The terms for using Dowel.

1. About Dowel

Dowel is a budgeting and financial planning tool designed to help individuals and households organize income, expenses, giving, savings, set-aside amounts, recurring entries, transactions, and monthly budget progress.

Dowel is not a bank, financial institution, investment advisor, credit counsellor, accounting firm, tax advisor, or legal advisor.

At this time, Dowel is a manual-first budgeting app. Dowel does not connect directly to your bank account, does not collect your online banking username or password, and does not move money in or out of your bank account.

2. Eligibility

You may use Dowel only if you are legally able to enter into these Terms.

If you are under the age of majority in your province, territory, state, or country of residence, you may use Dowel only with the consent and involvement of a parent or legal guardian.

By using Dowel, you represent that you meet these eligibility requirements.

3. Your account

To use some or all features of Dowel, you may need to create an account.

You agree to provide accurate and complete account information, keep your login credentials secure, not share your account credentials with unauthorized people, notify us if you believe your account has been accessed without permission, and be responsible for all activity that occurs under your account.

We are not responsible for losses caused by your failure to keep your account secure.

4. Your budget information

Dowel relies on information you enter into the app. This may include income, expenses, transactions, savings goals, giving goals, set-aside amounts, recurring schedules, budget categories, household information, and monthly summaries.

You are responsible for the accuracy, completeness, and legality of the information you enter.

Dowel may calculate totals, projections, summaries, progress indicators, and other budgeting information based on your entries. These calculations are provided for convenience and planning purposes only. You should review your own information carefully before making financial decisions.

5. Household sharing

Dowel may allow users to create or join a shared household budget.

If you join or create a household, budget information entered into that household may be visible to other authorized household members. This may include income planning, expenses, transactions, categories, savings, giving, recurring entries, set-aside amounts, monthly summaries, and other household budget information.

You should only share a household with people you trust.

You are responsible for managing who has access to your household. Dowel is not responsible for disputes between household members or for information viewed, used, changed, or shared by authorized household members.

If you leave a household or delete your account, some information you entered may remain part of the household record where needed for shared budget history, legal compliance, security, backup, or technical reasons.

6. No financial advice

Dowel provides budgeting tools and informational features only.

Dowel does not provide financial, investment, legal, tax, accounting, credit, debt, or professional advice. Any numbers, projections, alerts, summaries, charts, labels, recommendations, or progress indicators are for general budgeting and planning purposes only.

You should not rely on Dowel as the sole basis for financial, legal, tax, investment, credit, or household money decisions. You are responsible for reviewing your own financial situation and seeking professional advice where appropriate.

7. No guarantees about outcomes

Dowel may help you organize and understand your budget, but we do not guarantee that using Dowel will improve your financial position, prevent overspending, eliminate debt, increase savings, ensure accurate household budgeting, prevent financial loss, or produce any specific financial outcome.

Your financial results depend on your own circumstances, decisions, discipline, income, expenses, and accuracy of the information you enter.

8. Subscriptions, payments, and billing

Dowel may offer free, paid, trial, promotional, or subscription-based plans.

If you purchase a paid plan, you agree to pay all applicable fees, taxes, and charges presented to you at the time of purchase. Prices, features, billing periods, and plan terms may vary by platform, location, promotion, or subscription option.

If payment is handled through Apple, Google, Stripe, or another third-party payment provider, your purchase may also be governed by that provider's terms, billing rules, cancellation rules, and refund policies.

We do not store full credit card numbers unless explicitly stated. Payment information may be processed by third-party payment providers.

9. Auto-renewals, cancellations, and refunds

If Dowel offers subscriptions, your subscription may renew automatically unless cancelled before the renewal date.

You are responsible for cancelling your subscription through the method required by the platform or payment provider you used to subscribe.

For example, if you subscribe through an app store, you may need to cancel through that app store's account settings.

Unless otherwise required by law or stated at the time of purchase, fees are non-refundable once charged.

Nothing in these Terms limits any cancellation, refund, or consumer protection rights you may have under applicable law.

10. Free trials and promotions

Dowel may offer free trials, discounts, early-access pricing, preview access, or promotional offers.

