Privacy Policy

Bonzai is a portfolio tool for Canadian residential rental investors, at trybonzai.com. The Bonzai founder is accountable for how Bonzai handles your personal information. Questions, requests and complaints go to bonzai.webapp@gmail.com.

Bonzai follows Canada's Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) and applicable provincial privacy laws.

• Your account: your name, your email address, and your password. Your password is stored only in a scrambled form (a one-way hash) that we can’t read back.
• Your properties and finances, as you enter or import them: addresses (street, city, province and postal code), purchase details, estimated values, rent, expenses, mortgage details, leases (dates, rent, deposit, and the tenant’s initials — never tenant names or contact details), and calendar events.
• Documents and photos you upload: accountant’s income and expense summaries, mortgage statements, renewal and commitment letters, and the figures read from them; photos of your properties.
• Your settings: for example, whether AI document processing is on.
• Sign-in information: when each sign-in session starts and ends. A cookie keeps you signed in for up to 7 days.
• How you use Bonzai: Which parts of Bonzai you use and when, such as the day you sign in, add a property or upload a document. We record the action and the time, never the figures, addresses or documents involved, and use it only to see where Bonzai is hard to use.
• Your IP address, briefly: to limit repeated attempts to sign in, sign up or reset a password.

We don’t ask for banking passwords, Social Insurance Numbers, other government ID numbers or payment card details. Documents you upload may include account or loan numbers printed on them; the text read from them is kept with your import records (section 7). Bonzai has no third-party advertising or analytics trackers; the activity record above is kept by Bonzai alone.

Only to run Bonzai for you: to calculate and show your portfolio’s figures, to see which parts of Bonzai people use so we can improve it, to read figures from documents you upload (if you turn on AI processing), to keep your account secure, and to send account emails such as a password reset link or a deletion confirmation.

We don’t sell your information, use it for advertising, or share it with anyone except the service providers in section 6.

Apart from counting how many people sign up and use each part of Bonzai (section 2), Bonzai doesn’t use your information to build combined or anonymous statistics today. If it ever does, we’ll ask you first, separately, and you can say no without losing access.

The Bonzai founder can see account details (name, email, sign-up date) and can reach your data in our systems. We look at it only to fix a problem, to carry out a request you make, or to test changes to Bonzai on a private copy (section 4).

Bonzai stores your data in the United States (eastern US): files with Vercel, the database with Neon on Amazon Web Services, and the app itself on Vercel. Because it's stored outside Canada, it may be subject to the laws of the United States, including lawful access by courts and authorities there.

Your connection to Bonzai is encrypted (HTTPS). Uploaded documents and photos are kept in private storage that you can reach only through your signed-in account.

Before a change to Bonzai goes live, we test it on a private copy of the database. The copy is refreshed from the live database at least every 7 days, and only the Bonzai founder can reach it.

Bonzai can read figures from documents you upload using Anthropic’s Claude AI. It’s off unless you turn it on, and you can turn it off any time in Settings → Privacy & Data → AI document processing. With it off, you can still enter your figures by hand.

When it’s on:

• Bonzai reads the text from your document on its own servers first. Your original file is never sent to Anthropic.
• Before any text is sent to Anthropic, Bonzai removes Social Insurance Numbers, the name on your Bonzai account, email addresses, phone numbers and labelled account or loan numbers. It can't catch everything: property addresses, postal codes, other people's names (such as a co-borrower's) and numbers without a label may still be included.
• Anthropic returns the figures, and you check them on a review screen before anything is saved.
• Anthropic doesn't use this text to train its models. It keeps it for up to 30 days, and longer only if it's flagged for a usage-policy violation or required by law.

A document with no readable text (a scan or a photo) isn’t stored or sent anywhere; you’ll be asked to enter those figures by hand.

Bonzai refuses tax returns (T1, T776) at upload, before anything is stored or sent for AI processing, because they contain your Social Insurance Number. Please don't upload them.

These companies handle your information on Bonzai’s behalf. Each has its own privacy policy.

Vercel

Runs the app and stores your uploaded documents and photos.

Receives: Everything you send to Bonzai, and your files. Where: Eastern US (Washington, D.C.).

Neon

The database, on Amazon Web Services.

Receives: Your account and portfolio information. Where: Eastern US (Northern Virginia).

Anthropic

Reads figures from document text, only if you turn AI processing on.

Receives: Text read from documents you upload, after the removals in section 5. Where: United States.

Resend

Sends account emails.

Receives: Your email address and the email's text. Where: United States.

Google

Runs our feedback survey and our email (Gmail).

Receives: What you write in the survey or in an email to us. Where: United States and other countries.

• Your account, portfolio data, documents and photos: until you delete them or your account.
• A deleted property: hidden right away (you can undo for 5 minutes), then permanently removed with its files 6 to 7 days later.
• Records of each document import, including the text read from it: until you delete your account.
• Your activity record (section 2): until you delete your account.
• Sign-in sessions: until you sign out or they expire (up to 7 days). Changing or resetting your password ends your other sessions.
• Password reset links: they work once, for 60 minutes.
• IP-address records used to limit sign-in attempts: they expire within an hour and are cleared periodically.
• The testing copy (section 4): up to 7 days after you delete something.
• Backup copies of the database: up to 7 days.
• Anthropic: up to 30 days (section 5).

• Access and portability: email us and we’ll send you a copy of your data in a common format (a spreadsheet file), within 30 days.
• Correction: you can change most of your information yourself in the app. Email us for anything you can’t.
• Deletion: delete your account any time in Settings → Delete account. It removes your account and all its data from Bonzai’s systems right away; the testing copy and any backup copies are cleared within 7 days, and Anthropic deletes any text it received within 30 days. You can also ask us by email, and we’ll do it within 7 days.
• AI processing: turn it on or off any time in Settings.
• Complaints: contact us first at bonzai.webapp@gmail.com. You can also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (priv.gc.ca).

A few things are saved only in the browser you use: property notes, saved scenarios and analysis snapshots, your forecast assumptions, and display settings such as dark mode. They aren’t sent to Bonzai’s servers and don’t move to another device. Deleting your account doesn’t remove them: clear your browser’s site data for trybonzai.com to remove them.

If a breach of your information creates a real risk of significant harm to you, we’ll tell you and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada as soon as we can, as PIPEDA requires.

Bonzai is for adults managing their own rental properties. It isn’t meant for anyone under 18.

We’ll post changes here and update the date at the top. If a change materially affects how we handle your information, we’ll tell you by email or in the app before it takes effect.