Privacy notice

What SectionTotal collects, why, how long we keep it, and your rights. Last updated: 7 November 2026.

Who we are

SectionTotal is run by Dmytro Bot, a sole trader trading as SectionTotal, 49 Station Road, Polegate, East Sussex, BN26 6EA, United Kingdom. We are the data controller for your account. We are registered with the Information Commission (ICO), registration number ZC279767. Contact: privacy@sectiontotal.com.

When we send your invoices, we process your clients' details (names, email and postal addresses on the invoice) on your behalf. For that, you are the controller and we are your processor. Our Terms set out how we handle that data.

What we collect, why, and our lawful basis

Your account. Your Xero user ID and the email address of your Xero login, which Xero gives us when you sign in. We use them to sign you in and to contact you about your account: trial reminders, billing and support replies. Contract.
Connected organisations. Each organisation's Xero ID, name and connection status, and the Xero access that lets us act for it. Contract.
Invoices we send. The invoice ID, number and sending status, and delivery problems such as bounces. We read the invoice, contact and organisation details from Xero to build the PDF, but we don't keep invoice lines, amounts or your clients' details. If an address bounced or a client complained, we keep a record that lets us avoid emailing it again, not the address itself. Contract.
Billing. Trial dates, subscription status and your Stripe customer ID; subscription status comes from Stripe. Stripe handles card and payment details; we never see your card number. Contract and legal obligation (accounting records). After an organisation is disconnected, we keep its trial dates so each organisation gets one free trial: legitimate interests.
Support requests. What you write to us, your email address, and the account details we attach to help you (your organisations' set-up checks and recent sending status). Contract and legitimate interests (answering you).
Waitlist. If no Xero connection was free when you tried to connect: your account and email address, so we can invite you. Legitimate interests (inviting you when a connection frees up).
Product events. Which steps you have taken (signed up, connected an organisation, sent the first invoice, subscribed), with your account and organisation IDs, so we can see where people get stuck. Legitimate interests (improving SectionTotal).
Business contacts we email. If you work at an accounting or bookkeeping practice that is a limited company or LLP, we may send one email to the address published on your practice's website to introduce SectionTotal. We take the practice's name, company number and status from Companies House, and, to greet you by name, a director's or member's first name from there too; the address comes from your website. We never guess addresses or buy lists. We record whether we wrote and what you replied. Legitimate interests (telling practices that may find SectionTotal useful about it).
Security and operations. Sign-in session details and your country, to keep your account secure; account and organisation IDs in our logs, to find and fix faults. Your IP address is used to protect the service from abuse; we don't store it, but our hosting provider keeps it in its security logs for a short time. Legitimate interests (keeping the service and your data secure).

You need to sign in with Xero to use SectionTotal; without it you can't use the service. We don't make decisions about you by automated means that have legal or similarly significant effects.

Cookies

We use only strictly necessary cookies, so there is no cookie banner:

__Host-st_sess keeps you signed in. It ends after 30 minutes of inactivity, and after 12 hours at most.
__Host-st_oauth protects the sign-in with Xero. It lasts 10 minutes.

No advertising or analytics cookies. If you pick Light or Dark on the Account page, your browser stores that choice; choose System to remove it. Our Cookies page lists every cookie and the cookies set by Xero and Stripe when you use them.

Who we share it with

Xero, your accounting system, which we read from and write to on your instruction.
The services that run SectionTotal, under contracts that require them to protect your data: hosting and storage; email delivery, for invoice and account emails; payments, for subscriptions; our own email, for support and the business emails above; uptime monitoring and our status page, which receive no account or invoice data.
An accountant, if we use one, and HMRC, for our own accounts, and authorities where the law requires it.

Our providers page names each service, what it does and where. We never sell personal data.

International transfers

Your data is mainly stored in the EU. Some providers process it in the United States and in other countries where they operate. Each transfer relies on UK adequacy regulations (including the UK Extension to the EU–US Data Privacy Framework, for certified companies), or on the EU standard contractual clauses with the UK Addendum in the provider's data processing terms, or, rarely, on an exception the law allows (UK GDPR Article 49). Ask privacy@sectiontotal.com for a copy of the safeguards.

How long we keep it

Your account: while it has a connected organisation; without one, 12 months after your last sign-in. If you have been to our checkout, we keep your account with your billing records, as set out below. We also delete it on request.
Sign-in sessions: until they expire (12 hours at most).
Logs with account and organisation IDs: 7 days. Our hosting provider's security logs: up to 31 days.
Sending history and delivery problems: 12 months after the last activity.
Support requests: 24 months after the last update (we delete in batches, so up to 6 months longer). They are kept when an organisation is disconnected.
Waitlist entries: 12 months.
Product events: 13 months. Daily totals without personal data are kept longer.
Business contacts we emailed: 12 months after the last contact (we delete in batches, so up to 6 months longer). While we send these emails, we keep your practice's web domain, without the address, so we never write to the same practice twice. If you ask us not to write again, or your address bounces, we keep the address and the domain on a do-not-contact list for as long as we send these emails.
Records of addresses that bounced or complained: until the organisation is disconnected. Our email provider also keeps such addresses on its own block list, so it doesn't send to them again, for as long as we use it.
A disconnected organisation: deleted straight away, except its trial dates and billing status, which we keep so the free trial can't be restarted, until you ask us to delete them.
An organisation without a subscription: disconnected and deleted 14 days after its trial or subscription ends. We email you 3 days before.
Billing records: 5 years after the 31 January Self Assessment deadline for the tax year they belong to (up to about 7 years), then deleted.
After deletion, copies stay in backups for up to 30 days and in our email provider's message log for up to 45 days. Then they are gone.

Your rights

You can ask us to access, correct, delete or export your personal data, or to restrict how we use it. Email privacy@sectiontotal.com. We reply within one month.

Your right to object. Where we rely on legitimate interests (support, waitlist, product events, business emails, security, trial records), you can object at any time. For the business emails we stop at once; for the rest we stop unless we have a compelling reason that overrides your interests, or need the data for a legal claim.

You can complain to us about how we handle your data at privacy@sectiontotal.com. We acknowledge within 30 days and tell you the outcome. You can also complain to the Information Commission (ICO) at any time.

Disconnecting an organisation in your account deletes its data at once. You can also remove SectionTotal in Xero under Settings → Connected apps.

Security

Your data is encrypted at rest, and in transit between you, us and our providers. See Security for how we protect it and how to report a vulnerability.

Changes

If we change this notice in a way that matters, we email account holders before it takes effect.