Privacy policy

Who we are

Grocery Docket is made by RedDragon Development, based in New Zealand. If anything here doesn't make sense, or you want to ask about your data, email [email protected] — a person reads it and replies.

What the app collects

To run the app, we collect:

• Your email address, to sign you in.
• The receipts you add — the photo or PDF itself, and the line items (store, date, product names, quantities, prices) read off it.
• Shelf prices you choose to record, when you scan a barcode or photograph a price ticket.
• Your shopping list, and the app's own settings — theme, sharing choices, and the like.
• A push token for your device, but only if you turn on price-drop or restock alerts. They're off unless you switch them on.

You don't need an account to try it. Scanning a receipt without signing in creates an anonymous account behind the scenes, so the app has somewhere to put what it reads — nobody has typed anything into it yet. If it sits unused for 30 days without being turned into a real account (by adding your email), it and everything in it is deleted automatically.

How receipts are read

When you add a receipt, the file is sent once to Anthropic's API — a US-based provider — to read the line items off it. Anthropic's API does not use data sent to it that way to train its models.

The original file is then kept alongside your receipt by default, so you can get it back later — a warranty claim, an expense report, or just the paper itself. You can turn this off in Settings. Doing so stops new files being kept; it doesn't delete files already stored — those go only when you delete the receipt, or the image, yourself.

Where your data lives

Grocery Docket runs on our own server in the United States. The database sits with Supabase, hosted in Sydney, Australia — the closest serious option to New Zealand. Supabase also handles sign-in.

Your information is stored and processed outside New Zealand: on our server in the United States, in the database in Australia, and by Anthropic, in the United States, for receipt extraction. Those countries' privacy laws aren't identical to New Zealand's, and we rely on our providers' own contractual protections to keep your information safeguarded to a comparable standard. Using Grocery Docket means your information is handled in those places.

Messages you send us through this website, like a request for early access, go out through Resend, an email delivery service, straight to us. Nothing sent that way is used for anything except replying to you.

What's shared, honestly split three ways

Docket has three separate ways data can leave your account, and they really are separate — turning one on never turns on another.

• Community prices — on by default, opt out in Settings any time. What leaves your account is a price, a store, and a date. Never your name, never your basket, never what else you bought. Nothing is shown to anyone until at least 3 separate people have contributed comparable prices, so a single person's shopping is never exposed on its own. You can also name categories that stay out of the pool entirely — that list is empty until you fill it in.

• Households — off until you join one, by typing an invite code. Other members then see your price sightings with your name attached — that's the point of joining, so it's on by default once you're in. Sharing whole receipts is a separate switch, off unless you turn it on yourself.

• Open Food Facts — only when you tap "contribute" on a scanned barcode. A product's name, brand and size are sent to that public database, attributed to an Open Food Facts account — yours, if you've connected one in Settings. Nothing else about you is sent, and nothing happens unless you choose to.

We never sell your data, to anyone, for anything. There is no advertising in this app.

Payments

Grocery Docket doesn't sell subscriptions yet. When it does, purchases will go through Google Play, or the App Store on iOS — we never see your card details. Purchase and subscription status is processed by RevenueCat, which tells us only whether you're entitled to paid features, not how you paid.

Your data is sensitive, and we treat it that way

A grocery receipt says more than it looks like it does — a pharmacy item, alcohol, how many people are in your house. We treat that as sensitive information even though it looks mundane, and everything above is built around keeping it that way: scoped to your account, never shared without you choosing it, and never sold.

Your controls, all in the app

These live under Settings — nothing here needs an email to us to action:

• Export everything you've added, as a CSV or a JSON file.
• Delete by category — receipts, products and matching history, or shelf prices and your list — or delete everything in one go.
• Turn any of the sharing above off.
• Turn off keeping receipt images. Existing images stay until you delete the receipt they belong to.

Deleting a receipt deletes its line items and its image with it, in the same action.

Your rights

Under the Privacy Act 2020, you can ask us what we hold about you or ask us to correct it — email [email protected] and we'll sort it out, though most of it you can already do yourself in Settings. If you think we've got this wrong, you can complain to the Privacy Commissioner at privacy.org.nz.

Changes

If this policy changes, the update is posted here with a new date at the top. It won't be moved anywhere else, or announced by stealth.