Terms of service

1. About these terms

These terms of service ("terms") are an agreement between Cloyd C. Abad, a sole proprietor doing business as Stewardship Website Application Services ("CostBook", "we", "us") and the business that creates a CostBook account ("you"). They cover the CostBook web app, the quote links and PDFs it produces, and this website (together, the "service").

By creating an account, starting a trial or subscribing, you accept these terms on behalf of your business. If you're doing so for a company, you confirm that you have authority to bind it. If you don't agree, don't use the service.

These terms, our privacy policy, our refund policy and Creem's buyer terms for payments make up the whole agreement between us.

2. Who can use CostBook

CostBook is for businesses and professionals, not for personal or household use. To use it you must:

• be at least 18 years old and able to enter into a binding contract;
• use it for your business or trade;
• not be located in a country subject to a comprehensive embargo, or named on a government list of sanctioned or restricted parties (such as those kept by the US, the UN, Canada or the Philippines).

3. Your account and your team

The person who creates a business in CostBook is its owner. The owner can invite others as admins, members or viewers. Owners, admins and members can build and change quotes ("editors"). Viewers can see everything, costs included, but can't change anything.

You're responsible for everyone you invite and for what they do in your account. Give each person their own login. Don't share passwords, and keep sign-in details secure. Tell us straight away at cloyd.abad@costbook.app if you think someone has got into your account without permission.

The Base plan includes up to 3 editors and the Pro plan has no limit. Viewers are free on both. You can run more than one business from one login; each business has its own subscription.

Give us accurate details when you sign up, and keep them up to date.

4. Free trial

Each new business gets a 14-day free trial with every Pro feature switched on. No payment details are needed to start, and nothing is charged when the trial ends.

When the trial ends without a subscription, your business becomes read-only: you can still sign in, see everything and download it, but you can't make changes, and your customers can view quotes but not accept them. Subscribe at any time to pick up where you left off.

A business gets one trial. Adding another business to the same login does not start a new one.

5. Plans, billing and Creem

Creem is the merchant of record for all our orders, and the seller of every CostBook subscription. Creem is run by Armitage Labs OÜ, a company in Estonia. Creem handles checkout, payment, invoices, sales tax and VAT, and refunds, and its name appears on your card statement. When you subscribe, you buy from Creem under its buyer terms, and you use CostBook under these terms. For payment matters, if the two conflict, Creem's buyer terms apply.

Prices and taxes

Prices are listed on our pricing page in US dollars per business and don't include tax. Creem works out any sales tax, VAT or GST for your location and adds it at checkout.

Renewal

Subscriptions are paid in advance, monthly or yearly, and renew automatically at the end of each period for another period of the same length, until you cancel. By subscribing, you authorize Creem to charge your payment method at each renewal.

Cancelling

You can cancel at any time from your billing settings. Cancelling stops the next renewal. You keep full access until the end of the period you have paid for, and then your business becomes read-only. Apart from the cases in our refund policy, we don't refund the unused part of a period.

Changing plans

You can switch between Base and Pro, or between monthly and yearly, from your billing settings. Any prorated charge or credit is shown before you confirm.

Price changes

We may change our prices. We'll tell you by email at least 30 days before a new price applies to you, and it will only apply from your next renewal after that notice. If you don't want to pay the new price, cancel before that renewal.

Missed payments

If a renewal payment fails, your account keeps working while Creem tries again. If the payment still can't be collected, the subscription ends and your business becomes read-only until you subscribe again.

6. Founding program

The founding program is open to the first 10 businesses we accept. A founding business pays $75 a month for the Base plan with no limit on editors. That price is locked for 12 months from the first paid month, as long as the subscription stays active.

In return, we ask for a couple of short feedback calls a month while you get started. These are a reasonable request, not a contract term we will charge you for missing, but we may end the founding price if you never take part.

The founding price ends if the subscription is cancelled or lapses, or if you switch to a different plan. After 12 months, your subscription moves to the standard price of the plan you're on, with at least 30 days' notice. The founding place belongs to your business and can't be transferred. We won't name you as a customer in public without your written permission.

7. Your data

Everything your business puts into CostBook, including your price book, parts lists, projects, quotes, client details, logo and attached files ("your content"), belongs to you.

