Privacy Policy

Last updated August 20, 2026

Who we are

Valio is an hours tracking app for iPhone, made by Chaitanya Nijhara, an independent developer based in California, United States. In this policy, “we” and “us” mean Chaitanya Nijhara, and “the app” means the Valio iPhone app. For the purposes of the UK and EU General Data Protection Regulation, we are the controller of the limited personal data described here. You can reach us at support@govalio.com, or at 1259 El Camino Real, Unit #1119, Menlo Park, CA 94025, United States.

What stays on your device

Everything you enter into Valio is written to a database inside the app’s own storage on your iPhone. That includes:

• Jobs and their details: the job or employer name, a location you type as free text, tags, and notes
• Pay terms and their full history: regular rate, overtime rates, holiday rate, paid break allowance, and any premium pay rules you configure
• Shifts, breaks, pauses, and the times you clocked in and out, with the time zone the shift was recorded in
• Timesheets and everything on them: earnings, expenses, tips, discounts, notes, and whether you have marked a period as sent or paid
• Your export identity, if you set one up: your name or business name, a contact email or phone number, and a logo image
• Your settings and preferences, including currency, your self-reported tax rate, time rounding, and reminder choices

None of this is transmitted to us, and none of it is transmitted to any of the service providers below. We operate no server that receives your work records, and we have no way to read them. They stay on your device unless you choose to share them.

Three narrow things do leave, all described in full below, and none of them is the content of a record: your currency code, meaning the three letters and never an amount; plain counts of how many jobs, shifts, and timesheets you have; and — only if you choose to send it — the feedback form, which attaches your name and contact line to a message you write. Nothing else in the list above ever leaves your device.

When you add a logo, iOS presents its own photo picker outside the app and hands back only the single image you chose. Valio never receives access to your photo library.

What leaves your device, and to whom

Valio uses a small number of service providers. Each one receives only what is listed here, and each processes it on our behalf. Each is bound by its agreement with us to protect what it receives to the same standard this policy sets, and to use it only for the purpose listed against its name. None of them may sell it, share it for advertising, or combine it with data from anywhere else.

We describe them by the role they fill rather than by company name, because we may change providers over time. Whoever fills a role receives only what is listed for that role, and every commitment in this policy applies to them. If you want to know who our current providers are, write to us and we will tell you.

What the usage events actually contain

The events describe what kind of thing happened, not what it was about: actions like setting up a job, logging a shift, saving a pay rule, exporting a timesheet, or moving through the subscription screens.

No job title, employer or client name, exact pay rate, money amount, note, expense, or export identity is ever included in an analytics or crash event. A small number of events include a rough pay-range band rather than a figure. Where an event refers to a specific job or timesheet, it uses a random internal identifier that means nothing outside your own device. This promise is about automatic analytics and crash reporting; the feedback form you submit yourself is described below and does carry more.

Separately, our subscription provider sends subscription lifecycle events, such as a trial starting or a subscription renewing or ending, directly to our analytics provider from its own servers, matched on the identifier below, independent of whether the app itself is running.

The identifier we use

The first time Valio launches, it generates a random identifier and stores it in the iOS Keychain. It is not linked to iCloud and is never synced to your other devices. The same identifier is given to our subscription provider as your app user ID, to our analytics provider as your analytics ID, to our crash reporting provider if it ever needs to report a crash, and to our feedback form provider if you submit feedback. The subscription and analytics providers are told the value corresponds, so the two agree.

It is a random value with no meaning. It is not your Apple ID, not an email address, not your device’s advertising identifier, and not the identifier Apple provides to developers. Because Valio has no accounts, there is no name or address on our side for it to point to.

One thing worth knowing: because it is stored in the Keychain rather than with the app’s files, this identifier survives deleting and reinstalling Valio. That is deliberate — it is what lets a reinstall restore your subscription rather than appear as a brand new customer — but it does mean deleting the app does not reset it.

What we do not do

• We do not ask you to create an account or sign in.
• We do not use any advertising network, attribution software, or ad identifier. Valio never asks for permission to track you, because there is nothing to ask about.
• We do not track you across other companies’ apps or websites, and we combine nothing with data from other sources.
• We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. We have never done either.
• We do not sync your records to the cloud, and we run no server of our own that stores them.

