Privacy Statement
Last updated 28 October 20261. About this statement
This Privacy Statement explains how Water Software Solutions Ltd, a New Zealand company trading as Watercalcs (we, us, our), collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information when you use the Watercalcs website and its calculators, tools, and related services (the Service). We handle personal information in accordance with the New Zealand Privacy Act 2020.
The Service is intended for professionals. It is not directed at anyone under 18, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
This statement sits alongside our Terms of Use.
2. Information we collect
We collect:
- account information you give us, such as your name and email address, when you create an account. If you sign in through a third-party account (Google, Microsoft or GitHub), we receive your email address and a basic account identifier from that provider;
- information you give us when you join a waitlist, send feedback, or contact us, such as your name, email address, organisation, and whatever you choose to tell us;
- payment information, which is collected and processed by our payment provider, Stripe. We do not receive or store your full card details. We do receive limited details from Stripe, such as your billing name, email address, country, the last four digits of your card, and the status of your payments; and
- technical and usage information collected automatically when you use the Service, such as device and browser information, IP address, the pages and calculators used, and the date and time of each request, including through cookies and similar technologies and in server logs.
You do not need to create an account, or give us your name or email address, to use the free calculators. Technical and usage information is still collected automatically as described above.
Team accounts. Where an organisation holds a team subscription, we also collect and hold, for each person given access: their email address, their role on the account (administrator or member), the date they were added, who added them, and the date they last used the Service. Some of this information is provided to us by the organisation’s administrator rather than by the person themselves. If your organisation has added you to its team account, this statement applies to that information and you can contact us about it at any time.
Opmate sites. Where an organisation uses Opmate, we also hold, for each person given access to a site, their name or sign-in identity and role, and the site records described in section 4.
Invoiced organisations. Where an organisation asks to pay by invoice, we collect the organisation’s name, billing address, accounts payable email address, and where supplied its purchase order number and GST number. Most of this is information about the organisation, but the accounts payable address identifies a person or a role within it.
3. Calculator inputs and results
How the calculators work. The calculators run on our servers. When you use a calculator, the values you enter are sent to our servers, the calculation is carried out, and the results are sent back to your browser. Your working data is held in your browser during your session. Premium subscribers can save their settings and results to a file on their own device and load that file again later. Those files stay with you.
What we do not keep. We do not save your inputs or results to a database, and we do not keep a record of your calculations. Opmate works differently: it keeps records for each plant, as described in section 4.
Logs and error reports. Our servers and service providers keep technical logs and error reports so that we can secure the Service and find and fix faults. These record details of a request, such as the time, the IP address, and the calculator used. They may also capture some or all of the values submitted, particularly where a calculation fails. Logs and error reports are kept for a limited period, are looked at only for security and fault-finding, and are not used to build a profile of you or of your plant.
Where this happens. The servers that run the calculators, and the logs and error reports they produce, are located outside New Zealand. See section 7.
Personal information in calculators. The calculators are designed for engineering and operational data, not personal information. Please do not enter personal information about any individual unless a calculator specifically asks for it. Anything you do enter is handled in the way described in this section.
4. Opmate
Opmate is our fault-finding assistant for water treatment plants. Unlike the calculators, Opmate keeps records for each plant that uses it. This section explains what it keeps, who can see it, and when anything is shared with the people at Watercalcs who work on Opmate (the Opmate team). Clause 15 of our Terms of Use sets out how site data is owned, used, kept, and deleted.
What Opmate keeps for a plant. For each plant, Opmate keeps:
- the plant’s set-up and its control register, including documents uploaded to build them (such as a water safety plan or operating procedures);
- its conversations: what people type, the readings they give, and Opmate’s answers;
- its plant log: entries, completed forms, handovers, weekly summaries, duty and status, and photos added to log entries;
- key learnings; and
- who has access to the plant, and a record of who did what: who had each conversation, who made or confirmed each plant log entry, and who submitted or approved each key learning.
Who at the plant can see it. Everyone the organisation gives access to a plant can see that plant’s conversations, plant log, set-up, control register, and approved key learnings, including who had each conversation and who made each entry. Each plant sees only its own records.
Personal information in plant records. Plant log entries and conversations may include the name or user identity of the operator who made or confirmed an entry. Uploaded documents may also contain names, for example of their authors or of staff listed in procedures. The organisation decides what to upload and should avoid uploading documents whose main content is personal information. If you want your own identity removed from a plant’s records, contact us or the plant’s site administrator.
