01Who is responsible for what
For your clinic's account (the staff accounts, the billing details, the support emails), VetApprove is the data controller. We decide what is collected and why.
For everything you put into an estimate (the pet owner's name, phone number, email, the animal, the plan, the signature), your clinic is the data controller and VetApprove is a processor acting on your instructions. We do not decide what goes in, and we do not use it for our own purposes.
VetApprove is operated by Martin Noale, entrepreneur individuel (EI) registered in France, SIREN 895 250 033, Marly-le-Roi, 78160, France, hello@vetapprove.com, +33 6 07 82 03 88. A data processing agreement covering the processor role is available on request, before or after you subscribe: ask at hello@vetapprove.com and we send it back the same day, signed. The section further down summarises what is in it.
02What we collect from clinics
- Account: name, work email, role, clinic name, address, country, practice software used, number of veterinarians.
- Authentication: a magic-link token sent to your work email, session information, and the dates and IP addresses of sign-ins. There is no password to store during the beta.
- Billing: the subscription plan, invoices and payment status. Your card details for the subscription are held by our payment provider, not by us.
- Usage: which pages of the application were used and when, error logs, and counts such as estimates sent or signed. We use this to fix things and to see what is used, not to profile anyone.
- Support: what you write to us and what we answer.
03What we process about pet owners
Only what the clinic enters or what the act of signing produces:
- Identity and contact: first name, last name, email address and, if the clinic types one, a mobile number. The link and every reminder go out by email; we do not send text messages today.
- The animal: name, species, breed, age, as far as the clinic chooses to fill them in.
- The estimate: line items, prices, options, totals, deposit, expiry date, and any note the clinic writes.
- The interaction: when the link was opened, from which IP address, with which browser and operating system.
- The signature: the drawn signature image, the typed name, the timestamp, the IP address and the hash of the accepted content.
- The payment: the deposit amount, its status and a payment identifier. Card numbers are entered directly into our payment provider's hosted form and never reach us.
We do not ask for and do not want: identity documents, medical history beyond what the clinic writes into a line, or any information about the owner's health or finances.
04Why we process it
- To deliver the service the clinic asked for: build, send, display and sign an estimate; take a deposit; send reminders and receipts; produce the sealed PDF.
- To prove what was agreed: the audit trail exists so that a clinic and a pet owner can both show what was accepted and when.
- To bill the subscription and meet accounting obligations.
- To keep the service secure: detecting abuse, fraud and unauthorised access.
- To answer support requests.
In the European Union, the legal bases are the performance of the contract with the clinic, our legitimate interest in a secure and functioning service, and our legal obligations for accounting. Pet owners' data is processed under the clinic's own basis, which is normally the contract between the clinic and its client.
We do not sell data, we do not share it with advertisers, we do not send marketing to pet owners, and we do not train machine-learning models on estimates, prices or client details.
05Who processes data for us
We use a small number of suppliers, each for one job. They are bound by contract to process data only on our instructions.
- Cloudflare (United States). Runs and serves the application, carries the encrypted connection to the database, and counts page views without cookies. It sees the request traffic. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
- Supabase (United States, region us-east-1, Virginia). The Postgres database where clinics, estimates, signatures and payment references are stored. Not in the Data Privacy Framework: its data processing agreement carries the European Commission's standard contractual clauses.
- Resend (United States). Sends the estimate link, the reminders, the receipts and the notices to the clinic. It receives the recipient's email address, the subject and the message content. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
- Stripe. Payments. It receives the deposit amount, the pet owner's card details entered in its own form, and the email used for the receipt. Your clinic is the merchant on its own Stripe account and Stripe's own privacy terms apply. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
- Twilio (United States). Text messages. Not switched on: no text message has ever been sent. It is listed here because the code is written and we will not add a supplier quietly. Certified under the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
Because the operator is established in France, sending personal data to those American suppliers is a transfer under Chapter V of the GDPR. Each transfer relies on a Data Privacy Framework certification or, for Supabase, on the standard contractual clauses in its data processing agreement. Certifications are renewed yearly and we check them when this page is updated; the current list is public on dataprivacyframework.gov.
That is the whole list. If we add a supplier that touches clinic or pet-owner data, this page is updated and clinics are emailed before the change takes effect.
06Where the data is hosted
There is one region during the beta: the United States, region us-east-1 (Virginia). You do not choose it. Your estimates, clients and signed records live in that single database. The operator is established in France, so clinic account data is also read from France. If we ever add or move a region, clinics are told before it happens.
