Terms of Service

1. What Benchworks is

Benchworks is a software-as-a-service platform — we host the software and you use it over the internet. It's built for drop-off-and-collect repair shops: console, phone, computer, watch, jewellery, instrument, bike, locksmith, small-engine. In these terms "we" / "us" / "Benchworks" means the company operating benchworks.app from South Africa. "You" / "Tenant" means the shop or person using the platform under an account.

2. What the service does

You get a ticketing system, a customer record, an estimate / invoice builder, a public customer portal at {your-shop}.benchworks.app, a WhatsApp connector that hooks into your own WhatsApp Business number, an email channel, and a parts catalogue. The full feature list lives on our homepage; we may add to or improve features over time without changing these terms.

3. Accounts

One human per login. Don't share passwords — if your technician needs access, invite them as a user. You're responsible for anything done through your account, including by people you've invited. If you think your account has been compromised, email us and we'll help you lock it down.

4. What you can't do

We trust shop owners to use the platform sensibly. The few hard rules:

• No spam. The WhatsApp connector is for messaging your own repair customers, not cold marketing.
• No illegal content. We will cooperate with law-enforcement requests where legally required.
• No deliberately breaking, overloading, or probing the platform. If you're a security researcher, email us first; we're friendly.
• No reselling Benchworks itself as a service to a third party.

5. Bring your own AI keys (BYOK)

You connect your own Anthropic, OpenAI, and Google (Gemini) API keys. The AI provider invoices you directly. We never see your card and we don't mark up your AI usage. If you don't have a key set up, certain features fall back to our platform key — clearly flagged, and we'll forward the cost at-cost on your next bill rather than absorb it.

6. Fees and billing

Your subscription is monthly. Current pricing is on /pricing. We may change pricing in the future — if we do, you'll get at least 30 days' notice by email before it hits your bill, and you can cancel before the new price takes effect.

No contracts. No auto-renewing annual lock-ins. Cancel any time, from Settings → Account, with one click. We don't refund partial months — if you cancel mid-month, you keep using the service until the end of the period you've paid for — but no further charges hit your card.

Meta WhatsApp Business charges and Twilio SMS charges (where applicable) pass through at cost. We don't mark them up.

7. Your data is yours

Everything you put into Benchworks — customer records, ticket history, messages, photos, invoices — belongs to you. We hold it for you, we never claim ownership, and we never resell it. You can export the lot from Settings → Account any time you like, no support ticket needed.

8. Cancelling, exporting, and deletion

Click Cancel in Settings → Account. That's the whole process. We'll send a confirmation email. Your data then sits in a 90-day dormant grace period:

• You can come back and click Restore at any point in those 90 days — your shop wakes up exactly where you left it.
• You can download a full export of your data — CSV and JSON of every ticket, customer, invoice, message, audit log.
• After 90 days, we permanently delete your data from our production systems. Backups roll off on their own schedule (typically 30 days after that).

9. Service availability

We aim for 99% monthly uptime. If we miss the mark, we owe you a credit and we'll work it out automatically. Full details and the credit table are on /sla. The SLA is part of these terms.

10. Warranty

We provide the service "as is". We'll put real effort into keeping it up, fixing bugs, and shipping useful improvements — but we can't guarantee that every feature will work perfectly all the time, or that the platform will meet every specific outcome you might want. To the maximum extent the law allows, we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Nothing in this paragraph reduces the protections that consumer law in your country gives you that can't be contracted out of.

11. Liability cap

If something goes wrong and one of us has to pay the other, our total liability is capped at the fees you've paid us in the 12 months before the problem. We're not liable for indirect, consequential, or incidental damages (lost profits, lost goodwill, lost data beyond what restoring from your most recent export would recover). This cap doesn't apply to things you can't legally cap — gross negligence, fraud, intentional misconduct.

12. Indemnity

If a third party sues us because of how you used the platform — for example, you spammed your customers, you uploaded illegal content, you breached someone's IP — you'll cover our reasonable costs of dealing with that claim. We'll tell you straight away if such a claim lands.

13. Termination

You can cancel at any time, one click, from Settings → Account. We can suspend or close an account that breaches these terms — we'll give you notice and a chance to fix it first, except in cases of serious breach (illegal content, fraud, attempting to compromise the platform), where we may suspend immediately.

However the relationship ends, you have 90 days from termination to export your data. After that, it's deleted.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms over time as the product and the law evolve. For any material change we'll email you at least 30 days before it takes effect. The date at the top of this page is always the current version. If you don't agree with a change, cancel before it takes effect.

15. Governing law

Benchworks is operated from South Africa, so these terms are governed by South African law. Nothing in this paragraph waives consumer-protection rights that the law in your country gives you and that you can't contract out of (for example, the UK Consumer Rights Act, the Australian Consumer Law, the New Zealand Consumer Guarantees Act, or the South African Consumer Protection Act).

16. Disputes

If we disagree, email support@benchworks.app first and we'll try to work it out in good faith — most things are resolvable that way. If we can't, the dispute goes to arbitration in Johannesburg under the AFSA commercial rules, in English. This doesn't stop either of us going to court for urgent injunctive relief, or stop you raising the matter with a regulator or consumer body in your country.

17. Contact

Everything goes through support@benchworks.app. Real engineers read it. We aim to respond inside one business day.