Privacy Policy

1Information we collect

To provide the app's core functionality — shift management, calendar and hours calculation — we collect and process the following types of data.

A. Personal information (authentication)

To create a secure account and synchronise your data to the cloud, when you use the app with an email account we use Google Firebase Authentication services. We collect:

• Email address.
• Username, which is an alias you choose inside the app. If you sign in with Google we do not copy the name on your Google account: the app asks you for an alias instead, because inside a work group an alias is enough to tell people apart.
• Profile picture — either the picture from your Google account if you sign in with Google, or one you pick from your device's photo library. It is optional; without one the app shows your initial.

We also store the profile details you choose to fill in: job title, unit or department, city, country, region, and app language. All of them are optional. The country and region are used to load the right public holiday calendar, and your job title and unit are shown to the other members of any work group you join.

Finally, we record the date you last signed in. That date is the only thing the twelve-month inactivity deletion described in section 5 is based on.

B. User data (storage)

When you use the app with an email account we store the information you voluntarily enter into the app to generate your shift schedule. This data is securely stored in Google Cloud Firestore:

• Shift types and schedules.
• Shift patterns.
• Vacation days and personal days.
• Personal notes associated with calendar days.

C. Usage analytics and crash diagnostics

To understand how the app is used and to find and fix failures, we use two further Google Firebase services. These apply to every account, including local ones.

• Firebase Analytics records how the app is used: which screens you open and which features you use, such as creating a shift or exporting a schedule, along with a small number of properties like your chosen theme and whether your account is local or linked to an email address. These events are not linked to your name or your email address.
• Firebase Crashlytics records diagnostic information when the app crashes or hits an error: device model, operating system version, app version, a stack trace, and a short trail of recent actions. Crash reports are linked to your account identifier, so that we can tell whether a fault affects one account or many.

Analytics collection is switched off when you first open the app, and is only enabled once your consent has been resolved as described in section 4. Neither usage data nor diagnostic data is used to choose the ads you see, and neither is sold or shared with data brokers.

D. Work groups and shift swaps Email accounts only

If you create or join a work group, part of your data becomes visible to the other members of that group. That is the purpose of the feature, and it is worth being exact about what it means:

• Your alias and profile picture are copied into the group's records so that the other members can recognise you.
• The shifts you place in the group's calendar are visible to every member of that group, as are your job title and unit if you have filled them in.
• Shift swap requests you send, receive or accept are visible to the members involved. The group also keeps a running balance of favours owed between members and a permanent record of settled swaps.
• The group's administrator manages its shared shift types and can remove members. If the administrator leaves, the role passes automatically to the longest-standing remaining member.

We cannot control what other members do with what they can see, so only join groups whose members you know. You can leave a group at any time; when you do, your shifts in that group's calendar and your record of favours owed stay behind so the remaining members can settle up. Deleting your account erases them — see section 5.

2How we use your information

We use the collected information for:

• Service provision: to allow you to create, save and view your shift schedule from any device.
• Synchronisation: to keep your data updated across different devices if you change phones.
• Security: to verify your identity and protect your account against unauthorised access.
• Alarm functionality: to use operating system alarm permissions to schedule accurate shift start reminders based on your settings.
• Group features: to share the shifts and swap information you put into a work group with the other members of that group, as described in section 1.D.
• Product improvement: to understand which features are used, so that we can decide what to build next and what to repair, as described in section 1.C.
• Diagnostics: to detect, reproduce and fix crashes and errors, as described in section 1.C.
• Advertising: to show the ads that keep the app free, as described in section 4.

Legal bases for processing (EEA, UK and Switzerland)

Where the GDPR or the UK GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases:

3Sharing information with third parties

We do not sell, trade or rent your personal information to third parties. However, we use trusted service providers to operate the app's infrastructure:

• Google Firebase: for authentication services, database and secure information hosting.
• Google Firebase Analytics and Firebase Crashlytics: for usage measurement and crash diagnostics, as described in section 1.C.
• Google AdMob: for the advertising described in section 4.
• Nager.Date (date.nager.at): a public holiday calendar service. When you select a country or region, we ask this service for that country's public holidays. The request carries the country, the region and the year, plus the IP address your device needs to receive an answer. It carries no account identifier and no schedule data.

These providers have limited access to your information solely to perform these tasks on our behalf and are obligated to protect it according to their own privacy and security policies.

Separately from these providers, the other members of your work groups see the data described in section 1.D. They are not processing anything on our behalf: they are other users, seeing what you chose to put into a shared group.

International data transfers

Google's infrastructure processes and stores data outside the European Economic Area, including in the United States. Where your data leaves the EEA, the UK or Switzerland, that transfer relies on the safeguards Google provides for it: the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses and, where it applies, the EU–US Data Privacy Framework. Google's own terms for these services are at cloud.google.com/terms/data-processing-addendum and policies.google.com/privacy.

4Advertising and tracking

SmartShift shows advertising provided by Google AdMob. Ads are shown through rewarded ads to unlock optional features — for example premium calendar themes and the salary and export features — and help keep the app free. Third-party vendors, including Google, may use device identifiers and similar technologies to serve ads based on your prior use of this app and other apps and websites.

Data collected for advertising

To serve and measure ads, Google AdMob and its advertising technology partners may collect and process device and usage information, including device identifiers such as the Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) on iOS, IP address, an approximate location derived from your IP address, and information about your interactions with ads. This information may be used to deliver personalised or non-personalised ads, to measure their performance (including frequency capping), and to detect and prevent fraud.