07The data processing agreement, in short
For everything your clinic puts into an estimate, you are the controller and we are your processor. The agreement we sign says, in substance:
- We process pet-owner data only to run the service you asked for, on your documented instructions, and never for our own purposes.
- Subject matter and duration: the life of your subscription. Nature and purpose: sending, displaying, signing and sealing estimates, taking a deposit and sending the related messages. Categories of data and of people: the ones listed on this page.
- Everyone with access is bound to confidentiality. Access is one person, the operator, and only when support or a fault requires it.
- The sub-processors are the ones named above, no others. You are told by email before a new one is added and you may object.
- We help you answer a data subject request, and we hand back or delete the data when you leave, at your choice.
- We tell you about a personal data breach without undue delay, so that you can meet your own 72-hour duty. We aim to write to you within 24 hours of finding out.
- You may audit: ask, and we answer in writing with what we have. There is no third-party audit report to send you.
This is a summary. The signed document is the one that counts: ask for it at hello@vetapprove.com and read it before you subscribe if that matters to you.
08How long we keep it
- Signed estimates and their sealed records: while the clinic's account is open, then three years, because a clinic can be asked for one long after the procedure. The clinic can ask us to delete them sooner.
- Unsigned, declined or expired estimates: 24 months after the expiry date.
- Clinic account data: while the account is open, then 30 days. Invoices: ten years, which is what French accounting law requires of us.
- Sign-in links: 15 minutes, and they work once. Sign-in sessions: 30 days, then you sign in again.
- The message log (who was emailed what, and whether it arrived): 90 days. This one is swept automatically, every day.
- Support conversations: 3 years after the last message.
- Exports after account closure: available for 30 days, then deleted.
Being exact: the 90-day message log is the only sweep a machine runs today. The other durations are the rule we follow and we apply them by hand, because the beta is one person and a small number of clinics. The automatic sweep is written down as work to do, not claimed as done.
A clinic can ask us to delete its data at any time. We do it, same day, and we tell you exactly what was deleted and what (if anything) you asked us to keep as proof.
09Your rights
Under the GDPR and comparable laws you can ask for access to your data, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, and you can object to a processing based on legitimate interest. You can also complain to a supervisory authority. In France, the CNIL.
If you are a pet owner who received an estimate link, the clinic that sent it is your point of contact: it decided what to put in and it holds the relationship. Write to us anyway if the clinic does not answer, and we will help route the request.
Requests go to hello@vetapprove.com. We answer within one month, usually in a couple of days.
Nothing here is decided by a machine. There is no automated decision-making with legal or similar effects, no scoring of clinics or pet owners, and no profiling. A total is arithmetic, not a decision about a person.
10If you are in the United States
We are far below every threshold that makes the California privacy laws apply to a business: we do not reach $25 million of annual revenue, we do not handle the personal information of 100,000 California consumers or households, and we earn no share of our revenue from selling or sharing personal information. We honour the rights anyway, because refusing them on a technicality would be a strange way to run this.
- We do not sell personal information and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising. There is nothing to opt out of, because it never happens.
- Ask us what we hold about you, ask for a copy, ask for a correction, ask for deletion. Write to hello@vetapprove.com and we answer within 45 days, usually in two.
- We do not discriminate against anyone who exercises a right. There is no different price and no degraded service.
- We do not collect sensitive personal information as those laws define it: no government ID, no financial account number, no health data about a person, no precise geolocation.
- If a breach ever exposes personal information, we notify the clinic without undue delay so it can meet its own state notification duty, and we notify the CNIL within 72 hours where the GDPR requires it.
A pet owner's data belongs to the relationship with the clinic. Send your request to the clinic first: it holds the file and it decided what went in. We help it answer, and we answer you directly if it does not.
12Security
Everything travels over TLS, the database is encrypted at rest by our provider, and every record is scoped to a single clinic. The signed PDF is rendered from the sealed record for a signed-in user rather than left as a file on a public URL. The security page describes this in more detail, including what we do not claim: no SOC 2 report, no ISO certificate, and no HIPAA claim, since pet records are not protected health information.
13Children
VetApprove is a tool for businesses and their adult clients. It is not aimed at children and we do not knowingly collect data about them. If a clinic enters a minor's contact details, that is the clinic's decision and its responsibility under its own obligations.
14Changes and contact
If this policy changes in a way that affects you, we email clinics before the change takes effect and keep the previous version available. Questions, requests and complaints: hello@vetapprove.com.