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Privacy Policy

Last updated · September 14, 2026

1. Introduction

At Ahead Financials (“Ahead”, “we”, “us”, or “our”) we respect your privacy. This policy explains what personal data we collect when you visit aheadfinancials.com or use the Ahead iPhone app, how we use it, who we share it with, and the rights you have over it. Questions go to support@aheadfinancials.com.

2. The One Thing to Know First

Ahead does not connect to your bank. We never ask for bank credentials, we never hold or move your money, and we do not receive a feed of your bank transactions. Everything Ahead knows about your money is something you told it — by speaking, typing, or handing it a statement you chose to share.

3. Data We Collect

  • Account Data — your name and email address, taken from the account you create or from Sign in with Apple or Google when you use those. If you use Apple’s Hide My Email, we only ever see the relay address.
  • Money Data — the income, plans, bills, goals and spending entries you record in the app, including anything you dictate by voice or any statement or receipt you choose to upload. Ahead encrypts selected sensitive fields in this data at the application layer (see §6).
  • Subscription Data — the App Store product, entitlement, purchase and expiry information Apple and RevenueCat provide so Ahead can decide whether your membership is active. Apple handles your payment details. For earlier website purchases, we retain the limited Stripe identifiers, checkout email, and status needed to finish the launch transition and meet billing or legal obligations.
  • Device & Usage Data — app version, device model and OS, language and time zone, crash diagnostics, and product-analytics events describing which screens and features you used. Web visits also involve your IP address and browser type.
  • Push Token — if you turn on reminders, the notification token your device issues, so we can send bill reminders and check-ins.

We do not collect precise location, contacts, or health data, and we do not use tracking for advertising.

Website waitlist — if you join, we store your email address, signup time, and consent to receive Ahead launch updates. Waitlist records are stored in AWS in the United States. Cloudflare serves the website and securely forwards the form to AWS. We use a short-lived, hashed network identifier to limit abuse; we do not store your IP address in your waitlist record. Private beta access uses a secure cookie that expires after 12 hours.

We use your waitlist email only for launch updates you requested. You can unsubscribe using the link in those emails, or contact us from your signup address to request removal. Unsubscribing removes your email from the active waitlist. A suppression record helps us honour that choice; encrypted backups expire on their retention schedule.

4. Device Permissions

  • Microphone — only while you are holding the record button to log a purchase or answer a question. If you allow AI features, the clip is sent for processing from request memory. Ahead does not write a new recording file to server storage.
  • Photos & Files — only for the specific statement or receipt you pick. We never browse your library.
  • Notifications — only if you allow them, and only for reminders about your own money.

Each permission can be revoked at any time in iOS Settings.

5. How We Use Your Data

  • To provide the Service — to hold your plan and show you your numbers.
  • To generate the entries, categorizations, imports, and suggestions you ask for. We send content to third-party AI services only after you allow AI features (see §7).
  • To take payment and manage your subscription.
  • To keep the app working — diagnosing crashes, fixing bugs, and understanding in aggregate which features are used.
  • To answer you when you contact support.
  • To meet legal obligations.

Our lawful bases, where the GDPR or similar laws apply, are performance of our contract with you, our legitimate interest in operating and improving a secure product, your consent (for optional permissions such as notifications), and compliance with law. We do not sell your personal data, and we do not share it for advertising or cross-context behavioural profiling.

6. Security

Selected sensitive fields in your money data are encrypted field-by-field in our database under a key unique to your account, wrapped by AWS Key Management Service. Other budget fields are protected by database, access-control, and infrastructure security controls. All traffic runs over TLS, sign-in credentials are held in the iOS keychain, and access to production systems is limited to those who need it. No system is perfectly secure, but this is the standard we hold.

7. AI Processing & Personalized Insights

Ahead asks for permission before sending voice, typed requests, statements, budget details, or relevant saved budget and transaction history to AI services. If you allow it, Ahead can use this information to fulfill your requests and give you personalized insights. Only the content needed goes to OpenRouter, which routes it to providers running OpenAI and Google models. These providers include OpenAI, Google, Microsoft Azure, and Amazon Web Services. The provider used can vary with the model and availability.

