Terms of service

Books is bookkeeping software. It reads the bank and card statements you upload and the account activity you connect, keeps categorized books through the year, checks that every statement ties to the totals printed on it, keeps as many separate sets of books as you need without ever adding them together, records the write-offs only you can know about, and produces a package your accountant can work from.

Ezra is the part of Books you can talk to. It reads your own books and answers in plain language.

More precisely, and in the same spirit:

• It is not tax advice. Books records what you assert and does the arithmetic you would otherwise do by hand. It does not decide what is deductible, does not compute anyone's tax, and does not say where a figure belongs on a return.
• It does not file anything. No return, no form, no filing, to any authority, ever.
• It is not legal or financial advice, and nothing it produces is an audit or an attestation.
• Its business and personal flags are hints, not determinations. They exist to save your accountant time, and your accountant overrules them.
• It does not send your package for you. You download the zip and you send it. Books sends no mail on your behalf.

This is worth stating as a term and not just as a feature. Books reads. It holds no payment credentials, it cannot make a transfer, a payment, a withdrawal or a purchase on any account you connect, and there is no part of it that could. A connection you authorize through Plaid is a read of transactions and balances, and nothing more.

• You must be at least 18 and able to enter into a contract. An account is for you or for the business you run.
• Tell us the truth about who you are. Sign-in is by password of at least ten characters, or by Google.
• Keep your credentials to yourself. You are responsible for what happens under your account, and you should tell us at once if you think somebody else is in it.
• One account is one identity. Do not share a login, and do not use somebody else's.

You own what you put into Books and what Books makes from it: your statements, your transactions, your rulings, your write-offs and your packages. Ratifyly claims no ownership of any of it. We hold it in order to run the service for you, and for no other purpose.

You can take it out whenever you like. Every set of books produces a year end package as a zip you download, and the statement files you uploaded are still your files and can be downloaded as you sent them.

You keep responsibility for the accuracy of what you enter. Books can only reconcile what it is given: a statement you do not load is not part of your books, and the product says so rather than guessing at the gap.

Banks, through Plaid

Connecting a bank is optional. You authorize it in Plaid's own screen and your banking credentials never reach Books. You can disconnect at any time, which revokes the connection, destroys the stored token and removes the transactions it brought in. Your use of Plaid is also governed by Plaid's own terms with you.

QuickBooks, when Intuit opens it

The QuickBooks connector is built and it is not available to customers. It has not been through Intuit's app review, so no QuickBooks company can be connected to Books today. When that changes, connecting will be your choice and disconnecting will revoke the connection and destroy the stored token.

Ezra, and the model behind it

Ezra is built on Claude, made by Anthropic. Language models get things wrong. Every figure Ezra states is required to come from a query against your own books rather than from memory, and it is instructed to say which basis a balance rests on. Check anything that matters, and have your accountant check anything that matters to a return.

Do not:

• Connect an account, or upload statements, that you are not entitled to see. Put in your own financial records, or your business's.
• Try to reach another customer's books, or test whether you can.
• Attack the service: probe it, overload it, scrape it, or work around its rate limits and its sign-in protections.
• Use it to break the law, or to help somebody else do so.
• Resell or rebrand it as your own service without a written agreement with Ratifyly.

We may suspend or close an account that does these things. Where it is reasonable to do so, we will say why first.

Books is offered as it stands. We work at keeping it up and at keeping your data safe, and we take encrypted backups daily, but no service is available every minute and we do not promise that this one will be.

The product changes. Features are added, and occasionally something is withdrawn. If something you rely on is going away, we will tell you before it does.

Books is provided without warranties beyond those the law gives you and does not let us exclude. We do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error free, or that its categorizations will always be right, which is exactly why it puts the decisions that matter in front of a person.

Books that Books keeps are a starting point for your accountant, not a substitute for one. Decisions about your taxes are yours and your accountant's, and we are not liable for those decisions or their consequences.

To the extent the law allows, Ratifyly is not liable for lost profits, lost business or indirect losses, and our total liability to you for any claim arising out of Books is limited to what you paid us for the service in the twelve months before the claim.

Nothing here limits liability for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

You can stop using Books at any time. Closing an account and destroying everything on it is not self-service today: write to support@ezra.is from the address on your account and a person will do it. The privacy policy says exactly what is destroyed and what happens to the backups.

Take your package first. Once an account is deleted, we cannot get it back for you.

We may close an account for a serious breach of these terms, or if we stop offering the service. If we stop offering it, you will get notice and a chance to take your data out.

These terms are governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Virginia, in the United States, without regard to its conflict of laws rules. Books is offered in the United States and is not designed for use elsewhere.

When these terms change, the effective date at the top changes with them, and the previous wording is in the version history of the repository this page is published from. If a change materially affects your rights, we will tell you before it takes effect rather than relying on you to notice the date. Continuing to use Books after that is how you accept the new version; if you would rather not, close the account.

If any part of these terms turns out to be unenforceable, the rest still stands.

Write to support@ezra.is. A human being answers.