Terms of service

Draft – subject to legal review

Last updated: [date to be set when published]

These terms are the agreement between your organisation and us for the use of WorkplaceHQ, a staff communication app. Please read them before starting a trial or subscribing. We have tried to keep them short and in plain English.

1. Who we are and who you are

• "We", "us" or "WorkplaceHQ" means Yorkshire Hospitality Ltd (trading as WorkplaceHQ), a company registered in England and Wales with company number 09991958, whose registered office is at Management Suite Kepwick House, Peasholm Gap, Scarborough, England, YO12 7TN.
• "You" or "the Customer" means the business or organisation that signs up for WorkplaceHQ. The person who signs up confirms that they have authority to accept these terms on its behalf.
• WorkplaceHQ is for business use only. These terms do not apply to consumers.
• "Users" means your staff and anyone else you invite to use WorkplaceHQ.

2. Accounts and admins

• When you sign up we create a WorkplaceHQ space for your organisation. You choose one or more admins to run it.
• Admins add Users and invite them by sharing an invite link or a ready-written invite message themselves (WorkplaceHQ does not send invite emails). Admins can also remove Users, manage sites and groups, publish content and change settings. You are responsible for what your admins do and for keeping your list of Users up to date.
• Each User must have their own login. Logins must not be shared, and you must tell us promptly if you think an account has been misused.
• You are responsible for the content your Users post and for making sure your Users follow these terms.

3. Free trial

• New customers get a 14-day free trial. You do not need to give card details to start.
• During the trial you can use the full product with your team.
• At the end of the 14 days you choose whether to subscribe. If you want to keep using WorkplaceHQ, you subscribe and pay from that point. If you do not subscribe, your access ends when the trial ends and we deal with your data as set out in section 13.
• We will not charge you anything for the trial, and you will not be moved onto a paid plan without choosing to subscribe.
• We may limit trials to one per organisation.

4. Prices and payment

• The price is £39.50 a month plus VAT for up to 15 Users, then £2.50 a month plus VAT for each User over 15.
• For example: 25 Users cost £64.50 a month and 50 Users cost £127.00 a month, plus VAT.
• Subscriptions are billed monthly in advance. The number of Users is the number of active User accounts in your space at the billing date [Deano to confirm how Users are counted].
• Payment is by Direct Debit through GoCardless, collected monthly in advance. Yorkshire Hospitality Ltd issues a VAT invoice for every payment.
• If a payment is late we will remind you. If it is still unpaid [14] days after the reminder, we may suspend your access until it is paid (see section 12).
• We may change our prices by giving you at least 30 days' notice by email. The new price applies from your next billing date after the notice ends. If you do not agree, you can cancel before then.

5. Cancellation

• You can cancel your subscription at any time from your admin settings or by emailing us at [Deano to confirm support email].
• Cancellation takes effect at the end of the monthly period you have already paid for. We do not give refunds for part-months, except where the law requires it.
• There is no minimum term and no cancellation fee.

6. Acceptable use

You must not, and must make sure your Users do not:

• break the law, or use WorkplaceHQ to harass, bully, discriminate against or threaten anyone;
• post content that is unlawful, defamatory, obscene, or that infringes someone else's rights;
• upload viruses or harmful code, or try to get into parts of the service or other customers' data that you are not allowed to access;
• overload, disrupt, copy, reverse-engineer or resell the service, or use automated tools to scrape it;
• use WorkplaceHQ to send spam or unsolicited marketing;
• post sensitive information that does not need to be shared, such as passwords, bank details or children's images, without a proper reason and the right permissions.

We may remove content that breaks these rules, and we may suspend Users who break them (see section 12).

