How OarBook keeps your records

This page holds the place of OarBook’s terms until our lawyer’s version is ready, in January 2027. What it says is what OarBook does today.

What you agree to

OarBook keeps your books and every document you upload, encrypted, in a South African data centre, for 7 years, the period the tax authorities can ask for them. They are locked so they can't be changed or deleted in that time. You can download everything whenever you like.

Who keeps them

OarBook is a trading name of Deidre and Co (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2023/811635/07), Regus Century City, The Colosseum, Foyer 3, 1st Floor, Century Way, Century City, Cape Town 7441, South Africa. Your business decides what goes into its books; OarBook keeps them and works on them for you, as your operator under the Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). We use the personal information in your records (your staff, customers and suppliers) only to keep your books and to prepare what you ask for: invoices, returns, payslips and reports. We tell you at once if we have reason to believe anyone got into your records who should not have.

How OarBook handles personal information, and your rights under POPIA: the privacy notice. How to ask for records under PAIA: the PAIA manual.

Where and how

• Your books and documents are kept encrypted in Amazon’s Cape Town data centre (South Africa).
• Every document is locked for 7 years from the day it is kept: OarBook’s own app cannot delete or overwrite it.
• An entry in the books, once posted, is never changed. A mistake is put right with a reversing entry, and both stay.
• Each month a backup of the books is kept for 7 years.
• Only the people you invite can see your company’s books, each as far as their role allows. Every change is logged.
• If your business lets people send slips to OarBook’s WhatsApp number, Meta (WhatsApp) carries those messages to OarBook, under its own terms. OarBook keeps each slip as one of your documents; nobody reads the chats in a WhatsApp app, and OarBook keeps nothing else of them.
• Namibian businesses: there is no data centre in Namibia, so your books are kept in Cape Town and you keep a full copy of your own (Company → Your records → Download everything).

What OarBook never does

OarBook never pays and never files. It prepares payment files and returns; a person in your business pays in the bank and submits to the tax office. Your directors sign your annual financial statements; OarBook gives no audit opinion.

Downloading, and leaving

• You can download everything at any time: the books as spreadsheet files and every document as it was uploaded (Company → Your records → Download everything).
• If you leave, you take that full download first. We then keep your records as a read-only archive until their 7 years end, so you can still show them to the tax office.
• If you would rather we delete them, tell us after you have taken your copy. We close the archive at once and delete each record as soon as its 7-year lock allows.

Versions

• 9 October 2026: this placeholder. Until February 2027 the lock on your documents is in “governance” mode: OarBook’s app cannot lift it, but an administrator of OarBook’s storage holding a special right could. From February 2027 it is in “compliance” mode, which nobody can lift, not even OarBook, and these words will say so.

Questions: hello@oarbook.com