Why we are allowed to process this

If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, our legal bases under Article 6 of the GDPR are:

• Performance of a contract for the purchase and entitlement data handled by Apple and our subscription provider. Without it we cannot sell you a subscription or tell whether yours is active.
• Legitimate interests for the anonymous usage analytics and crash diagnostics: understanding which features are reached, where people get stuck, and why the app sometimes fails is how a one-person app gets better and more reliable. We have weighed this against your interests, and the reason we consider it proportionate is that the data carries no name, no exact rate or amount, and nothing that identifies you outside this app.
• Consent for the feedback form, which records nothing until you deliberately open it, type into it, and submit it, with what it will send shown to you before you do.

You have the right to object to processing based on legitimate interests. In fairness we should say plainly that the current release has no in-app switch to turn analytics off. We intend to add one. Until then, write to us at the address at the bottom of this page and we will act on your objection; and if you would rather not wait, iOS lets you block the app’s network access entirely in Settings.

How long we keep it

• On your device: until you delete it. We have no say in this and no ability to reach it.
• Purchase and entitlement records: for as long as the subscription relationship lasts and for as long afterwards as tax and accounting records require.
• Everything held by our service providers — usage events, crash reports, and feedback — for as long as it serves the purposes described above.

Where the law gives you a right to have your data erased, or we are otherwise required to remove it, write to us and we will act on it.

Where it is processed

We are in the United States, and our service providers process data there. If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, that means your data is transferred outside your country. These transfers rely on the Standard Contractual Clauses adopted by the European Commission, which form part of our agreements with each provider, together with the safeguards each of them describes in its own privacy documentation.

Your rights

If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, you have the right to access your personal data, to have it corrected or erased, to restrict or object to how it is processed, to receive it in a portable form, and to withdraw consent where processing rests on consent. You also have the right to complain to your data protection authority.

Two practical notes, because we would rather be useful than merely compliant:

• Everything on your device is already in your hands. You can read, correct, export, and delete any of it inside the app, without asking us. That covers essentially all the personal data Valio holds.
• For the records held by our service providers, we may need you to tell us the identifier. They are keyed to the anonymous value described above and to nothing else, so we genuinely cannot always connect a request to them from an email address alone. Where we cannot identify you from what you give us, Article 11 of the GDPR does not require us to acquire more information simply to do so. Write to us anyway — an App Store receipt or order ID helps us find the right records. For a request to see data rather than erase it, we may ask you to confirm the request another way, for example from the address the receipt was sent to. Where we cannot reasonably satisfy ourselves that a request is yours, we will say so rather than act on it.
• Apple’s own record of your purchase is not ours to delete. Apple is responsible for the transaction and keeps its records under its own privacy policy. Erasing what our providers hold does not cancel a subscription, does not refund anything, and does not cost you access — your entitlement is re-derived from your App Store receipt.

If you live in California

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, the categories of personal information Valio has collected in the past twelve months are: identifiers (the anonymous app identifier described above, and — only if you submit the feedback form — the name and contact line you have saved as your export identity), commercial information (that you bought a subscription, its status, and the plan and price recorded at purchase), and internet or other electronic network activity (the anonymous usage events, crash diagnostics, app version, and device and operating system details). All of it is collected directly from your device, for the business purposes described above, and disclosed only to the service providers described above.

We do not collect sensitive personal information. We have not sold personal information, and we have not shared it for cross-context behavioural advertising, in the past twelve months or ever. You have the right to know what we collect, to request deletion or correction, and not to be discriminated against for exercising those rights — and since we do not sell or share, there is no opt-out for you to need. To make a request, write to the address below; the identification note in the previous section applies here too.

Device backups

If you have iCloud Backup or encrypted local backups turned on, iOS may include Valio’s data in that backup. Those backups are made and stored by Apple, or by you on your own computer, under Apple’s terms and privacy policy rather than ours. You can control this in the iOS Settings app.