How long it is kept. The text of a conversation is deleted after two years. The record of what Opmate decided is kept without that text. The plant log, its photos and the rest of a plant’s records are the plant’s own record, and are kept while the plant uses Opmate. If an organisation stops paying for Opmate, its plants become read-only, and their records are deleted after 90 days. We email the organisation twice before that happens. A site administrator can export the plant’s records, or ask us to delete particular items or the whole plant, at any time.
The plant log and photos are never seen by the Opmate team. The database itself refuses the Opmate team’s access to every plant log table and to the photo tables. Photos are encrypted before they are stored, with a key held outside the database. Location and camera details are removed from photos when they are uploaded.
Sharing with the Opmate team is the plant’s choice, and is off to start with. The organisation’s administrator (or, for a plant that is not part of an organisation, the plant’s site administrator) chooses one of three settings:
- Off: nothing is shared.
- Rated replies only: when someone rates one of Opmate’s replies with a thumbs up or thumbs down, the conversation up to that reply is shared. When Opmate could not answer a question, the person who asked can press Send to Opmate to share that question. Nothing else is shared.
- All conversations: every conversation from the time this setting is switched on, and every question Opmate could not answer.
What the Opmate team sees of what is shared. A shared conversation carries the plant’s name, so that the Opmate team can check Opmate’s answer against the plant’s set-up. It never carries anyone’s name. A shared question never carries the plant’s name. The Opmate team uses what is shared to improve Opmate’s diagnostic engine.
Switching sharing off stops new sharing. Anything already shared stays with the Opmate team, because it has already been seen.
The plant can see what was shared. The plant’s site administrator can see each conversation that was shared, how and when; each question that was sent; and each time the Opmate team opened a shared conversation, with when, which conversation, and who opened it.
What the Opmate team sees of every plant. Whether or not a plant shares anything, the Opmate team sees how much each plant uses Opmate’s language model and what that costs: for each call to the model, the plant, the day, what the call was for, and how many tokens (units of text) it used. These are numbers only. They never include anyone’s words, names or conversations. The Opmate team also sees each organisation’s billing status, its administrators’ email addresses, how many people have access at each plant and in which role, and its settings, such as sharing and handovers. We use this to run, support and price Opmate. The Opmate team cannot change an organisation’s settings.
Who can technically reach the data. Opmate’s own tools cannot show the Opmate team a plant’s log or any conversation the plant has not shared, and the database enforces this. As with any hosted service, the companies that run our database and hosting (Supabase and Railway) could technically reach stored data. This section describes what the Opmate team does and does not do; it does not claim that access is impossible.
The language model. Opmate’s answers are worded by Anthropic’s Claude models. For each reply, Opmate sends Anthropic the operator’s message and the facts Opmate has worked out. It never sends a photo or another plant’s data. Anthropic processes these messages in the United States, does not use them to train its models, and keeps them only for a limited period for safety and abuse prevention. Plant records are never used to train AI models, whether ours or anyone else’s.
Where Opmate’s records are held. Opmate’s database is in Sydney, Australia (Supabase). The Opmate service runs in Singapore (Railway). The website is hosted in Sydney.
5. How and why we use your information
We use personal information to:
- provide and operate the Service;
- create and manage accounts and subscriptions;
- process payments, issue invoices, and calculate tax;
- respond to enquiries and send service messages, such as receipts, renewal reminders, and notices of changes;
- secure the Service, prevent misuse, and find and fix faults;
- understand how the Service is used and improve it;
- improve Opmate’s diagnostic engine, using only what a plant has chosen to share (section 4); and
- meet our legal obligations.
Where an organisation holds a team subscription, we use the information described above to give the right people access, to show the organisation’s administrator who currently holds a seat, and to bill the organisation correctly.
News and waitlist emails. We send waitlist updates and product news only if you have asked for them or the law otherwise allows. You can stop them at any time by using the unsubscribe option in the message or by contacting us.
We will only use personal information for the purposes for which it was collected, related purposes you would reasonably expect, or as otherwise permitted by law.
6. Team accounts — what your organisation can see
If your access to Premium comes through your employer or another organisation’s team subscription, that organisation’s administrators can see the following about you:
- the email address your access is linked to;
- your role on the account (administrator or member);
- the date you were added, and who added you; and
- the date you last used the Service.
