Terms

YardNote sends a business’s daily work instructions to its workers over WhatsApp, as a short spoken number and a recording in the worker’s own language, and takes their spoken replies back and puts each one against the job it belongs to. The manager and the office use a web application. A worker installs nothing and signs into nothing.

The business, through whoever signs it up. That person confirms they may accept these terms on the business’s behalf and that the people whose numbers they load work for that business.

Every business starts on 14 days free, with full use of the service and no minimum number of workers. Nothing is charged during the trial and no card is needed to start it.

Each business is opened by hand rather than automatically, so there may be a short wait between signing up and the first message going out. Sending stops at the end of the 14 days unless the business has said it wants to carry on. Messages coming in from workers are never stopped.

• R 399 a month: one manager, as many office and workshop people as the business wants on the web application, and the first 2 workers on WhatsApp.
• R 99 a month for every further worker on WhatsApp.
• WhatsApp’s own charges and the speech service are inside those figures.
• Invoiced monthly in arrears, in South African rand. VAT is not charged until YardNote must register for it; when that happens it is added to the price and the business is told a month ahead.

WhatsApp’s own rate is set by Meta and changes without our say. If it rises far enough that one worker costs more than about R 50 a month to message, YardNote may add a separate WhatsApp line to the bill at Meta’s rate. It would be announced three months before the first invoice that carried it, and a business that does not want to pay it may cancel in that time with nothing owed beyond the months already used.

Cancel any month with one message. The service runs to the end of the month already invoiced and then stops sending. There is no notice period and no cancellation fee.

After cancelling, the business’s records stay so it can ask for a copy. A recording is kept for twelve months. A business may ask at any time, before cancelling or after, for its records and its recordings to be removed, and they are removed.

• Asking each of its people, out loud and in a language they understand, before putting them on the service. The service will not send to a person until that person has agreed, from their own phone.
• Keeping the numbers and the languages it loads accurate.
• Using the service to send work instructions, and not to send anything unlawful, threatening or unrelated to the job.
• What is said in its own recordings and written in its own jobs.

• Sending the day’s work at 05:00 each morning it has been given work to send, and telling the manager when a message did not go.
• Keeping every original recording exactly as it arrived, for twelve months. An original is never written over, and it is never removed unless the business asks.
• Never limiting, rationing or charging for what a worker sends back.
• Keeping one business’s people, work and recordings out of every other business’s sight.

The service depends on WhatsApp, on mobile networks and on speech services that are not ours. Messages can be late or refused for reasons outside this service, and a transcript or a translation is often partly wrong — which is why the recording is the record and nothing in the product depends on the writing being right.

There is no uptime guarantee while the service is this young. If a morning send fails through YardNote’s own fault, say so and it will be put right; what that is worth on the bill is settled with the business rather than written down here as a figure.

Beyond that, YardNote’s liability in any month is limited to what the business paid for that month.

Each business decides who works for it and what is recorded about them, so the business is the responsible party for its own people’s information, every worker’s recording included. YardNote is its operator, and as its operator YardNote promises the business four things.

• YardNote processes the business’s recordings and its people’s personal information only on the business’s behalf, with its knowledge and on its instructions, and for the business’s purposes only.
• YardNote keeps them confidential. It discloses them to nobody except the services the privacy notice names, which carry, transcribe and store them for it, or where the law requires it.
• YardNote keeps them secure, with reasonable technical and organisational measures against their loss, their damage, and access by anybody not entitled to them.
• If YardNote has reason to believe that anybody not entitled to them has accessed or acquired them, it tells the business immediately.

What is held, where it is kept and for how long is set out in the privacy notice, which forms part of these terms.

A change to the price is announced three months ahead. Any other change to these terms is announced a month ahead. Carrying on using the service after that is agreement to the new version; cancelling in that time costs nothing.

These terms are governed by South African law.