Provider handling, including retention and any use for model improvement, follows the applicable service terms; Ahead does not promise zero retention by these services. See OpenRouter’s privacy policy and its provider data policies for details.

New AI diagnostics keep account, request, and job identifiers alongside model-usage, cost, and latency information. They do not include prompts, completions, transcripts, or generated events. Turning AI features off stops future requests and prevents a late result from changing your budget, but it cannot recall a request already sent. Manual features remain available, and Shape can use its existing calculation without AI.

8. Payments

New memberships are purchased through Apple’s App Store. Apple handles your payment details, while RevenueCat sends Ahead the product and entitlement status needed to unlock membership. Ahead no longer offers website checkout. Stripe remains a processor only for the limited records and administrative work needed to finish earlier website subscriptions, cancellations, and affected refunds.

9. Who We Share Data With

We share only what each provider needs to do its job, and only with these categories of processor:

  • Amazon Web Services — hosting, database, key management, and model processing when selected by OpenRouter after you allow AI features.
  • OpenRouter — routing AI requests after you allow AI features, as described in §7.
  • OpenAI and Microsoft Azure — model processing when selected by OpenRouter after you allow AI features, as described in §7.
  • Google — optional Google sign-in, merchant icons for recognized merchants, and model processing when selected by OpenRouter after you allow AI features.
  • Apple and RevenueCat — App Store distribution, purchase processing, subscription status, Sign in with Apple, and push delivery.
  • Stripe — administration and required records for earlier website subscriptions during the launch transition.
  • Resend — password-reset and support email delivery, including the information and screenshots you choose to send in a bug report.
  • PostHog — product analytics and crash diagnostics.
  • Langfuse — AI model usage, cost, latency, and operational identifiers. New diagnostics exclude prompts, completions, transcripts, and generated events.
  • Cloudflare — website delivery and secure forwarding of waitlist requests to AWS.

We may also disclose data where the law requires it, or to a successor if the business is ever sold — in which case this policy travels with it.

10. Where Your Data Lives

Ahead stores account, saved budget, and waitlist data on servers in the United States. AI requests use the providers described in §7; those requests are not restricted to a single processing region. If you use Ahead from outside the US, your stored account data is transferred to the US. We rely on standard contractual clauses with our providers where required.

11. Retention & Deletion

We keep your account and saved budget data while your account exists. New voice clips are processed from request memory and are not written to Ahead’s server storage. Encrypted statement-import results that have finished processing but have not been saved expire 24 hours after processing completes. Expired reviews cannot be saved. Scheduled cleanup removes their encrypted results; a server outage can delay that cleanup until the service restarts. Saving an import keeps the resulting budget entries, not the temporary review.

You can delete your account at any time from Settings → Delete Account inside the app; that erases the account, budget, device, and stored app data attached to it. Email us from your account address if you cannot reach the app and we will help. Deleting Ahead does not cancel an Apple subscription.

Limited records remain where they serve a separate purpose: a keyed, one-way identity digest preserves the original deadline of an existing Ahead-provided trial if the account is recreated; earlier billing records may be retained for transition and legal obligations; operational diagnostics may remain for troubleshooting and security; and backup copies may remain until their retention period ends. The identity digest is not a copy of your budget and is not used for advertising.

12. Your Rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, restrict, or port your personal data, to object to processing, and to withdraw consent. California residents have the rights to know, delete, correct, and opt out of sale or sharing — and as noted in §5, we do neither. Exercise any of these by emailing support@aheadfinancials.com; we will not treat you differently for asking.

13. Children

Ahead is intended for people 16 and older. If you are under the age of majority where you live, use requires the permission described in our Terms & Conditions. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under 16. If you believe a child has given us data, email us and we will delete it.

14. Changes to This Policy

If we make a material change we will update the date at the top of this page and, where the change is significant, tell you by email or in the app.

15. Contact Us

Ahead Financials — email support@aheadfinancials.com and we’ll respond within a few business days. You can also reach us through our support page.