Last updated 9 August 2026. Trade Dock is made by Ruth McCarthy, Ireland. Questions: [email protected]
A tradesperson's book belongs to the tradesperson. When a business puts a customer's name, address or price into Trade Dock, that business decides what goes in and what it is used for: in data protection language the business is the controller and we are its processor. We hold that information only to run the app for them. We never sell it, mine it, or use it for anything of our own.
Your own account details (your name, your email, what you subscribed to) are ours to look after, and there we are the controller.
A business's book lives on the phone first, so the app works with no signal. Photos added to jobs and customers stay on that phone only: they are not uploaded, so they are not part of the cloud copy.
Once a business has an account, the text of the book (customers, jobs, quotes, invoices, payments, suppliers, to-dos, job updates and notes) is copied to our database so it survives a lost phone and reaches the crew. Messages between a business and a customer, quotes and invoices sent to a customer's app, enquiries, connect codes and crew records live there too.
That database is Google Firestore, hosted in the European Union. Sign-in itself is handled by Firebase Authentication, which Google runs from the United States, so email addresses and sign-in records are processed there under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework. We cannot pin that part to Europe, so we do not claim otherwise.
Google (Firebase) for accounts, the database and hosting. Apple for Sign in with Apple and payments. RevenueCat to check whether a subscription is live, which means an anonymous id and a receipt, never the book. That is the whole list: there is no advertising, no analytics and no tracking in this app.
Speech is turned into text by the iPhone itself, on the device. No audio is kept and no recording is sent to us or anyone else.
Joining a tradesperson with their code tells them your name and email so they can match you to their records. From then on you see the quotes, invoices and messages that business chooses to send you. Their other customers cannot see you, and businesses you have not joined cannot see you at all. The customer app is free.
Your employer sees your name, your email and what you tick off. What else you can see (money, messages, the full job list) is set by the person who runs the business, not by us.
While the account is open, and then: invoices and payment records for six years, because Irish tax law requires it; job photos and job records for six years, in case of a dispute about work done; everything else goes when it is deleted. Delete an account and we remove the data from live systems straight away and from backups within 30 days. A business keeps its own record of work it did for a customer, the same as any accountant or filing cabinet would.
You can ask for a copy of what we hold, correct it, or have it deleted. Export and Delete are both in the app's Settings and work without asking us. If you would rather ask a person, email [email protected]. If your request is about a business's own records of you, ask that business: they control those, and we will help them answer you.
If you think we have handled your data badly you can complain to the Data Protection Commission in Ireland, or in Australia to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.
Trade Dock is a tool for running a business and is for over-18s only.
Data in transit is encrypted. Access to the database is restricted by rules that make each business a sealed box: no business can read another's, and a customer can only read what was sent to them. If a breach ever affects you we will tell you and the regulator.
Email [email protected]. A human answers.