SmartExpense
Privacy Policy
Last updated 31 August 2026
The short version
SmartExpense stores your expense records and receipt photos in a private cloud account that only you can read. Nothing is sold, nothing is shared with other users, and there is no advertising or analytics tracking in this app.
What is stored
Your transactions (merchant, date, amount, GST, ABN, category, job, markup and notes), your jobs, your categories and settings, and the receipt photos you take or choose. Your email address is stored by the sign-in service so the account can exist.
Where it is stored
In Google Firebase, under a project used only for this app. The database and the receipt images are both hosted in Google’s Sydney region (australia-southeast1). Security rules restrict every document and every image to the signed-in account that created it.
Receipt scanning
When you scan a receipt, a reduced-size copy of that one photo is sent to Google’s Gemini API to read the merchant, date, total and GST. Only the image you choose is sent, only at the moment you scan it, and the result is shown to you for checking before it is used. No other data from the app is sent with it.
Crash reports
Firebase Crashlytics records technical details if the app crashes, so the fault can be found and fixed. It is tied to your account id, not to your name or your financial data.
The on-device log
Settings has a diagnostics log that records what the app did. It stays on this phone and is never sent anywhere unless you deliberately share it. It deliberately records what happened rather than what it was about, so it does not contain merchant names or amounts.
Sign-in
You can sign in with an email and password, or with Google. Signing in with Google tells the app your email address and your name; it does not give the app access to your Google account, your contacts or your files.
Your control over the data
Everything can be edited or deleted in the app. Settings › Data management can delete records older than seven years, or erase every transaction and receipt image. Deleting is permanent — there is no backup to restore from, so export a CSV first if there is any doubt.
How long it is kept
Records are kept until you delete them. Australian tax records are generally kept for five years; the app offers pruning at seven as a cautious default. Nothing is deleted automatically.
Who this app is for
SmartExpense is a private app built for a single user, not a public product. It is not intended for use by children, and no account is offered to anyone the operator has not created one for.
Contact
Questions about this policy or the data held: contact the person who set the app up for you.