Terms of service

1. The agreement and our details

Cratebooks is operated by Cratebooks Ltd, registered in England and Wales under company number 17325477. Our registered office is 10 Parham Road, Worthing, United Kingdom, BN14 0BL. In these terms, "Cratebooks", "we", "us" and "our" mean Cratebooks Ltd. "You" means the person or business agreeing to these terms.

These terms, the order information shown at checkout and any plan-specific terms we clearly present form the agreement between us. Our Privacy Policy explains our use of personal data but does not form part of the contract. The data-processing terms in section 9 do form part of the contract. If plan-specific terms conflict with these terms, the plan-specific terms apply only to that plan and only to the extent of the conflict.

By checking the acceptance box and creating an account, including through a third-party sign-in provider, or by buying a plan after that acceptance, you agree to these terms. Merely viewing the Privacy Policy is not consent to data processing. If you act for a business or other person, you confirm that you have authority to bind them. Save or print a copy for your records.

2. Business use and eligibility

You must be at least 18 and legally capable of entering a contract. Cratebooks is supplied for use wholly or mainly in connection with a trade, profession or business, not for personal household use. You confirm that you are acting for business purposes.

Your legal status depends on the purpose for which you use the service, not just that confirmation. If you are legally a consumer, the consumer protections described in sections 17 and 18 apply. An unfair term is not binding on you.

3. The preparation, export and filing service

Cratebooks lets you import transaction rows from supported bank-statement files, receive automated categorisation suggestions, review records, check for common issues and create supported exports. You can then submit supported quarterly updates directly to HMRC through Cratebooks (section 4), file them yourself through other compatible software, or give them to your accountant.

• Cratebooks is not an accountant, tax adviser, lawyer, financial adviser or fiduciary.
• Suggestions, categories, tax-period views and checks are general software outputs. They are not professional advice and do not take account of every fact relevant to you.
• An export is not itself a tax return, filing, set of statutory accounts or assurance that your records comply with law.
• You may provide an export to your accountant or use it with compatible third-party software. We do not guarantee third-party compatibility unless we expressly say so.
• We do not hold client money, initiate payments, move money or change anything at your bank.

Checks and tips are prompts for you to consider, not decisions about what you are entitled to claim. You decide whether to act on them. Where we offer a list of suggested records or categories, you can untick any before accepting the list and can change your decisions later.

You decide whether to use the trading allowance and whether you are eligible. If you choose it in Cratebooks, we record that intended choice in your export and keep your expense records. Selecting it does not claim the allowance through a quarterly HMRC update or confirm your eligibility. You or your accountant must make any applicable allowance claim when completing your annual tax return through suitable software.

4. Direct HMRC filing

Cratebooks can submit supported Making Tax Digital for Income Tax quarterly updates for your self-employment directly to HMRC. Availability depends on your plan, HMRC connection, business type, accounting basis, period, product support and required security checks. Preparation and export work the same whether or not you use it. Where it is available and you use it:

• You connect to HMRC through HMRC's authorisation process. We do not ask for or receive your Government Gateway password.
• Cratebooks may read the business, obligation and calculation information needed to display the filing workflow and may send mandatory fraud-prevention headers to HMRC.
• We calculate the proposed period figures from the records and settings held in your account. You must review the preview, source records, period, business, accounting basis and every figure before filing.
• Your final confirmation is your instruction authorising Cratebooks to transmit the displayed data to HMRC as a software intermediary. It does not appoint us as your tax agent, adviser or representative.
• A success message or HMRC correlation identifier confirms technical receipt only. It does not mean that HMRC agrees the figures, that all obligations are complete, or that no further return, declaration, correction or payment is required.
• A quarterly or periodic update is not necessarily your annual finalisation, Self Assessment return or payment instruction. You must check what additional steps HMRC requires for your circumstances.
• Unless the interface expressly says otherwise, the feature does not sign you up for Making Tax Digital, determine whether you are mandated or exempt, submit your annual tax return or final declaration, report other income or gains, claim reliefs, make tax adjustments, amend an earlier return or pay tax.
• If the outcome is unclear because of an outage, timeout or inconsistent response, do not submit again blindly. Check your Cratebooks history and HMRC account, then contact us or HMRC as appropriate.
• You remain responsible for corrections, keeping supporting records, paying tax and meeting every deadline. Start early enough to allow for review, authentication, maintenance and provider outages.

Cratebooks currently records business mileage as a tax-year total and home working as counts of months in monthly hour bands. The resulting simplified-expense amounts are included in your full-year export and, when direct filing is available, your Q4 cumulative update. They are not included in Q1 to Q3 updates. This describes the current software workflow, not an HMRC requirement to report them only in Q4.