You give us permission to store, copy, process and display your content only as needed to run the service for you: for example, to calculate your quotes, show them to your team, and send them to the people you choose. We don't sell your content, show it to other businesses, use it for advertising, or use it to train AI models. We don't look at it except to provide support you ask for, to keep the service secure, or when the law requires us to.

You're responsible for your content, and you confirm you have the right to use it. In particular, if a supplier's price list or a customer's drawings are covered by a confidentiality agreement, make sure that agreement allows you to store them in a service like CostBook.

Your content will often include personal information about your own customers, such as names, emails and phone numbers. For that information you decide what is collected and why, and we handle it on your behalf as described in our privacy policy. You're responsible for having a lawful basis to store it and to send quotes to those people. If you need a data processing agreement, email cloyd.abad@costbook.app.

8. Downloading your data, and after you cancel

You can download your price book and project estimates as spreadsheets (CSV), and every quote as a PDF, at any time. Pro also offers exports formatted for QuickBooks Online.

If you cancel, or your trial ends without a subscription, we don't delete anything. You can still sign in, see all of it and download it. Before we ever delete a cancelled or expired business's data on our own initiative, we'll email the owner at least 60 days ahead.

The owner can ask us to delete the business and its data at any time by emailing cloyd.abad@costbook.app. The privacy policy explains what's kept, for how long, and why.

9. Quotes you send, and online acceptance

You are the seller on every quote you send through CostBook. The prices, scope, taxes, terms and conditions on a quote are yours, and so is the deal you make with your customer. We're not a party to that deal, and we're not your agent or a guarantor of it.

Your customers can accept or decline a quote online by typing their name and email and ticking a box. CostBook records who responded, when, from which IP address and browser, and exactly which version of the quote they responded to. It is not a drawn or certified digital signature. Laws on electronic signatures (such as the US ESIGN Act and state laws, Canadian provincial electronic commerce laws, and the Philippine E-Commerce Act) generally recognize electronic acceptance, but whether it is enough for a particular contract depends on your terms, your customer and where you both are. Deciding whether to rely on it is up to you.

Quote emails are sent from a CostBook address with replies going to your business. Only send quotes to people who expect to hear from you. Don't use CostBook to send unsolicited marketing. To protect deliverability for everyone, we limit how many quote emails can be sent in a day.

Quote links stay open until you switch them off or the quote expires. Anyone who has a link can see that quote, so share it only with the people it is meant for.

10. CostBook helps you quote; you make the call

CostBook works out margins, markups, taxes and totals, flags open quotes when prices in your price book change, checks for missing items, and offers sample tax set-ups, price lists and clause wording. These are aids to your judgment, not professional, financial, tax or legal advice. In particular:

• Results depend on the prices, quantities and settings you enter. Check every quote before you send it.
• Price-change alerts only cover changes to prices in your own price book. CostBook doesn't track market or supplier prices for you.
• Tax set-ups for US states, Canadian provinces and territories and the Philippines are starting points. Rates and rules change; confirm the right treatment for each sale with your accountant or tax authority.
• Sample price lists are illustrations, not real supplier prices. Sample clause wording, such as price-protection clauses, is a starting point and isn't legal advice. Have it checked against your own contracts.

You're responsible for the prices you charge and the taxes on your quotes and invoices. To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for underpricing, lost margin, or tax errors on quotes you send.

11. Acceptable use

Use CostBook lawfully and only for your business. Don't, and don't let anyone else:

• break any law, or infringe anyone's intellectual property, privacy or other rights;
• send spam, or use quotes or quote emails for phishing, fraud or misleading offers;
• upload malware, or anything you have no right to share;
• probe, scan or test the service's security, get around its limits, or access another business's data;
• overload the service, scrape it, or access it by automated means other than features we provide;
• copy, resell, sublicense or rent the service, or reverse engineer it except where the law allows;
• use the service to build a competing product.

12. Controlled technical data and sanctions

CostBook isn't designed for export-controlled technical data. Don't upload drawings, specifications or other technical data controlled under ITAR, the EAR or similar export-control laws. Prices, part numbers, quantities and labor hours are fine; keep controlled files where they already live.

