Security and your data
Plain facts about where your books are kept, who can see them, how they are backed up and how you take them out. Where the honest answer is “we do not do that”, this page says so.
Your own address and your own database
Each business works at its own web address, such as yourbusiness.sgworks.in, over an encrypted (HTTPS) connection.
Each account has its own separate database. Your data is not mixed with any other customer’s.
Sign-in and roles
- Every person has their own username and password, with one of three roles: Admin, Accountant or Staff.
- Passwords are stored hashed with scrypt. We cannot read them back.
- A password that someone else set for you must be changed the first time you sign in.
- Repeated failed sign-ins are rate-limited.
- An idle session is signed out automatically after a time the Admin sets, and anyone can lock their screen when they step away.
Audit trail
The audit trail records a defined set of actions. Financial documents and their cancellations are recorded. Many routine changes are not.
If you need a record of every action by every user, the product does not give you that today.
Backups
- A backup of your database is taken every hour.
- Each backup is encrypted with AES-256-GCM, using a key that belongs to your account alone, before it leaves the server.
- Backups are stored in Amazon S3 in Mumbai, inside India.
- Once a week the newest backup is restored automatically into an empty database and compared with the live one: every table’s row count, and the total debits and credits of the whole ledger.
- If an hourly backup or the weekly restore check fails, we are alerted automatically.
- In September 2026 we rehearsed a full rebuild. On a fresh server, two accounts were restored from the off-site backups and matched the live data table for table.
Who can see your data
- You and the people you give logins to, according to the role you give each of them.
- Our operator. Running a database means having administrative access to it. One person on our side can technically read any customer’s data. We do not do so except to fix a fault you have reported, or where the law requires it.
- Nobody else.
We do not sell your data, share it with anyone else or use it to train anything.
Taking your data out
These lists have their own Export CSV button today: customers, suppliers, products, invoices, quotations, sales returns, purchase bills, payments received, supplier payments, expenses, cash book, day book, journal entries, customer ledger and supplier ledger.
Profitability reports and GSTR-2B follow-up lists also download as CSV. GSTR-1 filing data downloads as a JSON file for each period.
Records that do not have their own export yet, such as the stock ledger, the audit trail, purchase orders, delivery challans and purchase returns, are sent to you on request, as CSV files or as a database dump, within 24 hours on a business day. There is no charge, and you do not have to be leaving to ask.
If you stop using it
- Not renewing does not lock you out. We give 30 days’ notice in writing. After that the account may become read-only: you can sign in, see everything, run every report and export your data, but you cannot add or change entries.
- After your service ends we keep your data for 90 days, so you can still ask for a copy. Then we delete your live database and your account. There is no charge for deletion.
- Encrypted backups run on their own clock. Hourly backups are kept for 2 days, daily backups for 32 days, monthly backups for 370 days and yearly backups for about seven years. They are stored in a mode in which nobody, including us, can delete them or shorten that period. They are encrypted with your account’s key.
If you need a provider that can erase every copy on demand, this is not that product, and we would rather you knew now.
What we do not promise
- The service runs on one server in India. There is no second server on standby and no automatic failover. If that server fails, the service is unavailable until we restore it.
- An outside monitoring service checks every customer’s site every five minutes and alerts us if it stops answering. We do not promise an uptime percentage or a recovery time.
- Backups are hourly. In the worst case, entries made in the last hour before a failure would have to be entered again.
- We do not keep web-server access logs today, so we cannot tell you from records who was signed in at a given minute.
Read the full terms
The Terms of service set all of this out in full. The Privacy policy explains personal data and your rights.
Questions about your data
Where is my data kept?
On a server in India. Encrypted backups are kept in Amazon S3 in Mumbai.
Who can see my data?
You and the people you give logins to, according to the role you give each of them. One operator on our side has the administrative access needed to run the database, and uses it only to fix a fault you have reported or where the law requires it. Nobody else.
How often is it backed up?
Every hour. Each backup is encrypted before it leaves the server. Once a week the newest backup is restored automatically into an empty database and checked against the live one.
Can I take my data out?
Yes, at any time and at no charge. Many lists have their own Export CSV button. Anything that does not have one yet, we send you on request within 24 hours on a business day.
What happens to my data if I leave?
We keep it for 90 days after your service ends, so you can still ask for a copy. Then we delete your live database and your account.
Encrypted backups run on their own clock and nobody can delete them early, including us. The longest-kept backups expire after about seven years.
Do you promise an uptime percentage?
No. An outside monitoring service checks every customer's site every five minutes and alerts us if it stops answering, and we restore service as fast as we can. We do not promise a percentage.
Ask us anything about your data
If something on this page is not clear, message us before you decide. We reply within 24 hours on business days.