Privacy Policy

Booktender is booking software for barbershops and other appointment-based shops, with an AI phone agent that can answer a shop’s calls. It is built in Calgary, Alberta. The organization responsible for Booktender is the one named in our Terms of Service.

Our privacy contact answers questions about this policy and about how we handle personal information. You can reach them by email at hello@booktender.app, or by mail at Booktender, 1721 29th Avenue SW, Studio 415, Calgary, AB T2T 6T7.

Booktender handles two kinds of information, and our role is different for each.

• A shop’s clients and callers. The shop is the organization responsible for this information under Alberta’s Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA). We hold and process it for the shop, on its instructions, to provide Booktender to it. If you are a shop’s client, the shop is your first contact about your information, and we help the shop answer.
• Shop owners’ and staff accounts, billing, and visitors to this website. The organization named in our Terms of Service is responsible for this information; its privacy contact is hello@booktender.app.

We follow PIPA. Where federal law applies, for example when information crosses provincial or national borders, we also follow the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA).

Visitors to this website. This site uses no cookies, analytics or trackers. Like any website, the servers that deliver its pages receive your device’s internet (IP) address and browser details in order to send them, and our hosting provider may keep these in logs for security. If you email us, we receive your email address and what you write. If you sign up for Booktender news by email, we keep your email address and when you signed up.

Shop owners and staff.

• Your name, email address and, if one is added, your phone number.
• The shops you belong to, your role, where you work, the services you do, your hours and time off.
• Pay details an owner records, such as commission rates, an hourly rate or chair rent, and the earnings and tips worked out from completed sales.
• A record of the changes you make in the app: who changed what, and when.
• For owners: the shop’s plan, invoices and payment status. Card details are entered on Stripe’s pages and held by Stripe; they never reach our servers.

A shop’s clients. The shop enters this information, or you give it when you book online, text the shop or call its phone agent.

• Your name, phone numbers and email address, and your birthday and pronouns if the shop records them.
• Your appointments, visit history, and any waitlist or walk-in entries.
• Notes the shop keeps: client notes, alerts for staff, and visit notes (what was done, products used, what you talked about), with any photos the shop takes for its records.
• Your sales: services, products, tips, discounts and how you paid. Card payments run on the shop’s own card terminal; Booktender records only the payment method and amount.
• The texts and emails the shop sends you, your replies, and whether you have opted out.
• A record of any consent you give the shop to send you offers. Booktender sends no marketing messages.
• To stop abuse of the online booking page, a count of booking attempts from each internet address and phone number.

People who call a shop’s AI phone agent.

• Your phone number (caller ID) and which of the shop’s clients it matches, if any.
• Your voice, while the call runs. We don’t keep recordings of calls (see Phone calls, AI and transcripts).
• A transcript of what you and the agent said, when the shop tells callers that calls are transcribed (the default).
• What the agent did: the times it looked up, the bookings it made, moved or cancelled, and whether it checked who you are.
• A short summary of the call for the shop, the call’s outcome, when it started and ended, and what it cost to run.
• A message, if you leave one: your name, a number to call back and the message.

The agent says it is an AI. Every call to a shop’s phone agent starts with it introducing itself as the shop’s AI assistant, and a shop can’t remove that. Unless the shop has switched it off, the agent then says, “Calls are transcribed to help with bookings.” For a shop called Corner Chair whose assistant is named Robin, the greeting is: “Thanks for calling Corner Chair, this is Robin, the shop’s AI assistant. Calls are transcribed to help with bookings. How can I help?”

How a call is handled. Your voice goes live to OpenAI’s realtime voice model, in the United States, which listens and answers. OpenAI also transcribes what you say, and when the call ends another OpenAI model writes a short summary for the shop. Booktender saves no audio of any call.

When the shop announces transcription (the default), the transcript and the details of the agent’s lookups are kept in the shop’s call log.

When the shop has switched the announcement off, the call is still transcribed while it runs so that a summary can be written, but Booktender keeps no transcript and none of the words of the agent’s lookups. The shop keeps only the outcome, any booking, the call’s times and cost, and a summary that doesn’t quote anyone.

Who sees calls. At the shop, the front desk, managers and owners of the location that took the call. Our own staff see calls only while a shop owner has opened support access (see How we protect information).

Recognising callers. The agent recognises a returning client by the number they call from and asks by first name whether it’s them. It never identifies anyone by their voice. Because caller ID can be faked, it won’t read out, move or cancel a booking until the caller also gives the booking reference or the date of their last visit.

The fuller notice. If you ask the agent who hears the call or where it goes, it tells you that the call is processed by service providers in the United States and who at the shop answers privacy questions. A booking made by phone carries the same note in its confirmation text and email.

Shop phone numbers aren’t connected yet. Until they are, the agent answers only test calls.

• To run the shop’s bookings: its calendar, online booking page, waitlist, walk-in list, check-in and checkout, and client records.
• To message clients for the shop: the booking confirmations, reminders, change and cancellation notices, waitlist offers and thank-you texts the shop has switched on, and to handle replies, including STOP and HELP.
• To answer the shop’s calls: to recognise returning clients by their number, find open times, book, move or cancel visits, take messages, and give the shop a record of each call.
• To sign people in and limit each person to what their role at the shop allows.
• To bill shops for their subscription and keep billing records.
• To give support when an owner asks for it, using only what the owner’s support access opens.
• To keep Booktender safe: to stop abuse such as repeated booking attempts, and to keep a record of who changed what.
• To send Booktender news by email, only if you sign up for it: launch news, new features and offers from Booktender. Every news email has a link to unsubscribe.
• To meet our legal obligations, such as keeping tax records.