App Tracking Transparency (iOS)

On iOS, before using the IDFA for tracking we ask for your permission through Apple's App Tracking Transparency prompt. Under Apple's rules, "tracking" means linking data collected in this app with data from other companies' apps, websites or offline properties for targeted advertising or advertising measurement, or sharing it with data brokers. If you choose "Ask App Not to Track", we will not access the IDFA and will not use other identifying information (such as your email address) to track you; you will still see ads, but they will be non-personalised. Declining tracking does not limit any feature of the app. You can change your choice at any time in iOS Settings › Privacy & Security › Tracking.

Advertising identifier

Ads also use the advertising identifier your device’s operating system provides. You can reset it, or turn off ad personalisation, from your device settings; on some systems you can remove the identifier altogether, after which apps receive a string of zeros instead of an ID. Turning personalisation off does not remove ads and does not limit any feature of the app; it makes the ads non-personalised.

Consent for users in the EEA, the UK and Switzerland

If you are located in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, we ask for your consent through a Google-certified consent message before using your data for personalised ads. You can change or withdraw your consent at any time from within the app, in Profile, under the privacy and consent option; selecting it re-opens the consent message so you can review and update your choices.

Your advertising choices

You can opt out of personalised advertising from Google in Google Ads Settings. You can also opt out of personalised advertising from participating third parties at aboutads.info/choices and, in the EU, at youronlinechoices.eu.

Third parties and Google

Advertising data is shared with Google, our advertising provider, and is processed in accordance with Google's Privacy Policy. For information on how Google uses data from apps that use its services, see policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites. A current list of Google's advertising technology providers is available at support.google.com/admob/answer/9012903.

Advertising and analytics also apply when you use the app without an account. Not having an account stops your schedule data from being uploaded; it does not disable ads or crash reporting.

5Data retention and deletion

We retain your personal data for as long as your account remains active.

Right to erasure and account deletion

We give you full control over your personal information:

• In-app deletion (recommended): you can delete your account and all associated data — shifts, profile, vacations, notes — immediately from within the app, in Profile › Delete my account.
• External deletion request: if you do not have access to the app or wish to request deletion through other channels, email support.smartshift@gmail.com with the subject "Account Deletion Request". We will process your request and delete all your data within a maximum period of 48 hours.
• Automatic deletion for inactivity: we keep your personal data only while your account is active. If you do not sign in to SmartShift for 12 consecutive months, your account and all associated data will be permanently deleted automatically.
• Before deletion we notify you by email at the address linked to your account: a first notice after 11 months of inactivity, and a reminder 7 days before the scheduled deletion date. You can prevent deletion at any time by simply opening the app and signing in.

What deletion erases

When an account is deleted, the following is permanently erased and cannot be recovered: your profile, shifts, shift types, shift patterns, holiday records, profile photo and group memberships.

This includes everything of yours inside your work groups. Deleting your account removes you from every group you belonged to and, in each of them, erases the shifts you had placed in that group's calendar, the pending swap requests and counter-offers you had made, your entry in the other members' record of favours owed, and the member record holding your alias and picture. If you were a group's last remaining member, the group and everything inside it is deleted along with your account.

What survives identifies nobody: each group keeps a permanent record of the swaps that were actually settled, which cannot be altered or deleted because the fairness of the favour system depends on it. Those records contain only internal account identifiers — no name, no picture, no email — and once your account is gone they no longer refer to any identifiable person.

If we cannot reach you (for example, no valid email on file), the account will still be deleted at the end of the retention period in accordance with this policy.

6Your rights

If you are in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom or Switzerland, you have the right to ask for access to the personal data we hold about you, to have inaccurate data corrected, to have your data erased, to restrict or object to our processing of it, to receive your data in a portable format, and to withdraw any consent you have given at any time — without that affecting processing already carried out.

Most of these you can exercise directly in the app:

• Your profile data is editable in Profile.
• Your schedule can be exported from the export screen.
• Your advertising consent can be changed in Profile, under the privacy and consent option.
• Your account and its data can be deleted in Profile › Delete my account.

For anything else, write to support.smartshift@gmail.com and we will reply within one month.

If you believe we have handled your data unlawfully, you can lodge a complaint with the data protection authority of your country. In Spain that is the Agencia Española de Protección de Datos (aepd.es).

7Data security

We take the security of your data very seriously. We implement industry-standard security measures — such as HTTPS/TLS encryption in transit — provided by Google's infrastructure to protect your information against unauthorised access, alteration or destruction.

Access to the data we store is also governed by server-side security rules, enforced by Google's infrastructure rather than by the app on your phone. Those rules mean your personal schedule can be read only by your own account, and a group's data only by the members of that group.

8Children's privacy

Our app is not directed to children under the age of 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 13. If we discover that we have collected information from a child without parental consent, we will delete it. In the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom, where national law sets a higher minimum age for consenting to online services on one's own — 14 in Spain — that higher age applies instead.

9Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy occasionally. We will notify you of any material changes by posting the new policy on this page or via a notice within the app. We recommend reviewing this page periodically.

10Contact and data controller

SmartShift is published by Lapisoft, which decides how the personal data described in this policy is processed and is therefore its controller:

For any question about this Privacy Policy, or to exercise the rights described in section 6, write to support.smartshift@gmail.com. We answer within one month.