Including those amounts in Q4 does not finalise your tax position. HMRC says simplified expenses need an adjustment before you finalise your Income Tax position. You or your accountant must check their treatment when completing your annual tax return, including whether an amount already reported needs adjusting rather than claiming it again. See HMRC's guidance on simplified-expense records and year-end adjustments.

HMRC controls its systems, recognition process, API specifications and availability. Production access permits approved API use but is not an HMRC endorsement. Inclusion in HMRC's software finder follows its recognition process, but HMRC does not recommend a listed product or assure that it suits every user. We may suspend or change filing functionality where needed to remain secure, accurate or compliant. Supported Making Tax Digital quarterly filing is included in the paid plan, with no separate filing charge, including for continuously active founding subscriptions.

5. Your responsibilities

You are responsible for:

• importing complete and accurate source data for every relevant account and period;
• checking duplicates, omissions, signs, dates, categories, business-use percentages, mileage, home-working months, accounting basis and tax-period selection;
• deciding whether an item is allowable, capital, mixed-use, personal, income or otherwise reportable;
• choosing any allowance or simplified-expense method you are eligible to use, keeping accurate supporting records and not claiming the same costs twice;
• reviewing every export or proposed submission before relying on it;
• making any necessary year-end claims and adjustments through your tax-return software or accountant; a quarterly update does not complete those steps;
• retaining bank statements, receipts, invoices and other evidence for the period required by law;
• seeking qualified advice where treatment is uncertain or your affairs are complex;
• meeting filing, correction, payment and record-keeping deadlines; and
• keeping independent copies of important exports and submission receipts.

You must not describe Cratebooks suggestions as professional advice or assume that an automated check has identified every error. You are responsible for the acts of anyone you permit to use your account.

6. Accounts and security

You must provide accurate account information, keep it current, use a strong unique password, protect your device and authentication methods, and keep recovery codes secure. Accounts are for one named user unless a plan expressly permits more. Do not share credentials.

Tell us immediately at [email protected] if you suspect unauthorised access. We may require email verification or multi-factor authentication for sensitive features. You authorise us to act on instructions authenticated through your account unless we know or reasonably suspect they are unauthorised.

7. Imports, integrations and third-party services

Supported CSV and PDF statements are parsed in your browser. The original file is not uploaded, but the transaction rows it contains are sent to your account so they can be categorised, and you then decide which to keep. Parsing quality depends on the statement format. You must review the preview and imported results.

Cratebooks does not connect to your bank, request bank-login credentials or provide an account information service. You obtain a statement from your bank and choose the file to import. Cratebooks Ltd is not authorised or registered by the Financial Conduct Authority as an account information service provider, and no such service is offered under these terms.

Stripe, WorkOS, Google, Apple, Microsoft, HMRC and other third parties operate services we do not control. Their own terms and privacy notices may apply. We are not responsible for their independent acts, content or availability where we are not at fault. This does not remove our responsibility for our own acts or omissions, or for taking reasonable care when selecting, configuring and integrating providers used to deliver our service.

8. Your data and permissions

You retain ownership of data you provide. You grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide licence for the term of your account to host, copy, transmit, transform and otherwise use that data only as needed to provide, secure and support the service, comply with law and exercise our rights under this agreement. Any use to improve community categorisation is limited to the processing described in the Privacy Policy and is subject to your opt-out right.

You confirm that you have all rights, notices, lawful bases and permissions required to provide the data and instruct our processing. Do not upload data that is unlawful, irrelevant to bookkeeping, subject to restrictions you cannot meet, or infected with malicious code.

We may create statistical or aggregated information that does not identify you or another person. We may use and retain genuinely anonymous information to operate and improve Cratebooks. Community categorisation is described in the Privacy Policy and can be opted out of in account settings.

9. Data-processing terms for customer-controlled data

Where we process personal data on your behalf, each party will comply with applicable data-protection law. You are the controller and Cratebooks is the processor. The subject matter is providing Cratebooks; the duration is the agreement; the nature and purpose are hosting, organising, categorising, securing and exporting customer records; the data subjects may include you, customers, suppliers, collaborators and payers; and the data types are those described in the Privacy Policy.

We will process that data only on your documented instructions, including these terms and your use of the service, unless law requires otherwise. We will ensure authorised personnel are bound by confidentiality, maintain appropriate security, notify you without undue delay after becoming aware of a personal-data breach affecting that data, and reasonably assist with data-subject requests, security obligations, impact assessments and regulator consultation. Assistance beyond the standard service may be charged at a reasonable rate where law permits.

You give general written authorisation for the subprocessors listed in the Privacy Policy and equivalent replacements. We will impose materially equivalent data-protection duties on subprocessors and remain responsible for their performance to the extent required by law. We will give reasonable advance notice of a material new subprocessor. You may object on reasonable data-protection grounds, in which case we will work in good faith on a solution. If none is reasonably available, either party may end the affected service.

