Terms of Service

1. What bbooks is

bbooks is online double-entry accounting software for small businesses in the United States. It records invoices, expenses, bills, bank activity, payroll, projects and inventory as journal entries, and produces financial reports from them.

It is an automated tool you use to keep your own books. We are not a certified public accounting firm, an accounting firm, your bookkeeper, or your tax adviser, and nothing generated by the software constitutes professional accounting, tax, investment, or legal advice. You bear sole and exclusive responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, and regulatory compliance of all data entered and all tax returns, filings, or financial disclosures based upon it.

2. Your account and your organization

You need an account to use bbooks, and that account is yours alone. Keep your password to yourself, and tell us if you think someone else has used it. You must be old enough to enter into a contract where you live, and the information you give us when you register must be accurate.

Work happens inside an organization, which represents one company's books. Whoever creates an organization administers it, and can invite other people and give each of them a role — administrator, accountant, employee or read-only — that decides what they may see and what they may change. An administrator can remove a member at any time, and that person's access to the organization ends immediately.

3. Subscription, trial and billing

Every new organization starts with a thirty-day free trial of the plan you choose. To begin the trial you choose a plan and give a card to Stripe, our payment processor. Unless you cancel before the trial ends, it then becomes a paid subscription to the plan you chose, and the first charge is made when the trial ends.

Plans are billed monthly in advance through Stripe and renew each month until you cancel. The plans available, what each one includes and what each one costs are on our pricing page — we deliberately do not repeat any amount here, so that this document cannot go out of date.

You can cancel at any time from your billing settings. If you cancel during the trial, you are not charged. After that, cancelling stops the next renewal; the month already in progress is not refunded unless we have agreed otherwise in writing. If we change what a plan costs, we will tell you before the change applies to your subscription.

4. Acceptable use

Use bbooks for lawful business purposes only. Do not use it to launder money, to commit or conceal fraud, or to keep records you know to be false.

Do not try to reach another organization's data, probe or interfere with the security of the service, copy or resell the software, reverse engineer it, or run automated processes against it that degrade it for other customers. Do not upload material you have no right to upload. If you break these rules we may suspend or close the account, and where the law requires it we will report what we are required to report.

5. Your books are yours

The books you keep in bbooks belong to you, not to us. You give us permission to store and process that data for one purpose only: to run the service for you — to host it, back it up, show it to the people you have invited, and help you when you ask us to.

We do not sell your data and we do not use your accounting records to advertise to you. You are responsible for having the right to store the information you put in, including information about your customers and your employees.

6. Keeping and exporting your records

Your records stay readable to you. If your subscription lapses, or you move to a plan that does not include a module, that module stops accepting new entries — but nothing is deleted. Every report, register and ledger stays readable, and you can still export what you have. Employees keep read-only access to their own pay records even if their employer's plan lapses.

Reports export to CSV, Excel and PDF from inside the application, and we recommend you export a copy before you stop using bbooks. If you want an organization and its records removed entirely, write to us at the contact address below; removal is permanent and we cannot undo it.

7. Warranties and liability

THE SERVICE, SOFTWARE, FINANCIAL CALCULATIONS, AUTOMATED RULES, CATEGORIZATIONS, TRIAL BALANCES, AND GENERATED REPORTS ARE PROVIDED "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EITHER EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO ANY IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, ACCURACY, SYSTEM INTEGRATION, OR NON-INFRINGEMENT. We work diligently to maintain the service, but we make no representation or warranty that calculations, data feeds, or reports will be uninterrupted, error-free, or entirely accurate. We hold no security or compliance certification and we do not claim one.

You acknowledge and agree that automated bank rules, reconciliation matching, transaction categorizations, and import suggestions are auxiliary tools designed solely to assist your workflow, and do not replace mandatory human review and professional accounting judgment. You have the affirmative duty to independently inspect, reconcile, and approve all entries, calculations, and financial reports before using them, relying upon them, or submitting them to any third party. Ascension Wealth Strategies LLC and its operators expressly disclaim all liability for any taxes, interest, penalties, additions to tax, fines, or assessments imposed by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) or any federal, state, or municipal taxing authority.

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, in no event shall Ascension Wealth Strategies LLC, its affiliates, directors, or employees be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, punitive, or exemplary damages, or for lost profits, lost business, lost goodwill, or data corruption. Our total aggregate cumulative liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or related to these terms or your use of the service shall not exceed the greater of the total amount actually paid by you to us in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to liability, or USD 100.

8. Ending the agreement

You can stop using bbooks at any time, and you can cancel your subscription from your billing settings. We can suspend or end your access if you break these terms, if a payment fails and stays unpaid after we have asked you to fix it, or if the law requires us to.

If we end your access for any reason other than a breach by you, we will give you reasonable notice and a chance to export your records first. Ending a subscription does not by itself delete your books — the sections above on your books and on keeping your records still apply.

9. Governing law and dispute resolution

These terms and any dispute arising out of or relating to them or to the service are governed by and construed in accordance with the laws of the State of Texas, United States, without giving effect to any principles of conflicts of law.

Any controversy, claim, or dispute arising out of or relating to these terms, the service, or the breach thereof shall be resolved exclusively by confidential, binding individual arbitration administered by the American Arbitration Association (AAA) under its Commercial Arbitration Rules, before a single neutral arbitrator. The place and seat of arbitration shall be Austin, Travis County, Texas. Judgment on the award rendered by the arbitrator may be entered in any court having jurisdiction thereof.

YOU AND ASCENSION WEALTH STRATEGIES LLC AGREE THAT EACH MAY BRING CLAIMS AGAINST THE OTHER ONLY IN AN INDIVIDUAL CAPACITY AND NOT AS A PLAINTIFF OR CLASS MEMBER IN ANY PURPORTED CLASS, COLLECTIVE, CONSOLIDATED, OR REPRESENTATIVE PROCEEDING. BOTH PARTIES EXPRESSLY WAIVE ANY RIGHT TO A TRIAL BY JURY. If any provision of these terms is found by a court or arbitrator to be invalid or unenforceable, that provision shall be enforced to the maximum extent permissible, and the remaining provisions shall remain in full force and effect.

10. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms as the product changes. When we do, we update the effective date shown at the top of this page, and if the change materially affects your rights we will tell the administrators of each organization by email before it takes effect.

If you keep using bbooks after a change takes effect, you accept the updated terms. If you do not accept them, cancel your subscription and stop using the service.

11. Contact

bbooks is operated by Ascension Wealth Strategies LLC. For questions about these terms, for legal notices, or for anything to do with your data, write to contact@ascensionwealthstrategiesllc.com and a person will answer you.