You must not use CostBook in breach of export-control or sanctions laws, or let anyone in an embargoed country, or on a sanctioned or restricted-party list, use it.

13. Our service and support

We work hard to keep CostBook available and your data safe, but we don't promise that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. We may sometimes need to take it offline for maintenance, and we'll try to do that at quiet times.

We improve CostBook continually, so features will change. If we make a change that substantially reduces what your paid plan includes, we'll tell you in advance. You can then cancel and get a refund of the unused part of any period you have paid for.

Support is by email at cloyd.abad@costbook.app.

14. Our intellectual property, and your feedback

We own CostBook: the software, design, sample content and brand. While your subscription or trial is active, you may use the service for your business under these terms. Nothing here transfers any of our rights to you.

PDFs and quote emails may carry a small "Sent with CostBook" note.

If you send us ideas or feedback, including through the founding program, we may use them freely without paying you or owing you anything. Feedback doesn't give us any rights to your content.

15. Suspension and termination

You can stop using CostBook and cancel your subscription at any time.

We may suspend or limit your account, with notice where we reasonably can, if: you seriously or repeatedly break these terms; your use creates a security, legal or fraud risk for us or others; you breach the export-control and sanctions section; or a payment can't be collected. We'll restore access once the problem is resolved.

We may end these terms if you materially break them and don't fix the problem within 30 days of our notice. We may also stop serving your business for any other reason by giving you at least 30 days' notice and refunding the unused part of any period you have paid for. In either case, you'll have at least 30 days to download your data unless the law prevents it.

Sections that by their nature should continue after the agreement ends will continue, including those on your data, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity and disputes.

16. Disclaimers

Except as these terms expressly say, the service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent the law allows, we disclaim all other warranties and conditions, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement.

Some places don't allow certain warranties to be excluded. If that applies to you, those warranties apply only to the minimum extent and for the minimum period the law requires.

17. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows:

• neither of us is liable to the other for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost margin, lost revenue, lost contracts or lost goodwill, even if told they were possible;
• our total liability arising out of or relating to the service or these terms is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid for the service in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim, and (b) US$100.

These limits do not apply to liability that cannot be limited by law, such as liability for fraud, gross negligence or wilful misconduct.

18. Indemnity

You will defend us against, and pay any reasonable costs and damages from, third-party claims arising from: your content; the quotes you send and your dealings with your customers and suppliers; or your breach of the acceptable-use or export-control sections. We will tell you promptly about any such claim and let you control its defence, and you won't settle a claim in a way that admits fault on our part without our consent.

19. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time. If a change is material, we'll email the account owner or show a notice in the app at least 30 days before it takes effect. If you keep using CostBook after that, the new terms apply. If you don't agree, you can cancel before they take effect, and if you have paid in advance, we'll refund the unused part of that period.

The date at the top of this page shows when these terms were last updated.

20. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of the Philippines, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. If a dispute arises, please email us first at cloyd.abad@costbook.app. We'll try in good faith to resolve it within 30 days. If we can't, the dispute will be decided by the proper courts of Dumaguete City, Philippines, and both of us agree to their jurisdiction.

Nothing here takes away rights you have under the law where your business is based that can't be waived by contract. This includes the Civil Code of Québec for businesses in Québec. Creem's buyer terms have their own governing-law rules for payment matters.

21. General

• Notices. We'll send notices to the account owner's email address. You can send notices to us at the email address below.
• Assignment. You may not transfer this agreement without our written consent. We may transfer it to a business that takes over CostBook, and we will tell you if we do.
• Things outside our control. Neither of us is responsible for delays or failures caused by events beyond reasonable control, such as natural disasters, wars, outages of hosting or internet providers, or acts of government.
• Severability and waiver. If part of these terms can't be enforced, the rest still applies. Not enforcing a right straight away doesn't mean we've given it up.
• Relationship. We are independent contractors. These terms create no partnership, agency or employment relationship.
• Language. These terms are written in English. If we provide a translation, the translation governs where the law requires it; otherwise, the English version governs.

22. Contact

Questions about these terms are welcome.

• Operator: Cloyd C. Abad, a sole proprietor doing business as Stewardship Website Application Services
• Address: Dumaguete City, Philippines
• Email: cloyd.abad@costbook.app