page. Works keeps Stripe’s references for the plan and the card’s brand and last four digits, never the full number.

What Works does not collect

• The phone app doesn’t track where you are, and doesn’t use the phone’s camera, microphone or contacts.
• No advertising identifiers.

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• To run Works for you: store and show your records, make PDFs and downloads, send the phone alerts you asked for, send the emails about your own account (such as an invitation or a link to set a new password), and send the emails a business sends or sets to go out by themselves, such as reminders.
• To send notices about Works itself, such as a change to our terms, to this policy or to your plan.
• To keep Works secure: sign-ins, two-step sign-in, limits on repeated attempts, and looking into misuse.
• To help you when you write to us.
• To take payment for a business’s Works plan.
• To do what the law requires of us.

We do not sell personal information. We do not use it for advertising, and we don’t share it except as this policy describes. Works does not send your information to any AI service.

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A few companies help us run Works. Each handles information only to provide its service to us.

Render

Hosts this website, the app and its database, in the United States (Virginia). It handles everything stored in Works. Render delivers pages through Cloudflare’s network, which also keeps attacks away.

Resend

Sends email. It handles the address, the email’s words and any PDF attached to it.

Expo

Delivers phone alerts, passing them on to Apple and Google. It handles the phone’s push address and the alert’s words: for example a customer’s name, a day, the first line of an address or an invoice number. Never an amount of money.

Stripe

Takes card payments. For a business’s Works plan, it handles the card, the business’s name, the owner’s sign-in email address and our reference number for the business. For card payments from a business’s customers, once they are switched on, it handles the payment inside the business’s own Stripe account.

Twilio

Sends text messages, only once texts are switched on. It will handle the phone number and the text’s words.

• When a customer pays a business by card, the customer and the business deal with Stripe under Stripe’s own terms and privacy policy.
• A business decides whether to connect other services. A connected service gets only what is described under What Works keeps.
• Email that you send to us is received by the company that runs our mailbox.
• We may share information when the law requires it, to protect someone’s safety or our rights, or as part of selling or merging our business.

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Invoices, statements, quotes, receipts and sign-up confirmations open through private links that only the person they were sent to was given. Anyone who has the link can open the page, so keep it to yourself.

A link stops working after a set time: normally 90 days for an invoice, 60 for a statement, 45 for a quote, 180 for a receipt and 30 for a sign-up confirmation. The business can turn a link off sooner.

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• A business’s records stay while the business uses Works. A business can archive a customer; Works has no button that erases one (see the next section).
• Sign-ins in a web browser end after 30 days at most, or after 14 days without use, and are then deleted.
• Sign-ins on the phone app end after 90 days at most, or after 30 days without use, and are then deleted.
• Phone alerts are deleted 30 days after they were made.
• Counters that limit repeated attempts are deleted after a day.
• Download links made on the phone work once, for 10 minutes.
• The sign-in history is kept, for security and to look into misuse. It has no set end date.
• Backups: the company that hosts Works keeps backup copies of the database for a few days, so it can be restored after a failure.
• A business that is read-only, because its free time ended or its plan isn’t paid: nothing is deleted.
• A business that was closed: its records are kept, but nobody can open them any more. Invoices, payments and work history are records a business may still be asked for, so they have no set end date. To ask about them, write to support@nextlayer.works.

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• Download my data. Anyone with an account can download a file with their account, businesses, sign-ins, devices and their own worker records. It never includes passwords or keys. In a web browser it is on the Your account page; on the phone, under Account, then Your data.
• Download all business data. An owner can download spreadsheet files with the business’s customers, service locations, agreements, visits, invoices and their lines, payments, workers, crews, hours and worker pay. Quotes, sent messages, the activity log, sign-up requests and agreement PDFs are not in that download.
• Delete my account. In the same two places as “Download my data”.

What deleting your account erases

• your name, email address and password;
• your sign-ins in web browsers, and your two-step sign-in settings;
• your place in each business you belonged to;
• download links, and phone alerts waiting for you.

Your sign-ins on phones are switched off at once and removed about a week later.

What stays

• What you did in Works stays with the business, shown as “Deleted account”, because invoices, payments and work history must stay correct.
• A worker record a business kept about you stays with that business, no longer tied to a sign-in.
• The sign-in history stays. It doesn’t hold your email address, only a scrambled form of it.
• An invitation you accepted keeps the email address it was sent to.

If you own a business

• If you’re the only owner of a business that other people use, make someone else an owner first.
• A business only you use closes with your account. It is archived, and its public links, booking keys, open invitations and queued messages are turned off. If its plan is on, Works asks you to stop the plan first.
• A closed business’s records are kept, but nobody can open them any more. Download them first if you’ll need them.
• You can sign up again later with the same email address.

If you’re a customer of a business

Ask the business to show you, correct or remove your details. Works has no button that erases a customer, so the business and we handle such a request by hand.

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Wherever you live, you can ask:

• what is kept about you, and for a copy of it;
• to have it corrected;
• to have it deleted.

• If you have a Works account, most of this is in the app already (see Download your data, or delete your account). For anything else, write to support@nextlayer.works.
• If you’re a customer or a worker of a business that uses Works, ask that business first: the records are its records. If you write to us, we pass your request to the business and help it answer.
• We answer within 45 days. We may first need to check that you are who you say you are. If we can’t do what you asked, for example because a record has to be kept, we tell you why.
• Asking costs nothing, and we won’t treat you worse for it.
• Nothing is sold, and nothing is shared for advertising. So there is nothing to opt out of. For the same reason Works behaves the same whether or not your browser sends a “Do Not Track” or “Global Privacy Control” signal: it tracks no one either way.

Some states give their residents rights like these by law. We give them to everyone.

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• Works sends a business’s emails to a customer only if the business recorded that the customer agreed to email. The same will go for texts, once they’re switched on.
• Emails show the business’s name and come from Works’s sending address. Replies go to the business.
• A customer who no longer wants messages can tell the business. Once the business records that, Works stops sending.

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• The website and the app use encrypted connections (HTTPS).
• Each business’s records are kept apart in the database, so one business can’t see another’s.
• Passwords and backup codes are stored only as hashes, and two-step keys are encrypted.
• Each person sees what their role allows. A worker’s sign-in is limited to their own work.
• Our logs are set up to leave out passwords and sign-in keys.

No system is perfectly secure.

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If we learn that someone got to personal information in Works who shouldn’t have, we tell the people with a Works account who are affected, and the owners of the businesses affected, without unreasonable delay. We say what happened and what we know.

Each business tells its own customers and workers where the law requires it, and we help it do that. We tell the authorities where the law requires it of us.

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Works is a tool for businesses and is not meant for children. We don’t knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If you think a child under 13 has given us information, write to support@nextlayer.works and we’ll delete it.

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If we change this policy, we will post the new version on this page with a new date. If the change is an important one, we’ll also tell the people who have an account, by email or in the app, before it applies.

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Next Layer AI LLC, Michigan, USA. Email: support@nextlayer.works.

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