7. Your data and UK GDPR

• Your data stays yours. Everything you and your Users put into WorkplaceHQ (posts, messages, documents, photos and staff details) belongs to you.
• For personal data in your space, you are the controller and we are the processor, as defined in the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018.
• We and each paying customer sign a written data processing agreement before the first paid charge. It sets out these processor terms in more detail.
• We will only process that personal data to provide WorkplaceHQ, on your documented instructions, which are set out in these terms and in how you configure the service.
• We will:

- make sure our staff and suppliers who handle your data are bound by confidentiality;

- keep appropriate security measures in place (see section 8);

- only use sub-processors (such as our hosting provider) under written terms that protect your data, and keep a list of them available to you [Deano to confirm sub-processor list, e.g. hosting provider];

- help you respond to requests from people exercising their data rights, and with data protection impact assessments where reasonable;

- tell you without undue delay if we become aware of a personal data breach affecting your data;

- delete or return your data when our agreement ends (see section 13);

- give you the information you reasonably need to show you are complying, and allow reasonable audits on notice.

• We host data in [Deano to confirm hosting location, e.g. the EU or UK]. If we transfer personal data outside the UK, we will use a lawful transfer mechanism.
• You are responsible for having a lawful basis to put your staff's data into WorkplaceHQ, and for telling your staff how it is used.
• We may use anonymised, aggregated information about how the service is used (which does not identify you or any person) to run and improve WorkplaceHQ.

8. Security

• We use reasonable technical and organisational measures to protect your data. These include encrypted connections (HTTPS), access controls, regular backups and keeping our software up to date.
• No system is completely secure. You must help by keeping logins private, removing leavers promptly and using the admin controls sensibly.

9. Availability and support

• We aim to keep WorkplaceHQ available 24 hours a day, but we do not promise it will always be available or error-free.
• We may need planned maintenance. Where we can, we will do this at quiet times and give notice of anything major.
• Support is by email at [Deano to confirm support email] during UK business hours.
• We may improve or change features over time. We will not make changes that materially reduce the core service you pay for without telling you first.

10. Intellectual property

• We (and our licensors) own WorkplaceHQ, including its software, design and brand. While you are a customer we give you and your Users a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use it for your internal business purposes.
• You own your content. You give us permission to host, copy and display it only as needed to provide the service to you.
• If you send us feedback or ideas, we may use them freely.

11. Liability

• Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.
• Neither of us is liable for loss of profits, revenue, business, goodwill or anticipated savings, or for any indirect or consequential loss.
• Apart from the above, each party's total liability under or in connection with these terms in any 12-month period is limited to the fees you paid us in that period [Deano/legal to confirm the cap, e.g. 12 months' fees or a fixed minimum such as £1,000].
• We are not responsible for content posted by you or your Users, or for problems caused by things outside our reasonable control.

12. Suspension and ending the agreement

• We may suspend access for a User or for your whole space if:

- payment is overdue (see section 4);

- there is a serious or repeated breach of the acceptable use rules; or

- we need to protect the service, other customers or the law.

• Where reasonable we will warn you first and lift the suspension once the problem is fixed.
• Either of us may end the agreement immediately by written notice if the other:

- seriously breaches these terms and does not fix the breach within 14 days of being asked to; or

- becomes insolvent.

• You can also end it at any time by cancelling (see section 5).

13. Exporting and deleting your data

• While your subscription is active, you can ask us for an export of your data and we will provide it in a commonly used format [Deano to confirm format; there is no self-service export in the app yet].
• When a trial ends without a subscription, or when a subscription is cancelled or ended, we keep your data for 30 days so that you can come back or ask for an export. After that we delete it from the live service. Backups are overwritten within a further [Deano to confirm, e.g. 30] days.
• If you want your data deleted sooner, ask us and we will do it.

14. Changes to these terms

• We may update these terms from time to time, for example to reflect changes in the law or in WorkplaceHQ.
• For significant changes we will give you at least 30 days' notice by email or in the app. If you do not agree, you may cancel before the change takes effect.
• The current version will always be on our website.

15. General

• These terms, with any order details we agree in writing, are the whole agreement between us about WorkplaceHQ.
• Neither of us may transfer the agreement without the other's consent, except that we may transfer it to a company that takes over our business.
• If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest still applies.
• Notices must be sent by email: to us at [Deano to confirm email], and to you at the email address of your account owner.
• No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms.

16. Law and courts

These terms, and any dispute about them, are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.