Privacy policy.

01Who we are

Seer Consult Ltd, trading as “seer.”, is the controller of the personal data described in this policy. We are registered in England & Wales, company number 14578376. Our registered office is 272 Goldington Road, Bedford, MK40 3EF, England.

This policy covers our website, seerconsult.com, and the seer. platform. For anything about your data, email admin@seerconsult.com.

02What we collect

• Contact form. Your name, email address, company, the topic you pick and your message. You give us these.
• Your account. Your email address. If you sign in with Google, we also receive your name, email address and profile picture from Google. If you turn on two-factor sign-in, the key your authenticator app uses, kept by Supabase, our sign-in provider.
• Organisation details. Company name, number, status, registered address and business activity codes from Companies House, which is a public register. When you verify your organisation we also get the names of its current directors from Companies House.
• People a customer names. When someone at a customer asks a director to confirm the company, or to sign a plan, they give us that director's name and email address. We use them only to send that request and record the answer.
• Suppliers a buyer invites. When an organisation invites its suppliers to seer., it gives us each supplier contact's email address and, if it chooses, their name. We use them only to send the invitation and up to two reminders, and to show the buyer whether the invitation was accepted. Every invitation and reminder has a link to stop all further invitations to that address, from any buyer.
• Signing accounts. A person can hold an account only to sign plans for an organisation. With each signed plan we keep the name and job title of the signer and the email address of the account they signed with.
• Data you upload. Anything you or your team add to the platform, such as evidence records and files.
• Bills you ask us to read. If bill reading is switched on for your organisation, the bills you upload for reading and the values read from them. A bill can include names, addresses and account numbers.
• Technical data. Essential cookies that keep you signed in, a one-way hash of your IP address (never the raw address) to stop spam and limit repeated requests, and basic server logs such as the time of a request and whether it worked.

03Why we use it and our lawful basis

UK data protection law says we need a lawful basis for each use. Ours are:

• Replying to your enquiry: legitimate interests (answering people who contact us), or taking steps you ask for before a contract.
• Creating your account, signing you in and running the platform: contract (we need it to provide the service you signed up for).
• Checking your organisation and directors with Companies House: contract, and our legitimate interest in making sure only authorised people act for an organisation.
• Emailing a director a customer names, and recording who signed a plan: legitimate interests (ours and our customer's): confirming who a company is, and that the person who signed its Carbon Reduction Plan was authorised to.
• Sending an invitation a buyer asked us to send: legitimate interests (ours and the buyer's): helping organisations collect carbon evidence from their suppliers. The supplier decides whether to join and what, if anything, to share.
• Keeping an address that asked not to be invited again: legitimate interests (honouring that request).
• Keeping the service secure, stopping spam and fixing faults: legitimate interests.
• Keeping business and financial records: legal obligation.

We don't rely on consent for any of the above. If we ever ask for your consent for something optional, such as marketing emails, you can withdraw it at any time.

For data your organisation uploads to the platform, your organisation is the controller and we process it on its behalf under our Terms and our Data processing terms.

04Google user data

If you sign in with Google, we use your name, email address and profile picture only to sign you in and to identify your account. We never sell this data, never use it for advertising and never use it to train AI models. We don't share it with anyone except the service providers listed below, and only so they can run the service for us.

Seer Consult's use and transfer of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

05Who processes data for us

We use a small number of providers who act on our instructions:

• Supabase: database, file storage and sign-in. Our primary database is in London, UK.
• Vercel: hosts our website and runs the seer. platform, so every page request, form and sign-in passes through it. The platform's server code runs in London, UK. Requests first reach Vercel's nearest network location, which may be outside the UK.
• Resend: sending emails, such as sign-in codes and replies.
• Google: Google sign-in, and our business email and correspondence (Google Workspace). If your organisation uses bill reading, Google Cloud also reads the bills you upload, using its Gemini model, in London, UK. See Reading bills with AI below. Google Cloud also keeps a nightly backup copy of the files stored in seer., in London, UK, so they can be restored if lost.
• Sentry: error reports from our servers, so we can find and fix faults. Reports are stored in the EU (Frankfurt, Germany) and are stripped of form contents, uploaded files, cookies, web addresses' query strings and email addresses before they are sent. Sentry is a US company and holds its account settings in the United States; transfers rely on the EU-U.S. Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension, with Standard Contractual Clauses and the UK Addendum where the Framework doesn't apply.
• Companies House: public company data.

Supabase and Vercel run on Amazon Web Services in its London region; AWS is their sub-processor, covered by their own data processing agreements.

Some of these providers may process data outside the UK. When they do, we rely on appropriate safeguards: UK adequacy regulations, or the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum.

For data your organisation uploads, the same providers, with where each processes data and under which safeguard, are listed in our Data processing terms.

We never sell personal data.

06Sharing with buyers

If your organisation shares information with a buyer on seer., the buyer can see only what your organisation chose to share with it: totals of your figures, with checked and not checked shown separately; the status and date of your Carbon Reduction Plan, and its signed copy; or the documents you added. You choose each one separately, for each buyer. We never share anything with a buyer unless your organisation chose to.

An owner or admin of your organisation can stop sharing at any time, and the buyer loses access straight away. A buyer can download the signed plan and the documents you share. Anything the buyer downloaded while you shared it stays with the buyer; stopping sharing ends its access to everything else. What a buyer does with what it has seen is the buyer's responsibility.

