Privacy policy

1. Who we are

Proplo is property management software that reads incoming bills — body corporate levies, municipal accounts and utility invoices — and helps property owners review, reconcile and pay them. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, and what control you have over it.

Proplo is operated by Proplo AI (Pty) Ltd (registration number 2026/280177/07), Unit 323 Greenstone Ridge, Block 39, Johannesburg, South Africa. We are the responsible party for the personal information described here, as that term is used in the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA).

2. Information you give us directly

• Account details — your name, email address, company name and password. Passwords are stored only as a one-way hash and can never be read back.
• Property and tenant records — property addresses, lease terms, tenant names and contact details you enter or upload.
• Banking and payment details — supplier and beneficiary bank accounts, payment references, and the account you pay from.
• Documents you upload — invoices, statements and supporting files.
• Messages you send us — contact form enquiries and support requests.

3. Mailbox access

Bills reach Proplo in one of several ways, all of which you choose and can withdraw. This section describes exactly what we access and what we keep.

3.1 How bills reach us

• Forwarding. You forward a bill, or set your mail provider to forward automatically, to an address we give you. We only ever receive what is forwarded.
• Connecting a mailbox. You may connect a mailbox — Gmail, Yahoo, iCloud, Outlook or any IMAP host — so we can check it for bills on your behalf. You authorise this either by signing in with your provider (OAuth) or by generating an app password, depending on what your provider supports.
• Uploading. You upload a document by hand.

3.2 What we read from a connected mailbox

We read your mailbox only to find bills. Specifically:

• We check the folders you have connected for messages received since we last checked.
• We read message headers only — sender, subject and message identifier — to decide whether a message is from a sender you have registered with us.
• We download the full message and its attachments only for senders you have registered against a property. Mail from anyone else is never downloaded, opened or stored.
• We open your mailbox in read-only mode. We do not mark messages as read, move, alter or delete anything, and we do not send mail from your account.

The one exception is when you explicitly ask us to find a bill for you during setup. Because the point of that request is to discover who sends your bills, it scans message headers from the last 60 days regardless of sender — and then downloads exactly one message, the single best match. It runs only when you click to start it.

3.3 What we keep

From a bill we keep the invoice itself and the details we extract from it — supplier, account reference, amount, due date, line items and a log of how the extraction went. We keep a record that a message was processed, identified by its message identifier, so the same bill is not imported twice.

Where an invoice is locked behind a password we cannot resolve, we retain the original message only until you supply the password and the bill is read, after which the retained copy is deleted. We do not keep copies of mail that is not a bill.

3.4 App passwords and access tokens

Where a provider offers sign-in (OAuth), we use it, because the access it grants is limited to reading mail and you can revoke it from your provider's own security settings at any time. Where a provider does not offer it, an app password is the only option; be aware that an app password generally grants full access to that mailbox, including the ability to send. We use it only as described above.

App passwords and access tokens are encrypted before storage, are never displayed back to you, never included in any report or log, and are deleted when you disconnect the mailbox. Disconnecting in Proplo does not revoke an app password at your provider — you should also delete it there.

4. Automated processing and artificial intelligence

To read a bill we send its contents — the message text and the invoice document — to Anthropic, which provides the artificial intelligence models we use to extract the supplier, account reference, amount and due date. This is processing carried out on our instruction for the sole purpose of reading your bill. Under our agreement with Anthropic, this content is not used to train their models.

Extraction is automated, but it does not make decisions with legal consequences for you on its own. Payments are not released by the extraction: a bill is either approved by you, or matched against rules you configured, and anything uncertain is held for your review.

5. Tenant screening

If you use Proplo to screen a prospective tenant, we collect the identity and financial information needed for those checks and share it with our verification provider, Datanamix, which may include identity verification, an identity photograph, credit reports and affordability assessments.

These checks are run only with the applicant's express, recorded consent, given by the applicant themselves before any check is performed. Applicants may withdraw consent and request their information by contacting us. Screening records are deleted once their retention period ends.

6. Payments

Depending on the payment method you choose, we share the details necessary to make a payment with Investec, Paystack or TradeSafe. We do not store full card numbers; card payments are handled by the payment provider on their own systems.

7. Trying Proplo without an account

If you upload a bill to our public demo without registering, we read it to show you what we extract. We keep a fingerprint of the file, the handful of fields we extracted, and a one-way hash of your IP address so we can detect abuse. We do not keep the document itself, we do not create an account for you, and we do not contact you unless you give us your email address.

8. Why we may process your information

• To provide the service you have asked for, under our agreement with you.
• With your consent, which you give when you connect a mailbox or authorise a screening check, and which you may withdraw.
• To meet legal obligations, including financial record-keeping.
• For our legitimate interests in keeping the service secure, preventing abuse and improving how well it works.

9. Who we share information with

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not share it for advertising. We share it only with the service providers who help us run Proplo, each bound to protect it and to use it only on our instruction:

• Anthropic — reading bills (United States)
• Resend — receiving forwarded mail
• Investec, Paystack, TradeSafe — payments
• Datanamix — tenant screening
• Railway — hosting and infrastructure
• Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Apple — only where you have connected a mailbox with them

Some of these providers are outside South Africa. Where information is transferred across borders we take steps required by POPIA to ensure it remains protected to a comparable standard.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to establish or defend a legal claim.

10. How we protect it

• Traffic between you and Proplo, and between Proplo and your mail provider, is encrypted, and we verify the identity of the servers we connect to.
• Credentials, access tokens and document passwords are encrypted before they are stored.
• Access is scoped to your organisation; users of one organisation cannot see another's data.
• Secrets are excluded from our application logs and from anything shown in the product.

No system is perfectly secure. If a breach affects your personal information we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

11. How long we keep it

We keep your information for as long as you have an account, and after that only as long as we are required to — principally for financial record-keeping. Retained copies of mail held for a locked invoice are deleted as soon as the invoice is read. Tenant screening records are deleted at the end of their retention period. When you disconnect a mailbox, the stored credential is deleted immediately.

You can ask us to delete your account and its data at any time using the contact details below.

12. Your rights

Under POPIA you may ask us to confirm what personal information we hold about you and to provide a copy; to correct or delete information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive or out of date; to stop processing it; and to withdraw a consent you previously gave. You may also object to processing, and you may complain to the Information Regulator.

To exercise any of these, contact our Information Officer below. We will respond within the period the law allows.

Information Regulator (South Africa) — inforegulator.org.za, complaints.IR@justice.gov.za.

13. Children

Proplo is intended for use by adults. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children. If you believe a child has given us information, contact us and we will delete it.

14. Changes to this policy

If we change how we handle personal information we will update this page and change the effective date above. Where a change materially affects you, we will tell you directly.

15. Contact us

Information Officer: Nirvaan

Email: privacy@proplo.co.za

Phone: 083 787 6651

Or use our contact form.