Administrators cannot see the content of your calculations, the inputs you enter, your results, or anything you have saved or exported. Opmate’s plant records, and who can see them, are covered in section 4.
An administrator can remove your access at any time. If they do, we keep a record that you previously had access so that the organisation can restore it if it chooses. That record does not include your calculations. If you would like that record deleted, you or your organisation can ask us using the contact details below.
If you would rather your use of the Service not be visible to your organisation, you can subscribe individually instead, using an email address that is not part of a team account.
7. Service providers and overseas processing
We use service providers to run the Service, and they store and process information on our behalf. At the date of this statement they are:
- Vercel — website hosting and analytics;
- Railway — the servers that run the calculators and Opmate;
- Supabase — sign-in, our account database, the Opmate waitlist, and Opmate’s plant records;
- Anthropic — the Claude models that word Opmate’s answers;
- Stripe — payments, invoicing, and tax calculation;
- Resend — sending email; and
- Google — Google Analytics.
Your information is held outside New Zealand. These providers, and the servers on which information is stored and processed, are located outside New Zealand, including in the United States. Information held overseas is subject to the laws of the country where it is held. Those laws may not give the same protections as New Zealand law, and may allow authorities in that country to access the information.
We choose established providers, rely on their contractual data-protection and security commitments, and remain responsible for the personal information they hold for us. Stripe also uses payment information for its own purposes, such as preventing fraud, under its own privacy policy.
Other disclosures. We may also disclose personal information where the law requires or permits it, to our professional advisers, and to a purchaser of, or successor to, all or part of our business, who must continue to handle it in line with this statement. We do not sell your personal information.
8. Storage and security
We take reasonable steps to protect personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorised access, including by using reputable service providers and encrypted connections. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.
If a privacy breach occurs that has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm, we will notify the people affected and the Privacy Commissioner as the Privacy Act 2020 requires.
10. Retention
We keep personal information only for as long as needed for the purposes described, or as required by law, after which we delete or de-identify it. In particular:
- account information is kept while you have an account, and is deleted on request once the account is closed, apart from anything we must keep by law;
- calculator inputs and results are not stored. Logs and error reports are kept for a limited period and are then deleted or overwritten in the ordinary course;
- Opmate’s records are kept as described in section 4;
- waitlist and enquiry information is kept until the waitlist or enquiry is closed, or until you ask us to remove it; and
- billing records, including invoices, are kept for as long as required by New Zealand tax and company law, which is generally seven years.
For team accounts, we keep the record of who has or has had access for as long as the organisation holds a subscription, and after it ends, so that access can be restored if the organisation subscribes again. An organisation, or an individual whose access has been removed, may ask us to delete that record at any time.
11. Your rights
Under the Privacy Act 2020 you have the right to ask for access to the personal information we hold about you and to ask for it to be corrected. You can also ask us to delete it, and we will do so unless we need to keep it for a lawful reason. To make a request, contact us using the details below. We may need to verify your identity, and we will respond within 20 working days.
If you are outside New Zealand. The privacy law of the place where you live may also apply to you, for example the General Data Protection Regulation in the European Economic Area, the UK GDPR in the United Kingdom, or the Privacy Act 1988 in Australia. Where it does, you may have additional rights, such as the right to have your information erased, to restrict or object to how we use it, to receive a copy in a portable form, to withdraw a consent you have given, and to complain to your local privacy regulator. We will honour the rights that apply to you.
Where those laws require us to have a legal basis for using personal information, we rely on:
- performing our contract with you, for accounts, subscriptions, and providing the Service;
- our legitimate interests in operating, securing, and improving the Service and understanding how it is used, including through Vercel Analytics;
- our legal obligations, for tax and accounting records; and
- your consent, where we ask for it, for Google Analytics cookies and for waitlist updates and product news. You can withdraw consent at any time. For Google Analytics, use the Cookie preferences link at the bottom of every page.
12. Complaints
If you have a concern about how we have handled your personal information, please contact us first. If you are not satisfied with our response, you may contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner (www.privacy.org.nz) or, if you are outside New Zealand, the privacy regulator where you live.
13. Changes
We may update this statement from time to time. The current version will be posted on this page with the date it was last updated. If a change is significant, we will also tell account holders by email or by notice within the Service.
14. Contact
For any privacy question, or to ask for access to, correction of, or deletion of information we hold about you:
Water Software Solutions Ltd — Privacy
NZBN 9429051580636
support@watercalcs.com