Privacy
What we keep about you, and why
Last updated 29 October 2026
This notice covers this website, the beta form, and what the Textbook Accounting program sends us. Textbook Accounting is responsible for this information under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). To contact our Information Officer, write to support@pencilbooks.co.za with any question or request.
In short
- Your books stay with you. Your company's accounts, customers, suppliers, employees and amounts live on your own computer, and the program never sends them to us. The one exception is when you ask us to help move a Pastel company across (section 5).
- This website has no cookies, no tracking and no advertising, and loads nothing from anyone else.
- The program sends us technical information so that we can keep it working, licensed and up to date. Each part is listed below.
- We do not sell your information or use it for advertising. Apart from the company that rents us our server (section 6), we share it only where the law requires us to.
1. This website
No cookies, no analytics, no tracking and no advertising scripts. The fonts and pictures come from our own server. Like any web server, ours notes each request (your internet address, the page asked for, the time and your browser's name) so that we can keep it safe and fix problems. These logs are deleted after about a week.
2. The beta form
We keep what you type in: your name, business, email address, phone number if you give it, what you use now, the number of employees if you give it, and your message. We also keep the sentence you agreed to and when you sent the form. Your name, email address and that agreement are needed; without them we cannot reply. Everything else is up to you. If you send it again with the same email address, the new details replace the old ones.
We use these details only to contact you about the beta and the launch of Textbook Accounting, and only the Textbook Accounting team uses them.
3. What the program sends us
The Textbook Accounting host, the program on your office computer, talks to our server for the things below. Your computer is known to us by a random number the host makes when it is installed, and by the computer's name.
| What | What is in it | Can you switch it off? |
|---|---|---|
| Error reports, when something goes wrong | The kind of error and technical details of where it happened, the version, and the computer's operating system. Before a report leaves your office, the host removes email addresses, quoted values, numbers of three digits or more and folder names. | Yes: Administration, Problems. |
| A daily check-in | The computer's name, the version and operating system, when the last backup was made and whether backups are failing, whether a second backup place is set, and how many companies and active users there are. No names of companies or people. | No: it is how we see that backups are working and that the program is up to date. |
| The licence | When you activate it: the licence key and the computer's name. Each day after: the licence number. We hold the licence itself, with your business's name, an email address if you gave one, and what it allows. | No: the licence needs it. |
| Updates | The version you have and the kind of computer (for example, 64-bit Windows), to offer the right update. | No. |
| Feedback you send | Only when you send a note from the program: your message, your name as it is in the program, the screen you were on and the version. Your email address only if you ask for a reply. | It is only sent when you send it. |
The program sends nothing else: none of your books, transactions, customers, suppliers, employees or amounts. Error reports are cleaned as described, but a report can still occasionally contain a word that was on the screen when the error happened; we only use reports to fix the program.
4. Email the program sends
Invoices, statements and reminders are sent through the email account you set up in the program. They go from your computer to your email provider and do not pass through us.
5. Moving a Pastel company
When we help a beta company move its Pastel books across, we work on a copy that holds personal information about its customers, suppliers and perhaps employees. The business stays responsible for that information, and we act only for it, under a signed agreement that says what we may do with the copy. The copy is kept apart from our server: at the business's premises or on our own encrypted computers in South Africa. It is deleted within 30 days of the end of the beta, or sooner if the business asks. See the beta terms.
6. Where it is kept, and for how long
On a server we rent from Contabo GmbH, in a data centre in the European Union, so it is kept outside South Africa. The EU's data protection law, the GDPR, applies there, and Contabo may only store it for us, not use it. POPIA allows information to go to a country whose law protects it in a similar way (section 72). The Textbook Accounting team signs in to see it with a password and a code from an authenticator app.
- Beta sign-ups: until you ask us to delete them, or until they are no longer needed after the launch, whichever comes first.
- Licences: while the licence is in use, and afterwards as long as the law requires us to keep business records.
- Error reports, check-ins and feedback: we do not delete these automatically yet. We delete yours when you ask.
- Server logs: about a week.
7. Your rights
You can ask what we hold about you, and ask us to correct or delete it, or to stop using it, at any time: write to support@pencilbooks.co.za. We answer within 30 days. Where the law requires us to keep something, we tell you what and why. If we ever have reason to believe your information has been lost or seen by someone who should not have it, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as soon as we reasonably can.
If you are not happy with how we handle your information, you can complain to the Information Regulator at inforegulator.org.za.
8. Changes to this notice
When this notice changes, the date at the top changes. If a change affects what we do with information we already hold, we also email the people we have an address for.