Terms of use

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are between you and [Company name] (“LinkSync”, “we”, “us”). We are a company registered in England and Wales (number [company number]) with our registered office at [registered address].

Your organisation (your employer, the agency that placed you, or the organisation that gave you access) has its own contract with us, called the Customer Agreement. These terms do not change that contract, and that contract does not take away anything we promise you here.

Your organisation’s own policies also apply when you use LinkSync at work. Anything to do with your job, such as your rota, pay, conduct or discipline, is between you and your organisation. If its policies say something different about your job, they come first.

By using LinkSync you agree to these terms and to our Acceptable Use Policy. If you don’t agree, don’t use LinkSync, and talk to your organisation about other arrangements.

2. Words we use

App

The LinkSync app for phones.

Web admin

The LinkSync website that managers and other authorised people use in a browser.

GeoSync

The small device fixed at a place you visit that you tap with your phone to clock in and out.

Visit

The time between clocking in and clocking out. Your organisation may call it something else, such as a call, a shift or a check.

Visit record

The evidence LinkSync keeps about a visit: who, where, when, and what the checks found.

Registered phone

The one phone you have registered with LinkSync.

Your organisation

Each organisation that has invited you to LinkSync. If you work for more than one, each is “your organisation” for its own visits.

3. Getting access

• You can only use LinkSync if an organisation that uses it invites you. We don’t accept sign-ups from the public.
• LinkSync is free for you. Your organisation pays for it. Your organisation should not charge you for using it.
• You must be old enough to work in your role, and at least [16] years old.
• Your organisation decides what you can see and do in LinkSync, by giving you a role. If you think your role is wrong, ask your manager.
• If you work for more than one organisation that uses LinkSync, you keep one account and one registered phone. Each organisation only sees its own visits.

4. Your account and signing in

• You sign in with your email address and a one-time code we send to it. Keep your email account secure, because anyone who can read your email could try to sign in as you.
• Never share a sign-in code. LinkSync staff will never ask you for one.
• If you use the web admin, you must set up the extra sign-in step it asks for, and keep it to yourself.
• Keep your name and email up to date with your organisation.
• Tell your manager straight away if you think someone else has used your account. You can also tell us at security@linksync.co.uk.

5. Your registered phone

Registering

• You register one phone. That one phone is used for every organisation you work for. One phone can only hold one person’s LinkSync account.
• It can be a work phone, or your own phone if you and your organisation agree. If you use your own phone, LinkSync only collects what our privacy notice describes. It cannot see anything else on your phone.
• When you register, the app creates a security key that stays on your phone and cannot be copied off it. It only works when you unlock your phone with your own passcode, face or fingerprint.
• Your phone’s lock must be yours alone. Don’t add anyone else’s face or fingerprint, or share your passcode.
• Your phone needs to be one of our supported phones, with an up-to-date version of its operating system and of the app. It must not be jailbroken, rooted or otherwise modified to remove its built-in protections. The app checks this when you register and each time you tap.

Changing or losing your phone

• New phone, reset or reinstall: ask for a phone change in the app. Your old phone stops working for LinkSync straight away. Your manager approves the change, then you register the new phone.
• Lost or stolen phone: tell your manager the same day, using a colleague’s phone if you need to, so nobody else can use yours to clock in. Never clock in on someone else’s phone.
• While you are waiting for a new phone to be approved, you won’t be able to clock in. Visits you couldn’t clock show as missed, and your manager deals with them under your organisation’s own process.

If you can’t use a smartphone

Tell your manager. Your organisation is responsible for agreeing a reasonable alternative with you, such as providing a work phone.