Exporting and sending a timesheet

When you export a timesheet, the file is created on your device and handed to the standard iOS share sheet. You choose where it goes, for example Messages, Mail, AirDrop, or a file. The file never passes through us, and we do not keep a copy.

An export contains your work records for the period: dates, hours, rates, amounts, expenses, tips, discounts, and any notes you included. If you turn on the identity block, it also prints your name or business name, your contact line, and your logo. Once you have shared the file it is in the hands of whoever you sent it to, so send it deliberately.

Reminders and notifications

Valio’s reminders are scheduled by iOS on your device. There is no push notification service, and no reminder, job name, or schedule is ever sent to a server. If you turn reminders down, nothing is scheduled.

Ratings prompt

Valio may occasionally ask you to rate the app using Apple’s built-in rating prompt. That prompt is presented and handled entirely by iOS. We do not learn whether it appeared, whether you rated the app, or what you rated it.

Feedback

Valio has an optional feedback form, reached from Settings. It is a web form shown inside the app and hosted by a provider on our behalf. Nothing is recorded unless you actually submit it — opening the form and backing out leaves nothing behind.

When you do submit, we receive your message together with the name you have saved as your export identity, if you have set one, and the contact line saved alongside it when that line is an email address. If you have saved a phone number there instead, it is not sent. Both are filled into the form in front of you, so you can change or clear them before sending. The submission also carries the anonymous identifier described above, the app version and where you stand in your subscription, and three plain counts — how many jobs, shifts, and timesheets you have — together with your currency code. That is the context that lets us reproduce what you are describing without having to come back and ask. It never includes the jobs, rates, amounts, notes, or timesheets themselves — only how many of them there are.

We use this only to understand and reply. Because the message is a free text field, please do not type anything into it that you would not want us to read.

Children

Valio is a tool for tracking work hours and is not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect information from children under 13, or under 16 in the European Economic Area and the United Kingdom. If you believe a child has provided us with information, write to us and we will delete it.

Security

Your records are held in the app’s private storage area, which iOS keeps separate from other apps and protects with your device passcode and Apple’s file protection. The anonymous identifier is held in the iOS Keychain. Traffic to our service providers uses encrypted connections. Valio does not add encryption of its own beyond what iOS provides, and it does not currently lock the app behind Face ID, so a device passcode is the practical protection for what is on your phone.

Deleting your data

Because your records live on your device, you control them directly. You can edit or delete anything inside the app at any time, and deleting a job takes everything attached to it — its shifts, timesheets, notes, holiday dates, and pay terms — with it.

To remove everything at once, delete Valio from your iPhone. That removes the app’s whole storage area: the database holding every job, shift, timesheet, expense, tip, note, and tag; your export identity; your settings and reminder choices; and any timesheet file the app had generated but you had not yet sent anywhere. The current release has no single “erase everything” button inside the app, so this is the way to do it.

Deleting the app does not cancel or forfeit your subscription. A subscription is not your data: it is a purchase held by Apple against the Apple ID that bought it, and Valio re-derives your access when you reinstall, because the anonymous identifier it is recorded against lives in the Keychain and survives deletion. Restore Purchases is there if it does not come back on its own. Cancelling is a separate thing you do in your App Store account settings, as the Terms of Use describe.

Deleting the app removes that storage from your device. It does not:

• reset the anonymous identifier in the Keychain, which persists across reinstalls as described above;
• delete the purchase records held by Apple and our subscription provider, the usage and crash data already received by our analytics and crash reporting providers, or any feedback you have already sent;
• reach a timesheet you have already exported and saved or sent somewhere else, which is in that place’s hands rather than the app’s;
• remove a copy already inside a device backup, which is Apple’s to manage or yours, as described under Device backups above.

To have the records our own providers hold removed, write to us using the guidance in the rights section above. Apple’s records of the transaction are Apple’s to manage, not ours.

Changes to this policy

If Valio gains a feature that changes how data is handled, for example cloud sync or an advertising SDK, we will update this page and the date at the top before that feature ships.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or to make a request under this policy: support@govalio.com

Chaitanya Nijhara, 1259 El Camino Real, Unit #1119, Menlo Park, CA 94025, United States