Effective date: 4 September 2026
Last updated: 11 September 2026
This policy covers the Idahome Artisans Field Android app
(com.idahomeartisans.field) and the company server it talks to. Both are
operated by Idahome Artisans Construction LLC, a finish-carpentry and
cabinetry business in Boise, Idaho.
Who this is for
The app is an internal work tool. It is not sold, it is not on the public Play
Store, and it is not available to anyone outside the business — it is
distributed only through Google Play internal testing to a named list of the
company’s own people.
You cannot create an account in the app. Accounts exist because you work
here; the owner creates them. If you are reading this and you do not work for
Idahome Artisans, this app is not for you and there is nothing here about you.
In short
- The app records where the work vehicle goes, so the business can keep the
mileage log the IRS requires. That is the only reason it wants location. - Everything it collects goes to the company’s own server. The one exception is
time entries, which also go to Intuit’s QuickBooks Time, because that is where
payroll and job costing already live. - There is no advertising, no analytics, no tracking SDK, no crash reporter, and
nothing is sold to anybody. - The app on your phone talks to the company’s own server, to Intuit’s
QuickBooks Time API, and to Google Maps — Google Maps draws the map your drive
is shown on, so it receives the part of the world that map is displaying. The
company server also talks to Intuit, and sends two kinds of position to
OpenStreetMap, the United States Census Bureau and Google: job site street
addresses, to look up the coordinates for a map pin, and the place a drive
started and the place it ended, to turn into a name. The route between those
two places is never sent to anyone.
How automatic drive detection works
Google Play services on your phone tells the app when the phone has got into a
vehicle. At that point — and only at that point — the app turns on the GPS,
records the trip, and turns the GPS off again a few minutes after you stop
moving. There is no start or stop button, because the drives that matter for
a tax log are the ones nobody remembers to press a button for: a run to the
supply house, a second trip back for a tool.
Between drives nothing samples your position. The only thing running is the
motion check described below, and that never records where you are.
What the app collects, and why
| What | When | Why | Where it goes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your name and email address | When your account is set up | To identify who a shift, a drive or a to-do belongs to | Company server. Your user identifier also goes to Intuit with your time entries |
| Your phone’s model name (e.g. “SM-S938U”) | Once, when the phone is paired to your account | So the owner can tell one phone from another when something goes wrong | Company server only |
| Precise location, while you are using the app | When you clock in, set a job’s location, or add a job or customer | To match you to the nearest job site and to put a pin on a job | Matching happens on the phone. The fix itself is sent to the company server when you set a job location or create a job or customer |
| Precise location, while the app is closed | Only while a drive is being recorded | To record the start, the end, the distance and the route of each business drive for the mileage log | Company server only |
| A photograph of a receipt, and what you type about it | Only when you photograph one | So the expense reaches the company’s books | Company server, and on to Intuit QuickBooks Online |
| Physical activity / motion | Continuously in the background, including while parked | To know when a drive has started, so the GPS is not on all day | Stays on the phone. It is never sent anywhere. |
| Time entries and notes | When you clock in, out, split a shift, or correct one | Payroll, job costing and invoicing | Company server and Intuit QuickBooks Time |
| To-do items and job/schedule data you enter | When you use those screens | To run the work | Company server only |
Background location, specifically
When automatic drive detection is switched on and you have granted Android’s
“Allow all the time” location permission, the app records location while
it is closed and while the screen is off, for the length of a drive. What it
keeps for each drive is:
- the time it started and the time it ended;
- the position it started from and the position it ended at;
- the distance travelled;
- the route — a sampled trail of positions along the way, roughly one every
four seconds.
The route is kept because it is what makes a mileage number checkable: a
distance with no path behind it is a number nobody can verify, including you.
This is optional. Decline it and the app still works — you will just only get
the drives taken with the app open, and you will have to add the rest by hand.
You can turn it off at any time from the app’s Tracking screen, or revoke the
permission entirely in Android’s Settings, and the app will stop recording
drives.
Your drive is drawn on a Google map. The route line itself comes from the
app’s own recorded positions; the map underneath it is supplied by Google Maps, which
means Google receives the part of the world the map is showing in order to send back the
map of it.
Two positions from each drive — where it started and where it ended — are sent to
Google to turn into a place name or a street address, so the log reads “Stinker” or
“5109 Bluestem Way” instead of a pair of coordinates. The rest of the route is never
sent to anyone. The sampled trail of positions along the way stays on the company
server and is used only to draw the line and measure the distance.
The one thing that does go to a mapping service is a job site’s street
address. The company server sends it to OpenStreetMap, to the United States
Census Bureau and to Google so the job can get a map pin, and re-sends it about
once a week so that a corrected address reaches the pin. Asking three services is
deliberate: a pin is only moved when two of them independently agree, which is
what stops a bad match putting a job site on the wrong street. Each request
carries the property address and nothing else — no name, no account, no device
identifier and no position. It is a property address the business already holds —
it is never anybody’s whereabouts.
The same services are also asked, once, to name the start and end point of a
drive when no job site is near enough to name it. That request carries a position — the
place the vehicle stopped — and nothing else: no name, no account, no device identifier.