At the end of the service, and taking account of available export functionality, we will delete or return customer-controlled personal data at your written choice, except where law requires retention. You should export data before closing the account. We will provide information reasonably necessary to demonstrate compliance and allow proportionate audits where legally required, subject to confidentiality, security, reasonable notice and avoiding unnecessary disruption. International transfers will use a lawful safeguard described in the Privacy Policy.

10. Our intellectual property

We and our licensors own Cratebooks, including the software, design, brand, documentation, categorisation rules, models and all related intellectual-property rights. We grant you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable and revocable right to use the service for your internal business records during the agreement. No source code or ownership is transferred.

You may use and share exports containing your own data for your business, accountant, advisers and filing workflows. If you send feedback or suggestions, you permit us to use them without restriction or payment, but we will not identify you publicly without permission.

11. Plans, fees and automatic renewal

• The features, billing period, price and any introductory or founding-rate promise are those clearly displayed before purchase. Prices are in pounds sterling and include VAT where stated or legally applicable.
• Subscriptions renew automatically for the billing period shown at checkout until cancelled. Stripe charges the saved payment method on or shortly after the renewal date.
• If your offer expressly states that a founding renewal price is locked while the same subscription remains continuously active, we will honour that promise for the scope of that plan. Cancellation, expiry or failed renewal may end the founding rate. Supported HMRC quarterly filing is included. Other future products may be priced separately only where that is clearly disclosed before purchase.
• We may change standard prices. We will give at least 30 days' notice before a higher price applies to an existing paid subscription, and you may cancel before renewal.
• If payment fails, we may retry it and suspend paid features after reasonable notice. You remain responsible for charges properly incurred before cancellation.

12. Cancellation and refunds

You may cancel through the billing portal or by emailing [email protected]. Cancellation stops the next renewal. Unless we say otherwise, paid access continues to the end of the period already paid for.

Our first-purchase guarantee allows you to request a full refund by emailing [email protected] within 14 days of your first payment. After that, charges are non-refundable except where these terms say otherwise or law requires a refund. Closing your browser or ceasing to use the service does not cancel a subscription.

Account deletion is different from cancelling renewal: it ends your access immediately and permanently removes your live account records, subject to the retention described in our Privacy Policy. We complete deletion only after confirming that any linked subscription has been cancelled. If we cannot confirm cancellation, the account remains open and we ask you to retry or contact us. Export your records first and keep any cancellation confirmation.

If consumer cancellation law applies despite the business-use restriction, your statutory rights apply in addition to this guarantee. Nothing here requires you to waive a right that cannot lawfully be waived.

13. Acceptable use

You must not use Cratebooks unlawfully or in a way that harms the service or others. In particular, do not access another user's data, defeat security or rate limits, introduce malicious code, scrape or overload the service, test vulnerabilities without written permission, use automated access outside documented interfaces, reverse engineer except where law expressly permits it, infringe rights, resell access, or use Cratebooks to provide a competing service.

14. Availability, maintenance and changes

We will provide the service with reasonable care and skill. Online services depend on networks and providers and cannot be guaranteed uninterrupted, error-free or permanently available. We may perform maintenance, fix security issues and change features to reflect law, HMRC requirements, technology or user needs.

We will not materially reduce the core paid service during a current paid period without a valid reason. If we permanently remove a core paid feature and the remaining service is materially less useful to you, we will tell you and let you cancel the affected paid service without a cancellation charge. If you cancel for that reason, we will refund the unused proportion of prepaid fees. These rights also apply where the change is required by law, security or a third-party service outside our reasonable control. They do not replace any other remedy you have under law.

15. Suspension, termination and data export

You may stop using Cratebooks or delete your account at any time. Export records you need first. Account deletion is intended to be permanent and cannot be undone.

We may suspend access immediately where reasonably necessary for security, suspected unlawful use, non-payment, legal compliance or protection of users. We may terminate for a material breach that you do not remedy within 14 days after notice, unless the breach cannot be remedied or immediate action is reasonably necessary. We may discontinue the service on reasonable notice and will provide an opportunity to export data. If we discontinue a paid service for reasons unrelated to your breach, we will refund the unused proportion of prepaid fees.

Terms that by nature should survive termination do so, including payment obligations, intellectual property, confidentiality, liability, dispute and data-retention provisions.

16. Confidentiality

Each party will protect the other's confidential information using reasonable care and use it only for this agreement. This does not cover information that is public without breach, already lawfully known, independently developed or lawfully received without restriction. A party may disclose information where required by law after giving notice where legally permitted.

17. Warranties and disclaimers

We will provide Cratebooks with reasonable care and skill and have the right to provide it. The software is not personalised tax advice: suggestions may need correction for your circumstances, checks do not find every issue, and third-party compatibility is limited to what we expressly support. We cannot guarantee when HMRC or another independent provider will accept or process a submission. These boundaries do not excuse a failure by us to perform the functions we promise with reasonable care and skill.