We may change, limit, withdraw, or end any promotion at any time, unless prohibited by law. Promotional terms may vary and may be subject to additional conditions.

If a trial converts into a paid subscription, we will provide the applicable pricing and billing information before charging you, where required.

11. Acceptable use

You agree not to misuse Dowel.

You must not use Dowel for unlawful, fraudulent, abusive, harmful, or misleading purposes; access or attempt to access another person's account without permission; interfere with the security, performance, availability, or integrity of the Service; attempt to reverse engineer, scrape, copy, decompile, or extract source code except where permitted by law; upload malicious code, viruses, malware, or harmful files; circumvent security or authentication controls; use automated tools to access the Service without our permission; misrepresent your identity or affiliation; use Dowel to harass, abuse, threaten, or harm others; use Dowel in a way that violates another person's privacy or rights; or sell, resell, rent, lease, sublicense, or commercially exploit the Service without our written permission.

We may suspend or terminate access if we believe you have violated these Terms or used Dowel in a way that creates risk for us, other users, or the Service.

12. Your content and licence to operate the Service

You retain ownership of the information you enter into Dowel.

However, by entering information into Dowel, you give us a limited licence to host, store, process, display, transmit, back up, analyze, and use that information as necessary to provide, secure, support, maintain, and improve the Service.

This licence is limited to operating and improving Dowel and does not give us ownership of your budget information.

13. Privacy

Your use of Dowel is also governed by our Privacy Policy.

The Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, disclose, store, and protect personal information.

By using Dowel, you agree that we may handle your information as described in the Privacy Policy.

14. Preview, early-access, and test features

Some Dowel features may be released as preview, early-access, experimental, or test features.

These features may be incomplete, may change, may contain errors, may be removed, and may not work as expected. We may modify or discontinue preview, early-access, experimental, or test features at any time without notice.

Preview, early-access, experimental, or test feature use is provided as is and should not be relied on for critical financial decisions.

15. Third-party services

Dowel may rely on or integrate with third-party services, such as hosting providers, authentication providers, analytics tools, payment processors, email providers, app stores, customer support tools, or other technology providers.

We are not responsible for third-party services, websites, policies, practices, errors, outages, data handling, or terms. Your use of third-party services may be governed by their own terms and privacy policies.

16. App stores

If you download or use Dowel through the Apple App Store, Google Play, or another app marketplace, the marketplace's terms may also apply.

The app marketplace is not responsible for providing support, maintenance, warranties, claims, or services for Dowel, except to the extent required by its own terms or applicable law.

17. Changes to the Service

We may change, update, improve, limit, suspend, remove, or discontinue any part of Dowel at any time.

We may also change features, design, pricing, availability, eligibility, technical requirements, or supported platforms.

We will try to provide reasonable notice of material changes where practical, but we are not required to continue offering any specific feature or version of the Service.

18. Service availability

We aim to keep Dowel available and reliable, but we do not guarantee uninterrupted, error-free, secure, or always-available service.

Dowel may be unavailable due to maintenance, updates, outages, third-party service failures, security issues, internet disruptions, device issues, or events beyond our control.

We are not responsible for losses caused by downtime, data delays, display errors, calculation errors, sync issues, or unavailable features.

19. Intellectual property

Dowel, including its name, logo, design, software, interface, features, text, graphics, branding, code, workflows, and other content, is owned by us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual property laws.

You may use Dowel only as permitted by these Terms.

You may not copy, modify, distribute, reproduce, sell, sublicense, publish, create derivative works from, or exploit any part of Dowel without our written permission.

20. Feedback

If you send us ideas, suggestions, improvements, feature requests, or other feedback, you agree that we may use that feedback without restriction, compensation, or obligation to you.

You are not required to provide feedback, but if you do, we may use it to improve Dowel.

21. Account suspension or termination

You may stop using Dowel at any time.

We may suspend, restrict, or terminate your access to Dowel if you violate these Terms; create security, legal, operational, financial, or reputational risk; your payment fails, where applicable; we are required to do so by law; we discontinue the Service; or we believe your account has been compromised or misused.

Termination may result in loss of access to your account, household, budget information, subscription features, or other Service features.