The answer is stored with the drive so the same place is never looked up twice. Where the
company’s own copy of the OpenStreetMap data already knows the place, the name comes from
that copy and nothing is sent anywhere at all.
Physical activity and motion
The app uses Android’s activity-recognition service to tell driving from walking.
This runs in the background, including while the vehicle is parked — that is the
whole point of it, since it is what notices a drive beginning.
This data never leaves the phone. No activity type, confidence score or step
count is transmitted to the company server or to anyone else. It is used on the
device to decide one thing: whether to turn the GPS on.
Who else receives your information
Intuit (QuickBooks Time / QuickBooks Online). Your time entries and the user
identifier attached to them are sent to Intuit, both directly from the phone and
from the company server. This is how hours reach payroll and job costing, and it
is the same thing that happened before the app existed. Intuit’s handling of
that data is governed by Intuit’s own privacy policy.
Your location and your drives are not sent to Intuit — there is no mileage
record in Intuit’s API for them to go into. Receipt photographs you take are sent to
Intuit, by email from the company server, so the expense reaches QuickBooks Online; the
photograph, the amount and any note you typed go with it.
OpenStreetMap, the United States Census Bureau and Google. The company server
sends job site street addresses to these three geocoding services to turn them
into coordinates, and repeats it about once a week so that a corrected address
reaches the pin. Those address requests carry no personal information and no
position of yours. The same three services are also asked to name the place a
drive started and the place it ended, as described further up — that request
carries a position, and nothing else with it. All of this happens on the server,
not on your phone.
Google. Location and activity recognition are provided by Android and Google
Play services running on your own phone. The app is distributed through Google
Play, so Google knows the app is installed on your device. The company server
also sends job site street addresses to Google’s geocoding service, as described
just above. The app draws your drive on a Google map, so Google receives the area being
displayed while you look at it, and the company server sends Google the start and end point
of a drive when it needs a name for them. Google is not sent your name, your account,
your hours, your receipts, or the route between those two endpoints.
Nobody else. No advertisers, no analytics company, no data broker. Your
information is not sold, rented, or traded, and there is no “sharing” for
advertising of any kind.
The company may have to disclose information if the law requires it — a
subpoena, a court order, or a tax authority’s lawful request. Given what this
app holds, the realistic case is a mileage log supporting a deduction on the
company’s own tax return.
What the app does not do
- It does not show ads and contains no advertising code.
- It contains no analytics or crash-reporting SDK, and does not collect
behavioural telemetry about which buttons you press. - It does not collect an advertising ID, the Android ID, a serial number, a MAC
address, your phone number, your contacts, your microphone, or the photo library
on your phone. The app has no camera permission — photographing a receipt hands
the job to your phone’s own camera app, and the app receives only the photograph
you took. - It does not send you marketing. There is nothing to opt out of.
- It does not track you while you are not working, except in this specific
sense: automatic drive detection does not know whether a drive is business or
personal until you say so. A drive taken on a Sunday will be recorded, and
you classify it as personal. Personal drives stay in the log as personal, and
the owner can see them in the same list as everything else. If that matters to
you, switch the mode to “Only while I am on the clock”, or off.
How it is protected
Everything the app sends travels over HTTPS. The app is built so that plain,
unencrypted connections fail rather than fall back.
Access to the company server and its database is limited to the owner. The
server is shared hosting provided by Namecheap, so — as with any hosting
provider — Namecheap’s technical support staff are able to reach the account’s
files and database. Nobody else has access.
No system is perfectly secure, and this policy does not promise one.
How long it is kept
Records in this system are voided or retired, not deleted. When you remove a
drive, a shift or a to-do, it stops appearing in the app and stops counting for
anything, but the row remains in the company database marked as voided. That is
deliberate: hours and mileage are financial records, and silently vanishing rows
are how money and deductions go missing.
Time and mileage records are kept for four years, which is the period the IRS
requires employment tax records to be kept. Before that point they will not be
deleted, even on request, because the business is required to keep them. After
it, they are deleted on request — by hand, since there are two of us and there is
no automatic purge.
Seeing, correcting and deleting your information
Most of it you can already reach in the app: your drives, your hours, your
to-dos. You can correct a shift, reclassify a drive, or reject a drive you never
took, and the correction is recorded.
For anything else — a copy of everything held about you, a correction you cannot
make in the app, or deletion — ask the owner directly using the contact
details below. There is no automated deletion button; requests are handled by
hand. You will get an answer within 30 days.
Two honest limits:
- Deleting your account does not remove hours already sent to Intuit’s
QuickBooks Time. Those are payroll records and live in Intuit’s system, under
Intuit’s controls. - Financial records the business is legally required to keep will not be deleted
on request while that obligation lasts.
Children
This app is for employees of Idahome Artisans doing their jobs. It is not
directed to children, it is not available to the public, and no account is
created for anyone under 18.
Changes to this policy
If this policy changes in a way that affects what is collected or where it goes,
everyone using the app will be told directly — there are two of us, so this is a
conversation, not a notice. The date at the top is updated whenever the text
changes.
Contact
Idahome Artisans Construction LLC
Boise, Idaho, USA
Email: info@idahomeartisans.com
Web: https://idahomeartisans.com