If you are legally a consumer, you have rights to services supplied with reasonable care and skill and in accordance with information about the service that you relied on when entering the contract. If we fail to meet those obligations, you may be entitled to have the service performed again at no extra cost or to a price reduction, including a refund where appropriate. These terms do not remove those rights or other remedies available under consumer law.

18. Liability

Nothing in these terms excludes or limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, breach of a liability that law does not permit us to limit, or your statutory rights where they cannot be limited.

If you are legally a consumer, we are responsible for foreseeable loss or damage caused by our breach of these terms or our failure to use reasonable care and skill. Loss or damage is foreseeable if it is an obvious consequence of the breach or if you and we knew it might happen when the contract was made.

The following limits apply to business users, subject to the law's requirements, including any applicable test of reasonableness. They do not limit a consumer's statutory rights or remedies:

• we are not liable for tax, National Insurance, penalties, interest, missed reliefs, accounting treatment or filing consequences to the extent caused by your incomplete or inaccurate source data, tax-treatment choices, failure to review, failure to seek advice on matters outside the service described in these terms, or failure to meet a deadline. This does not exclude our responsibility for loss caused by our own breach or failure to use reasonable care and skill;
• we are not liable for independent acts, omissions, rules, outages or decisions of HMRC, a bank that produced your statement, an adviser or another third party outside our reasonable control where we are not at fault. This does not exclude our responsibility for our own acts or omissions, or for taking reasonable care when selecting, configuring and integrating providers used to deliver our service;
• we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, or for loss of profit, revenue, business, anticipated savings, opportunity, goodwill or reputation;
• your failure to keep the independent copies required under section 5 may reduce the amount recoverable for loss or corruption of data, but only to the extent that it actually increased the loss. It does not exclude all responsibility for data loss caused by our breach or failure to use reasonable care and skill; and
• our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the service, whether in contract, tort including negligence, breach of statutory duty or otherwise, is limited to the greater of £100 and the total fees paid or payable by you for the service in the 12 months before the event giving rise to liability.

The business-user exclusions and cap apply only where legally enforceable. They do not reduce any refund expressly promised in these terms.

19. Your responsibility for claims

To the extent permitted by law, you will reimburse us for reasonable losses, liabilities and external costs arising from a third-party claim caused by your unlawful content, infringement of another person's rights, or deliberate misuse of the service in material breach of these terms. This does not apply to the extent the claim was caused by us. We will notify you promptly, allow you reasonable involvement in the defence and take reasonable steps to mitigate loss.

20. Events outside reasonable control

Neither party is liable for delay or failure to the extent caused by an event genuinely outside its reasonable control, such as a widespread network or HMRC outage, natural disaster or government action. This does not excuse a failure to take reasonable precautions or reduce the impact, or a problem within the reasonable control of a provider engaged to perform that party's obligations. The affected party must notify the other as soon as reasonably practicable and take reasonable steps to resume performance.

If such an event prevents us from providing a core paid service and the interruption materially affects your use of it, you may cancel the affected paid service without a cancellation charge by emailing [email protected]. We will refund the unused proportion of prepaid fees, including the period for which that service was unavailable. Amounts owed for service already supplied remain payable. This clause does not remove your rights to refunds, cancellation or other remedies under consumer law.

21. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms for legal, regulatory, security, provider or service changes. We will post the new version and date. We will give reasonable advance notice of a material change that disadvantages existing paid users. Unless law or urgent security requires earlier effect, the change will apply from the stated date. If you do not agree, you must stop using the service and may cancel before the change takes effect. A change does not retrospectively alter a dispute that arose before it took effect.

22. General legal terms

We may transfer this agreement as part of a financing, reorganisation or sale of our business, provided this does not materially reduce your rights. You may not transfer it without our written consent. No other person has a right to enforce these terms under the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999.

If a court finds part of these terms unlawful or unenforceable, that part is not binding and the rest remains effective where it can operate without it. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver. For business users, these terms and the order information are the entire agreement about the service and replace earlier statements, without limiting liability for fraud. For consumers, this does not exclude information about the service that you relied on when entering the contract. Nothing creates a partnership, employment, fiduciary, agency or tax-agent relationship.

Notices to us must be sent to [email protected]. We may send notices to your account email or through a prominent in-app notice. Email is treated as received on the next working day unless a delivery failure is received.

23. Governing law and disputes

These terms and any non-contractual dispute are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction for business users. If you are legally a consumer, you may also have the right to bring proceedings in the part of the UK or country where you live.

Please contact us first so we can try to resolve a complaint. Nothing prevents either party seeking urgent court relief or using any mandatory statutory complaint route.

24. Contact

Cratebooks Ltd
10 Parham Road
Worthing
United Kingdom
BN14 0BL

Email: [email protected]