Some sections of these Terms will continue to apply after termination, including sections about ownership, disclaimers, limitation of liability, indemnity, governing law, and dispute resolution.

22. Account deletion

You may request deletion of your account using the available in-app process, if available, or by contacting us.

Account deletion may be subject to legal, technical, security, backup, billing, dispute-resolution, and legitimate business requirements.

If your account is connected to a shared household, deleting your account may not delete all household records, especially where information is connected to shared budget history or other household members.

23. Disclaimer of warranties

Dowel is provided on an as-is and as-available basis.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, we disclaim all warranties, representations, and conditions of any kind, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, availability, reliability, non-infringement, and security.

We do not warrant that Dowel will meet your needs; Dowel will be uninterrupted, secure, or error-free; budget calculations or projections will always be accurate; data will never be lost, delayed, corrupted, or unavailable; defects will always be corrected; or the Service will be compatible with every device, browser, operating system, or platform.

Some jurisdictions do not allow certain warranty exclusions, so some of the above may not apply to you.

24. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law, Dowel and its owners, directors, officers, employees, contractors, service providers, affiliates, and licensors will not be liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, exemplary, or punitive damages, including lost profits, lost savings, lost data, financial loss, business interruption, loss of goodwill, or reliance damages.

To the maximum extent permitted by law, our total liability for any claim relating to Dowel or these Terms will be limited to the greater of the amount you paid to Dowel for the Service in the three months before the claim arose or CAD $100.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability that cannot legally be limited.

25. Indemnity

You agree to indemnify, defend, and hold harmless Dowel and its owners, directors, officers, employees, contractors, service providers, affiliates, and licensors from any claims, losses, damages, liabilities, costs, and expenses, including reasonable legal fees, arising from or related to your use or misuse of Dowel, your violation of these Terms, your violation of applicable law, your violation of another person's rights, information you enter, share, or submit through Dowel, or household disputes or unauthorized sharing caused by you or your household members.

26. Electronic communications

You agree that we may communicate with you electronically, including by email, in-app notice, website notice, or other electronic methods.

Electronic communications may include account notices, security notices, policy updates, subscription notices, support messages, and other Service-related information.

If you subscribe to marketing emails, you may unsubscribe from marketing messages using the unsubscribe option provided or by contacting us. You may still receive non-marketing messages related to your account or the Service.

27. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time.

If we make material changes, we will take reasonable steps to notify you, such as posting the updated Terms on our website, updating the Last updated date, sending an email, or providing an in-app notice.

Your continued use of Dowel after updated Terms are posted means you accept the updated Terms.

If you do not agree to the updated Terms, you must stop using Dowel.

28. Governing law

These Terms and your use of Dowel are governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada applicable in Ontario, without regard to conflict-of-law rules.

Subject to any rights you may have under applicable consumer protection laws, you agree that disputes will be resolved in the courts located in Ontario, Canada.

29. Dispute resolution

Before starting a legal claim, you agree to contact us first so we can try to resolve the issue informally.

Contact us at support@getdowel.com with a description of the issue, your account email, and the outcome you are requesting.

Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking urgent injunctive or equitable relief where appropriate.

30. Force majeure

We are not responsible for delays, failures, losses, or damages caused by events beyond our reasonable control, including internet failures, power outages, cyberattacks, third-party service failures, labour disruptions, natural disasters, government actions, emergencies, war, terrorism, or other events outside our control.

31. Severability

If any part of these Terms is found to be invalid, illegal, or unenforceable, the remaining parts will continue in full force and effect.

32. No waiver

If we do not enforce a part of these Terms right away, that does not mean we waive our right to enforce it later.

33. Assignment

You may not assign or transfer these Terms or your account without our written permission.

We may assign or transfer these Terms as part of a merger, acquisition, financing, sale of assets, reorganization, or by operation of law.

34. Entire agreement

These Terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any additional terms presented to you for specific features, subscriptions, promotions, or app store purchases, form the entire agreement between you and Dowel regarding the Service.

35. Contact us

If you have questions about these Terms, contact us at:

Company: Dowel Budgeting App Inc.

Operating name: Dowel

Email: support@getdowel.com

Address: 1958 Gough Ave., London, Ontario N5X 0H2

Location: Ontario, Canada