Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

HotSeat (“HotSeat”, “we”, “our”, or “us”) is the platform available at hotseatbooking.ca, operated by HotSeat (Ontario, Canada). We provide appointment booking and business management software for service businesses across North America.

We are the “business” responsible for personal information handled through the platform. Our Privacy Officer can be reached at info@hotseatbooking.ca for any access, correction, or privacy request.

2. Information we collect

Business accounts (shop owners): When you sign up, we collect your name, email address, business name, business type, phone number, and physical address. We store this information to create and manage your HotSeat account and booking page.

Customer data: When a customer books an appointment through your HotSeat booking page, we collect their name, email address, and phone number. The email address is required so we can send the booking confirmation, the appointment reminder, and the links the customer uses to cancel or reschedule; a shop entering a walk-in or phone booking on its own dashboard may record a customer without one. We do not require customers to create accounts — booking is available as a guest. This data is stored at the location level and is accessible only to the shop that collected it.

Usage data: We collect standard server logs including IP addresses, browser type, pages visited, and timestamps to operate and improve the service.

3. How we use your information

• To create and manage your HotSeat account and business profile
• To enable appointment booking and send email confirmations and reminders, plus SMS reminders where a customer has opted in
• To display your booking page to your customers
• To send transactional emails related to your account
• To improve the platform through aggregate, anonymised analytics

4. Data sharing

We do not sell your personal information. We share data only with the following categories of service providers, strictly to operate the platform:

• Supabase — database and authentication infrastructure (shop accounts, customer records, and appointments)
• Resend — transactional email delivery (names, email addresses, and appointment details)
• Twilio — text-message delivery for shops that turn on SMS reminders (customer phone numbers and appointment details)
• Vercel — application hosting, plus usage analytics once you consent to them (server logs, IP addresses, and page-view telemetry)
• Google — Google Places address autocomplete, which runs in your browser and contacts Google directly (the address text you type and your IP address)

All sub-processors are bound by data processing agreements and handle data only as instructed. We will update this list before engaging any new sub-processor — for example, a payment processor when automated online billing is introduced.

5. Data retention

We keep personal information only as long as it is needed for the purposes above or to meet our legal obligations:

• Active accounts: retained while the account is open.
• Closed accounts: when an account is closed it is first deactivated (removed from the live service). We then anonymise or erase the personal information it contains within 12 months, except records we must keep longer by law (for example, transaction and tax records, typically up to 7 years).
• Appointment records: retained while they remain relevant to the operation of the shop's account, then anonymised on the same schedule.

On a verified erasure request we anonymise or delete your personal information within 30 days, subject to the legal-retention exceptions above. A shop owner may request anonymisation of customer records they collected by contacting us at info@hotseatbooking.ca.

6. Your rights

Depending on your location, you may have the right to:

• Access the personal data we hold about you
• Request correction of inaccurate data
• Request deletion or anonymisation of your personal data, subject to the legal-retention exceptions in section 5
• Request a copy of your data in a portable format (CSV) — email us or use “Request my data” in your dashboard settings, and we'll provide it within 30 days
• Withdraw consent for optional data processing at any time

To exercise any of these rights, email us at info@hotseatbooking.ca. We will respond within 30 days.

7. Québec residents (Law 25)

If you are in Québec, Québec's Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector (as amended by Law 25) gives you additional protections, and we commit to them across the platform:

• Privacy Officer. The person responsible for protection of personal information is reachable at info@hotseatbooking.ca.
• Confidentiality incidents. If a breach poses a risk of serious injury, we will notify the Commission d'accès à l'information and the affected individuals promptly, and keep a register of incidents as required.
• Anonymisation. When personal information is no longer needed for the purposes it was collected, we anonymise or destroy it.
• Portability. You may ask to receive the computerised personal information you provided in a structured, commonly used technical format.

8. Cookies

We use session cookies strictly necessary for authentication. We do not use third-party advertising cookies or tracking pixels. Analytics, if enabled, are aggregate and do not identify individual users.

9. Security

All data is encrypted in transit (TLS 1.2+) and at rest. Authentication is managed through Supabase Auth with secure, HTTP-only cookie sessions. We conduct regular reviews of our security practices. No method of transmission over the internet is 100% secure; we cannot guarantee absolute security but commit to industry-standard protections.

10. Children's privacy

HotSeat is not intended for use by anyone under the age of 18. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.

11. Changes to this policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. We will notify you of material changes by email or by posting a notice on your dashboard. Continued use of HotSeat after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact

Questions about this policy? Email us at info@hotseatbooking.ca.