We don’t sell personal information, we don’t use it for advertising (Booktender news goes only to people who sign up for it), and we don’t use shops’ data to train AI models.

These service providers help us run Booktender. Each handles information to provide its service to us.

• Supabase: Database, sign-in, file storage and background jobs. Where: Region chosen at launch; listed here before any shop's data is stored.
• OpenAI: The AI phone agent's voice model, transcription of what callers say, and call summaries. Where: United States.
• Telnyx: Shop phone numbers, calls and texts, when shop lines go live. Where: Region chosen at launch; listed here before any shop's data is stored.
• Resend: Email delivery, and the list of people who signed up for Booktender news. Where: Region chosen at launch; listed here before any shop's data is stored.
• Stripe: Subscription billing and invoices for shops. Where: Region chosen at launch; listed here before any shop's data is stored.
• Hosting provider: Runs the website and the call service that connects the AI phone agent to the shop's calendar. Where: Region chosen at launch; listed here before any shop's data is stored.

The full list, with the information each provider handles, is on our Security page.

Information outside Canada. OpenAI processes calls in the United States. Information processed or stored outside Canada is subject to the laws of that country, and may be accessible to its courts, law enforcement and national security authorities. For more about how our service providers outside Canada handle information, write to our privacy contact at hello@booktender.app.

This website sets no cookies and uses no analytics, advertising pixels or other trackers.

The Booktender app uses cookies to keep you signed in. The app needs them to work, and they aren’t used for advertising.

• A shop’s data is kept while the shop has an account with us, including while it is paused or after it cancels, so the owner can come back or download it. An owner can ask us to delete it (see Seeing, correcting and deleting information).
• Most things a shop deletes in the app are kept for 30 days and then permanently erased.
• Call records, with their summaries and any transcripts, stay in the shop’s call log while the shop has its account. No call audio is kept at all.
• Our copy of each text or email sent is deleted after 30 days. Texts also stay in the location’s text inbox, where the shop reads replies.
• Opt-outs are kept in a log that can only be added to, for as long as the shop has its account, even after the client’s record is deleted, so a STOP is never lost. Records of consent to offers are kept with the client’s record.
• Booktender news sign-ups: your email address stays on the list until you unsubscribe. After that it is kept marked as unsubscribed, so that you aren’t emailed again.
• The audit trail of changes can’t be edited, and it is kept even after the records it describes are deleted.
• Booking-page abuse counts are deleted after a day without use.

• The database itself keeps each shop’s information to that shop, and each person to what their role allows. A front-desk screen gets its own limited rights: no money totals, pay, settings, team or client exports.
• Our staff never see a shop’s client contact details or call transcripts unless an owner opens support access, for between 1 hour and 7 days, and the owner can close it early. Every action our staff take on a shop is logged.
• Changes in a shop are kept in an audit trail that no one can edit.
• People sign in with a six-digit code or a link sent to their email; owners have no password to steal.
• Payment cards for subscriptions are handled by Stripe and never reach our servers.

More detail, including the AI phone agent’s safeguards, is on our Security page.

If you are a shop’s client or caller, ask the shop. It can see and correct your client record, and it decides what happens to it. If you can’t reach the shop, write to us at hello@booktender.app and we will help.

If you are an owner or on a shop’s team, the shop’s owners and managers can correct your team profile in the app, and you can write to us for anything else we hold about you. Owners can download the shop’s data at any time, even while the shop is paused: Settings › Billing › Your data › Download data gives one JSON file. There is no button to delete a whole shop yet; to have a shop and its data deleted, the owner writes to us.

We may need to confirm who you are before we act on a request, and we answer within the time privacy law allows.

• Texts: reply STOP to any text from a shop and it stops texting you at once (STOPALL, UNSUBSCRIBE, CANCEL, END, QUIT, REVOKE, OPTOUT and ARRET work too). Reply START to get texts again, or HELP for the shop’s name and number.
• Emails: use the unsubscribe link in any email from a shop.
• Either: ask the shop to turn off texts or emails to you.
• Calls: you can hang up at any time, and you can ask the agent to take a message for the shop instead.
• Booktender news: use the unsubscribe link in any news email, or write to us at hello@booktender.app.
• Owners: you can cancel your subscription in the app, close support access early, or ask us to delete your shop’s data.

Turning off texts or emails means the shop can’t send you confirmations or reminders that way.

Please write to our privacy contact first, at hello@booktender.app or by mail at Booktender, 1721 29th Avenue SW, Studio 415, Calgary, AB T2T 6T7, so we can try to put things right. You can also complain to:

• the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner of Alberta, which oversees PIPA;
• the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, which oversees PIPEDA.

When we change this policy, we post the new version here with its effective date. If a change affects how we handle shops’ information, we email shop owners before it takes effect. This version takes effect on October 26, 2026.