Privacy Policy

1. Who we are

Pearstop (“Pearstop,” “we,” “us,” “our”) provides software and services that clean, extract, and classify procurement and asset data. We are based at Dogpatch Labs, CHQ Building, Custom House Quay, D01 Y6H7 Dublin, Ireland, and we are the data controller for the personal data described in this policy.

We operate under the laws of Ireland and the European Union, including the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). This policy is written to meet those requirements and applies to every visitor, regardless of where you access the site from. Where we process personal information of South African individuals or companies, we also comply with the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). In this policy, "personal data" includes "personal information" as defined in POPIA, which also covers information about companies.

2. What we collect

We collect personal data only when you choose to give it to us:

• Contact form: your name, email address, company, and the content of your message.
• Newsletter sign-up: your email address and, if provided, your name.
• Sample classification requests: your name, email address, company name, an approximate spend range, a free-text description of what you're hoping to achieve, and any invoice files or line items you choose to upload.
• Case study downloads: your name, email address, and company.
• Site usage: aggregate, cookie-free statistics on how the site is used (pages viewed, general location, device type), which can’t identify you. If you accept analytics cookies, we also collect more detailed usage data through Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity – see section 8.

3. Why we collect it

We only process personal data where we have a valid legal basis to do so:

• To respond to your enquiry or prepare a demo – legitimate interest, or performance of a contract you've asked us to prepare.
• To classify a sample you send us – legitimate interest in delivering the service you requested, or your consent.
• To send you the newsletter or case studies – your consent, which you can withdraw at any time.
• To understand and improve the site – our legitimate interest in running it well, for cookie-free statistics, and your consent, for Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity.

4. Who we share it with

We do not sell your personal data, ever. We share it only with the following categories of service provider, and only so far as needed to run the site and deliver what you asked for:

• Hosting and infrastructure providers that run the website and store any files you upload.
• Email and workflow tools we use to route enquiries to the right person on our team.
• The AI/ML systems we use to classify submitted invoice data, run on EU-hosted infrastructure.
• Google and Microsoft, as analytics providers – only if you accept analytics cookies (see section 8).

Apart from the analytics data described in section 8, all data is stored and processed on servers in the European Union.

Each of these providers is bound by contract to protect your data and use it only for the purpose we specify.

5. How long we keep it

• Sample invoice files and the data submitted alongside them: deleted automatically after 90 days, or sooner if you ask us to, unless you ask us in writing to keep them for an ongoing engagement.
• Contact form and newsletter data: kept until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete it, or for as long as we have a legitimate reason to stay in touch, whichever is shorter.
• Cookie-free analytics: kept only in aggregated form that cannot be used to identify you.
• Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity data: deleted automatically by those providers after no more than 14 months.

6. How we protect it

We handle every piece of data you give us securely: encrypted in transit, access limited to the people who need it to do their job, and stored with providers that meet recognised security standards. No system is perfectly secure, but we treat your data the way we'd want our own treated.

7. Your rights

Under GDPR and POPIA, you have the right to:

• Ask what data we hold about you and get a copy of it (access).
• Correct anything that's wrong (rectification).
• Ask us to delete your data at any time (erasure) – email us and we'll handle it promptly.
• Ask us to restrict, or object to, how we use your data.
• Move your data to another provider (portability).
• Withdraw consent at any point, with no effect on anything we did before you withdrew it.
• Lodge a complaint with the Irish Data Protection Commission (dataprotection.ie) or your local supervisory authority. If you are in South Africa, you can also lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (inforegulator.org.za).

To exercise any of these rights, email inquiries@pearstop.com. We'll respond within a reasonable time and, in any case, within the timeframes GDPR requires.

8. Cookies and analytics

We use three analytics tools to understand how the site is used, so we can improve it:

• Vercel Web Analytics, provided by our hosting provider. It sets no cookies and records only aggregate data: pages viewed, referring site, country and device type. It runs for every visitor.
• Google Analytics 4, provided by Google Ireland Limited. It sets first-party cookies (named _ga and _ga_<ID>) to tell visits apart, and records the pages you view, how you arrived at the site, your approximate location, and your device and browser type. Google Analytics does not log or store IP addresses.
• Microsoft Clarity, provided by Microsoft Ireland Operations Limited. It sets cookies (such as _clck and _clsk) and records how you interact with pages – clicks, scrolling and mouse movement – to produce heatmaps and session replays. Text you type into form fields is masked and not recorded.

Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity load only after you click “Accept” in the cookie banner. If you click “Decline”, or don’t make a choice, they don’t run and set no cookies. You can change your choice at any time with the “Cookie settings” link at the bottom of every page; if you withdraw consent, we delete their cookies from your browser.

Google and Microsoft process this data on our behalf and may transfer it outside the EU, including to the United States. Those transfers are covered by the EU-US Data Privacy Framework and the European Commission’s standard contractual clauses.

We don’t use advertising cookies or remarketing, we don’t use analytics data to identify you, and we never sell it.

9. Children

This site isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect personal data from anyone under 16.

10. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as the business or the law changes. We'll update the date at the top when we do.

11. Contact us

Questions about this policy or your data: inquiries@pearstop.com, or write to us at Dogpatch Labs, CHQ Building, Custom House Quay, D01 Y6H7 Dublin, Ireland.