Privacy & AI

SturdyBooks uses AI for two things: suggesting accounts for bill and expense lines, and reading receipt photos. Both are off unless Sturdy Bid has switched them on for your company, and both only ever suggest — a person reviews and saves every document.

When it’s used

• Only when someone clicks Suggest accounts, or uploads a receipt (or clicks Read with AI) — never in the background on its own.
• Only for lines your categorization rules don’t already answer. Rules are checked first, inside SturdyBooks, and a line a rule answers is never sent.
• Only for companies Sturdy Bid has switched it on for, and only within your company’s monthly AI budget. When the budget’s used up, suggestions come from your rules until next month.

What the AI sees

To suggest an account, for each line:

• the payee’s name (up to 60 characters),
• the line’s description (up to 120 characters),
• the amount and the date;

and, about your company:

• your chart of accounts (account codes and names),
• your categorization rules,
• a short summary of which payees have gone to which accounts before.

To read a receipt: the photo itself. It’s asked only for the store name, the date, the total, tax and tip, the card’s last four digits, and the items bought.

What it never sees

When it suggests accounts, the AI never sees:

• your invoices, or anything else in your books beyond the lines and summaries above;
• addresses, email addresses or phone numbers;
• bank account, routing or full card numbers.

Before a line’s description is sent, SturdyBooks masks anything that looks like an email address, and any number long enough to be a phone, card, account or routing number.

The receipt photo itself is sent, so the AI sees whatever is printed on it. It’s asked only for the fields listed above, and told never to return addresses, phone numbers, people’s names, or full card or account numbers — only the card’s last four digits are kept.

Who runs the AI

The AI runs on DigitalOcean’s hosted AI service — the same cloud provider SturdyBooks runs on.

Your receipt photos

• Receipt photos are stored privately, apart from everything else, and are only ever shown to people signed in to your company — never through a public link.
• Photos are kept with the receipt; SturdyBooks doesn’t delete or overwrite them.
• A photo you upload twice isn’t stored twice — SturdyBooks recognizes it and points you to the one you already have.

Every use is recorded

Each AI request — answered or refused — is logged for your company with what it cost, which is how the monthly budget on the Rules page is kept. See AI suggestions & rules.