6. Clocking in and out

• To clock in, hold your registered phone to the GeoSync. To clock out, do it again. You never type or choose anything about a visit.
• If your organisation uses face checks, the app asks for a short live selfie before you tap, to confirm it is really you. If the check can’t confirm you after a few tries, the app asks you to speak to your manager.
• While you are clocked in, the app records where your phone is about once a minute. It stops when you clock out. Always clock out at the end of a visit. Our privacy notice explains this in full.
• LinkSync checks each visit automatically. A visit that doesn’t pass every check is flagged for a manager to look at. A flag is not a finding that you did anything wrong.
• Visit records can’t be edited by anyone, including you, your manager or us. That is what makes them trustworthy evidence, for you as well as for your organisation.
• If a GeoSync is missing, damaged or won’t respond, or you can’t get in, tell your manager. You can’t record the visit another way in the app.
• Never delay emergency help to clock in. People’s safety comes first.

7. GeoSyncs

• GeoSyncs are supplied and approved by LinkSync. They only work once we have approved where they are fitted.
• If your role includes fitting GeoSyncs, only fit one where the people who live there have agreed (or a lawful decision has been made for them), follow the steps the app shows, and don’t photograph people or private documents.
• Don’t move, remove, cover, copy or tamper with a GeoSync. If one is damaged, missing or has moved, tell your manager the same day.

8. If you manage others

If your role lets you use the web admin, you also agree to:

• use LinkSync only for your organisation’s work, and only for the people and places you are responsible for;
• look at personal information only when your work needs it. Every look is logged;
• review flagged visits fairly: look at the evidence, talk to the person, and never treat a flag on its own as proof of wrongdoing;
• follow your organisation’s policies before taking any action that affects someone’s pay or conduct;
• give other people only the access their job needs, and remove it when they no longer need it;
• keep any information you export or download secure, use it only for its purpose, and delete it when you no longer need it;
• approve phone changes and record agreement to GeoSyncs only when you are satisfied they are genuine and correct;
• never approve something about yourself. LinkSync prevents this, but don’t try to get round it.

If you have read-only guest access, for example as a commissioner or auditor, use it only for the purpose it was given for, and don’t share what you see except as your role allows.

9. What you must not do

The full list is in our Acceptable Use Policy. In particular, you must not:

• let anyone else use your account or registered phone for LinkSync, or unlock it for them;
• clock in or out for someone else, or ask anyone to do it for you;
• record, or try to record, a visit that didn’t happen or didn’t last as long as recorded;
• use apps, settings or devices that fake your location, pretend to be a GeoSync, relay a GeoSync from somewhere else, or interfere with LinkSync in any other way;
• move, remove, cover, copy or tamper with a GeoSync;
• try to get into parts of LinkSync, or information, you are not meant to see;
• copy, take apart or reverse-engineer the app, except where the law allows it, or as our responsible disclosure rules allow;
• use LinkSync to harass, monitor or discriminate against anyone.

Faking a visit can put people at risk, and your organisation may treat it as serious misconduct or fraud.

10. Your information

Our privacy notice explains what LinkSync records, when, who sees it, how long it is kept and your rights. Please read it, especially the parts about your location while clocked in and face checks.

Your organisation is in charge of your visit records. We run LinkSync for it. We are in charge of your sign-in details and your registered phone. Our cookies notice explains what LinkSync keeps on your device.

11. Availability and changes to the service

• We work hard to keep LinkSync running and secure, but we can’t promise it will always be available or free from faults. It may be unavailable during maintenance, which we try to do at quiet times, or because of problems outside our control, such as phone network or internet outages.
• If there’s no signal, the app stores your tap securely and sends it when you are back online. These visits are marked as recorded offline and may need a manager to look at them.
• If you can’t clock in for any reason, tell your manager. Your organisation decides what to do about the visit.
• We improve LinkSync regularly. Sometimes this means changing, adding or removing features. If a change removes something you rely on, we will tell your organisation in advance.
• You may need to update the app to keep using it, for example to fix a security problem.

12. Who owns what

• We own LinkSync: the app, the web admin, the GeoSync design, our name and logo, and everything else we provide, or we have permission to use them. These terms give you permission to use LinkSync for your organisation’s work while you have access. They don’t give you any other rights in it.
• Visit records and other information about your organisation’s work belong to your organisation, as the Customer Agreement sets out.
• If you send us suggestions or feedback, we may use them to improve LinkSync without paying you. We won’t name you without asking.

