NoteFinPrivacy Policy
NoteFin is built to work without an account. This policy explains what stays on your phone, what leaves it only when you ask, and the choices you have at any time.
The short version: your financial records are stored locally on your device. We do not run a server that collects your ledger, we do not sell data, and we do not require you to create an account. Data leaves your device only for the optional features you switch on yourself — Google Drive backup, an AI provider you connect with your own API key, or Google Play billing.
Contents
1. Information the app handles
You enter this information yourself. It is used only to provide the features you asked for:
- Financial records: transactions, transfers, categories, budgets and event budgets, accounts and balances, fixed assets and valuations, liabilities (debts), receivables, recurring transactions and ledger settings.
- Profile details: the display name you type and the cat avatar you choose.
- Contacts you optionally attach to a debt or receivable, and the messaging-app shortcut you choose for them (for example WhatsApp, Telegram or SMS). The shortcut only opens your own messaging app with a prefilled message; you stay in control of sending it.
- Receipt photos you choose to scan, plus the text recognised from them, when you use the receipt scanner.
- Voice recordings captured when you use voice input — processed to turn speech into text for a transaction.
- App settings: currency, language, theme, reminder preferences and your AI configuration (provider, model, endpoint).
You can use the app entirely without giving us any of this. We do not ask for your name, address, phone number or email address to use NoteFin.
2. Where your data is stored
Your records are written to a local database inside the app’s private storage on your device. AI API keys and other sensitive values are kept in the device’s secure storage (Android Keystore / Encrypted Shared Preferences).
We do not operate a database of our users’ ledgers. There is no NoteFin account and no NoteFin cloud sync server storing your transactions.
3. Optional features that send data off-device
None of these are enabled by default. Each one is triggered by you.
| Feature | What is shared | With whom |
|---|---|---|
| Google Drive backup | An encrypted backup file of your app data (and your Pro licence state), stored in the app’s private Drive app-data folder. | Google Drive. NoteFin requests the restricted drive.appdata scope, so it can only see
the folder it created — not the rest of your Drive. |
| Google Sign-In | Your Google account email address, used to attach the backup, verify a Pro purchase and restore it on another device. | Google Sign-In, and the NoteFin licence verification service. |
| AI assistant (bring your own key) | The text you submit for assistance (for example a sentence describing a transaction, or a question about your report) plus the minimum context needed to answer it, such as recent category or account names. | The provider you configured: Google Gemini, OpenAI, DeepSeek, xAI Grok, Groq, or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint you enter. Their own privacy terms apply to that request. |
| Receipt scanning | The receipt photo you selected, processed for text recognition. | Processed on your device with on-device text recognition. The image is not uploaded by NoteFin. If you then ask the AI assistant to structure the result, only the recognised text is sent to your AI provider. |
| Voice input | Your speech, converted to text so it can be turned into a transaction. | The speech recognition service available on your device. NoteFin does not store the audio after transcription. |
| Report & file export / sharing | The file you chose to create (PDF, Excel, CSV or a backup file). | Only the destination you pick yourself, through the Android share sheet or file picker. |
4. Permissions and why they are needed
NoteFin requests these Android permissions. Each is asked at the moment you use the related feature, and you can refuse any of them — the rest of the app keeps working.
| Permission | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Internet | Optional Drive backup, licence verification, AI requests to the provider you configure, and ads in the free version. |
| Camera | Taking a photo of a receipt to scan. Used only while you are in the scanner. |
| Record audio | Voice input for describing a transaction. |
| Read media images | Choosing an existing receipt photo or avatar image you pick from your gallery. |
| Read / write external storage | Only on older Android versions, to save and open your exported or backup files. |
| Post notifications | The optional daily reminder to log your spending. |
| Schedule exact alarm | Sending that reminder at the time you chose. If you decline, NoteFin falls back to an inexact reminder. |
| Receive boot completed | Re-registering your reminder after your phone restarts, so it is not silently lost. |
NoteFin does not request access to your location, your full contact list, your call logs, your SMS inbox, or biometric data.
5. Advertising and purchases
Ads. The free version of NoteFin shows advertising supplied by Google AdMob. AdMob may access an advertising identifier and technical information about your device to serve and measure ads, in line with Google’s own policies. Pro plans remove ads entirely.
Purchases. Subscription and lifetime purchases are processed by Google Play Billing. NoteFin never sees your payment card details. It receives only the purchase confirmation needed to unlock Pro features, and may send your Google account email to the licence verification service to keep Pro active when you change devices.
6. Security and backups
- Money amounts are stored as whole minor units, and the database stays inside the app’s private storage on your device.
- Backup files created by NoteFin are encrypted, and AI API keys are held in the device’s secure storage rather than in plain preferences.
- Communication with the services listed above uses HTTPS.
- No method of storage or transmission is perfectly secure. Keep your device lock screen enabled, and keep your backup files somewhere you trust.
- You are responsible for the backup files you export, because you choose where they are stored.
7. Retention and deletion
Your records stay on your device until you delete them. You are always in control:
- Delete individual transactions, accounts, assets, debts or budgets inside the app.
- Delete a whole ledger or reset your data from the app settings.
- Uninstalling the app removes the local database from your device.
- If you enabled Drive backup, delete the backup from the app (or from Google Drive) to remove that copy.
- To have any data connected to a licence or support request removed, email us at official.kapiten@gmail.com and we will act on it.
8. Children
NoteFin is a personal finance tool intended for general audiences and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has provided information through a support channel, contact us and we will delete it.
9. Changes to this policy
If a future version of the app changes how data is handled, this page will be updated and the effective date and version above will change. Continued use of the app after an update means you accept the revised policy.
10. Contact us
Questions about this policy, or a request to access or delete data:
You can also read our Terms & Conditions.