Privacy policy
Last updated 10 November 2026
BooksGURU (booksguru.net) is online accounting software for UK small businesses. This page explains what personal information BooksGURU handles, why, and what you can do about it.
Who we are
BooksGURU is run by Aster IT Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 17491204), registered with the Information Commissioner's Office (registration number C2051752). You can contact us about anything on this page at hello@booksguru.net.
Some businesses use BooksGURU under another name through one of our resellers, such as their accountant or IT provider. In that case the reseller is your first point of contact.
Two kinds of information
Information about you as a user. Your name, email address and how you use BooksGURU. Aster IT Ltd is the data controller for this.
The business records you keep in BooksGURU. Your invoices, bills, contacts, payments, journals and reports, which include details of your own customers, suppliers, directors, partners and staff. Your business is the data controller for these records, and we process them only on your instructions, to provide BooksGURU. We don't use them for anything else.
What we collect and why
Your account
Your name, email address, password (stored only as a secure hash), the organisations you can open and your role in each. We use these to give you access, keep your account secure and send you messages about your account.
Your business records
Everything you or the people you invite enter: contacts and their email and postal addresses, invoices, quotes, bills, payments, VAT figures, bank details printed on invoices, and the names, roles, shareholdings and profit shares of the people behind your business. We store these so BooksGURU can work, and we keep a log of every change (who, what and when) so your records can be trusted.
Emails you send through BooksGURU
When you email an invoice, quote, reminder or statement, we send it on your behalf and keep a record of who it went to, when, and whether it was sent.
Online payments
If you connect your own Stripe or GoCardless account, your customers pay you through them. We never see or store card or bank details; we receive a confirmation of each payment so the invoice can be marked paid. The keys for those accounts are stored encrypted.
Early access list
If you join the early access list we keep your email address, business name and type of business, and the internet address the form was sent from (to stop abuse). We use them only to contact you about BooksGURU. Ask us and we will remove you.
Support
If you use the live chat, we keep the conversation so we can help you.
Cookies
We use a small number of cookies that are needed for the site to work: one keeps you signed in and protects forms against forgery. The live chat, if you open it, sets its own cookie to keep your conversation together. We don't use advertising or tracking cookies.
Who we share it with
We don't sell personal information. We use a few providers to run BooksGURU, and they only process it on our behalf:
- Our own servers in the UK, which host the service and its database.
- Brevo, our email delivery provider, which sends account emails and the documents you email to your customers.
- Stripe and GoCardless, only when you connect your own account, as described above.
- HMRC recognised bridging software, only when you choose to download your figures and file them through it.
We may also share information if the law requires it, or to protect our users, our service or others from fraud or harm.
How long we keep it
We keep your account and records while your account is open. Businesses must usually keep accounting records for at least six years, so please make sure you have a copy before you close your account. When you close it, or ask us to delete it, we delete your records and personal information within 30 days, apart from anything we must keep by law. Early access details are deleted when you ask, or once you have an account.
Your rights
Under UK data protection law you can ask for a copy of your information, ask us to correct or delete it, object to or restrict how we use it, and ask for it in a portable format. Email hello@booksguru.net and we will reply within one month. If your request is about a business's records (for example you are one of its customers), we will pass it to that business, because it controls them. If you are not happy with our answer you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office at ico.org.uk.
Our legal reasons for using your information are: to provide the service you signed up for (contract), to keep it secure and improve it (our legitimate interests), to meet legal duties, and your consent for the early access list, which you can withdraw at any time.
Security
Connections to BooksGURU are encrypted, passwords are hashed, and keys for connected services are stored encrypted. Every change to your records is logged. Access to our systems is limited to the people who need it.
Changes
If we change this policy we will update the date at the top, and tell account owners by email about any significant change.