13. Suspending or ending your access

By you

You can stop using LinkSync at any time by telling your organisation. It may then need to agree another way for you to record your work. Your visit records stay with your organisation for as long as its records policy says, because they are also records of work done for other people.

By your organisation

Your access ends, for that organisation, when it removes you or stops using LinkSync. Your access to any other organisation is not affected.

By us

We may suspend your access, or block your registered phone, if we reasonably believe:

• your account or phone is being used by someone else, or has been lost or compromised;
• you have seriously or repeatedly broken these terms or the Acceptable Use Policy;
• it is needed to protect the people at the places your organisation visits, other users, or LinkSync; or
• the law requires it.

We will act proportionately. Where it is safe and lawful, we will tell you and your organisation why, and you can ask us to look again by emailing hello@linksync.co.uk. If we close your account entirely, your organisation keeps its visit records.

14. Our responsibility to you

• LinkSync is provided free to you so that your organisation can record and prove visits. Your relationship about your job, including pay, hours and discipline, is with your organisation, not with us. We are not responsible for decisions your organisation makes using LinkSync.
• We are responsible for loss or damage you suffer that is a foreseeable result of us breaking these terms or failing to use reasonable care and skill. Loss or damage is foreseeable if it was obvious it would happen, or if both of us knew it might happen when you started using LinkSync.
• We are not responsible for loss or damage that was not foreseeable, that was caused by something outside our reasonable control, or that you could have avoided by following these terms, such as reporting a lost phone.
• The app only uses your phone in the ways our privacy notice describes. If faulty content we provide damages your phone or other digital content, and it was because we didn’t use reasonable care and skill, we will either repair the damage or pay you fair compensation.
• Except as set out above, our total liability to you for anything arising from your use of LinkSync is limited to [amount]. [Solicitor to confirm whether a cap is appropriate for a free, work-provided service, and the amount.]

15. App stores

You download the app from an app store. These terms are between you and us, not the app store. The app store is not responsible for the app, its content, support or maintenance, or any claim about it, and the app store’s own terms also apply to your use of the store. The app store and its group companies may enforce these terms against you as a third party where the store’s rules require it. [Solicitor to confirm the minimum terms each app store requires, which may need the store to be named.]

16. If something goes wrong

• About a visit, your pay or your job: talk to your manager, and use your organisation’s grievance or complaints process.
• About your information: see your rights in our privacy notice.
• About LinkSync itself: email hello@linksync.co.uk. We will acknowledge your complaint within [5] working days and aim to resolve it within [20] working days. If we can’t, we will tell you why and when to expect an answer.

17. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms, for example when the law or LinkSync changes. The date at the top shows the latest version. If a change matters to you, we will tell you in the app or by email at least [30] days before it takes effect, unless we must make it sooner for legal or security reasons. If you don’t agree to a change, stop using LinkSync and tell your organisation. Earlier versions are available on request.

18. Other legal terms

• We may transfer our rights and duties under these terms to another organisation, for example if our business is sold. We will make sure your rights are not reduced. You can’t transfer your account or these terms to anyone else.
• Except for the app stores in section 15, nobody else has any right to enforce these terms.
• If a court decides part of these terms can’t be enforced, the rest still applies.
• If we don’t enforce something straight away, we can still enforce it later.
• These terms, the Acceptable Use Policy and the privacy notice are the whole agreement between you and us about your use of LinkSync.

19. The law and the courts

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. Any dispute will be dealt with by the courts of England and Wales. If you live in Scotland or Northern Ireland and are using LinkSync as a consumer, you can also bring proceedings in your local courts.

Before going to court, please contact us so we can try to sort things out.

20. Contact us

Questions about these terms: hello@linksync.co.uk
Questions about your information: privacy@linksync.co.uk
A security problem: security@linksync.co.uk

[Company name], [registered address].