If your organisation is due to be deleted because nobody has used it (see How long we keep it), we tell each buyer it shares with at the same time as we tell your owners.

07Reading bills with AI

Bill reading is off until an owner of your organisation accepts our Data processing terms, or your organisation signs a data processing agreement with us.

When you upload a bill and ask us to read it, we send the file to Google's Gemini model on Google Cloud, with our instructions for reading it. It is processed in London, UK. We don't send your name or email address, but the bill itself may contain personal data, such as a name or address.

• Google doesn't use bills to train its AI models.
• Google keeps a temporary copy for up to 24 hours, in memory only and in London, to make repeat requests faster.
• If Google's automated safety checks flag a request as possible misuse, Google may keep that request for up to 90 days, in London, and authorised Google staff may look at it. They do this only to check whether its usage policies have been broken.

The AI only proposes values. A person in your organisation checks every value before anything is saved, and, on paid plans, a second person checks the entry. No decision about you is made by AI alone.

08How long we keep it

• Contact messages: 24 months, then deleted at our next quarterly clean-up.
• Your sign-in account: while you belong to an organisation on seer. When an organisation's data is deleted, we delete the accounts of its members and former members who belong to no other organisation, except its last owner and anyone we can't confirm belonged only to that organisation. If you leave an organisation that carries on, email admin@seerconsult.com and we'll delete your account within one month, once you belong to no other organisation on seer. If you're its last owner, another owner must be added first. What you recorded in an organisation's ledger belongs to that organisation and stays with it. When we delete your account, we remove your name and email address from its records, except from plans you signed.
• Your organisation's data: while its account is open, and for 7 years from the date it closes, except for unused Free organisations, described next. We record that date when you ask us to close the account.

Unused Free organisations: if an organisation has never had a paid plan and has never signed a Carbon Reduction Plan, the 7-year period doesn't apply to it. When none of its members has signed in or used it for 12 months, we email its owners to say it will be deleted. If nobody signs in during the next 30 days, we delete it at our next quarterly clean-up: its ledger entries, uploaded files, audit trail, and the sign-in accounts of members who belong to no other organisation. We keep only a record that the deletion happened, with nothing that identifies a person. If it shares with any buyers on seer., we tell them when we email its owners.

• Supplier invitations: an invitation that isn't accepted is deleted 90 days after it expires. A record that it was sent, without the email address, is kept.
• Addresses that asked not to be invited again: kept only to honour that request, for as long as it applies. Email admin@seerconsult.com to be removed from the list.

Getting a copy: an owner of your organisation can download all of its data at any time, on every plan, from Settings → Export. Once your organisation's data is deleted, we can't return it.

At the end of that period, or earlier on request, we delete:

• the files you uploaded (bills, evidence and imports);
• invitations, completed verification requests, and any verification request still waiting on a director;
• requests to sign a plan that were never used, and the email address on those that were;
• the sign-in accounts described above, and those of people who only signed plans for the organisation and sign for no other.

We keep the following, so a published plan can still be proved:

• the confirmed figures and each entry's details (such as supplier, site and notes);
• each file's name and fingerprint (SHA-256);
• the values our AI proposed from a bill;
• the audit trail;
• your organisation's name and details;
• signed plans, unless you ask us to delete them and we're able to. We'll tell you whether we can, and why.
• with each signed plan, the name and job title of the person who signed it, the email address of the account they signed with, and our record of approving or refusing a signer;
• the name of the person who accepted the data processing terms for your organisation, and when.

When we delete an organisation's data, or one person's account, we also remove personal details from the records we keep. We search its audit trail, invitations, notes and descriptions for the names and email addresses of the people concerned, and for other email addresses and phone numbers, and replace them with “[removed]”. We also remove the network address and browser details recorded when a plan was signed. Each record stays, marked as redacted, so the figures can still be proved.

Copies elsewhere: backups expire on our provider's schedule. Google may hold a bill-reading request for up to 24 hours, or up to 90 days if its automated checks flag it. Our hosting and email providers keep logs for their own set periods.

09Security

All data is encrypted in transit. Access is limited to people who need it, and row-level security in our database keeps each organisation's data separate from every other organisation's.

10Your rights

You have the right to:

• access the personal data we hold about you;
• have it corrected if it's wrong;
• have it deleted;
• restrict how we use it;
• object to us using it;
• receive it in a portable format;
• withdraw consent, where we rely on it.

Your organisation's owners can download all of its data at any time from Settings → Export, as CSV files and the original files. For data about you personally, or if you aren't an owner, email admin@seerconsult.com.

To use any of these rights, email admin@seerconsult.com. We'll reply within one month. If you ask us to delete data, our reply tells you what we deleted, what we kept, and why. If you're unhappy with how we handle your data, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk. We'd appreciate the chance to put things right first.

11Cookies

We only use essential cookies: sign-in session cookies that keep you signed in, and one that remembers which organisation you're working in. We don't use advertising or analytics cookies today. If that changes, we'll update this page first.

12Children

Our website and platform are not for anyone under 18.

13Changes to this policy

If we change this policy, we'll update it here and change the date at the top. If a change affects you significantly, we'll tell you by email.