Terms of Service

The agreement between you and the operator of NorthStar covering what the service does, what you may do with it, and what happens when either of us wants to stop.

Effective date: [EFFECTIVE DATE] · Operator: [COMPANY LEGAL NAME], [POSTAL ADDRESS] · Contact: [SUPPORT_EMAIL]

1. Who these terms are between

These terms are between [COMPANY LEGAL NAME] ( “NorthStar”, “we”, “us”), registered in [JURISDICTION] at [POSTAL ADDRESS], and the person or organisation that creates a NorthStar account (“you”). By creating an account you agree to them.

If you create an account on behalf of an organisation, you confirm you are authorised to accept these terms for it, and “you” means that organisation.

2. What the service is

NorthStar is a long-horizon resource-planning tool. You create projects, tasks and allocations, record the people (“workers”) you are planning around, and NorthStar shows you the resulting schedule, conflicts and capacity picture.

Two properties of the product are deliberate and worth stating as terms rather than as marketing: NorthStar never reschedules your plan for you, and dependencies between tasks are informational — they raise a warning, they do not move anything. You remain responsible for the plan.

3. Accounts and security

• You must give a working email address; we send a confirmation link and no account can sign in until that address is confirmed.
• Passwords must be at least 12 characters. You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for activity under your account.
• Changing or resetting your password signs out every other session immediately. If you believe someone else has access to your account, change your password and contact us at [SUPPORT_EMAIL].
• You must be old enough to enter into a contract in your jurisdiction. NorthStar is a workplace tool and is not directed at children.

4. Organisations, roles and your data

Your work lives inside an organisation. Every record NorthStar stores is scoped to exactly one organisation, and that scoping is enforced in the database itself, not only in the application. Members hold a role (for example administrator, planner or viewer) that determines what they may do.

You own your content. The projects, workers, allocations, comments and baselines you put into NorthStar remain yours. You grant us only the permission we need to host, process, back up and display that content in order to provide the service to you.

People may only be added to your organisation by invitation, which the invited person must accept from their own account. Nobody can be bound into an organisation without that consent.

5. Planning around real people

A “worker” in NorthStar is usually a real member of your staff. You are the controller of that personal data and we process it on your instructions — see the Privacy Policy. You are responsible for having a lawful basis to record those people in a planning tool, and for telling them you do.

NorthStar deliberately does not ask why someone is unavailable: a period of leave is recorded as time, not as a reason. Please keep it that way — do not put health information, or other special-category data, into names, titles or comment fields.

6. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• break the law with the service, or use it to infringe anyone’s rights;
• attempt to access another organisation’s data, probe or circumvent the access controls, or interfere with the service’s operation;
• automate access in a way that degrades the service for others, or attempt to defeat rate limits;
• upload malicious code, or content you have no right to store — including personal data you are not permitted to process.

Good-faith security research is welcome. If you find a vulnerability, please report it to [SUPPORT_EMAIL] before disclosing it, and do not access or alter data belonging to anyone else while investigating.

7. Availability, changes and beta status

We aim to keep NorthStar available and correct, but we do not currently offer a service-level agreement. The service is under active development: features may change or be withdrawn, and we will give reasonable notice before removing something you depend on. Planned maintenance may make the service briefly unavailable.

NorthStar is provided as is. To the extent permitted by law we disclaim implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement. Nothing in these terms excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded — including for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for fraud.

8. Fees

NorthStar is currently offered without charge. If we introduce paid plans we will give you notice before any charge applies to your account, and you will be able to decline by exporting your data and closing your account.

9. Getting your data out, and ending the agreement

• Export. You can export your organisation’s full workspace at any time. Ask at [SUPPORT_EMAIL] if you need a machine-readable export of everything we hold, including audit records.
• Deleting an account. You may delete your own account from the account page once you no longer belong to an organisation. Deleting an account never deletes an organisation, because an organisation may hold other people’s work.
• Deleting an organisation. An administrator can have an organisation torn down — every project, worker, allocation, comment and baseline it holds is deleted. This is irreversible. Export first.
• Suspension. We may suspend or close an account that breaches section 6, or that we are legally required to close. Where we can, we will tell you first and give you a chance to export.

Security audit records — who signed in, who changed a role, who deleted an organisation — are kept separately from your planning data and are not deleted when an organisation is, because their purpose is to survive it. See the Privacy Policy for what they contain and how long they are kept.

10. Limitation of liability

Subject to section 7, and to the maximum extent permitted by law, neither party is liable to the other for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of business, or loss of anticipated savings. Our total aggregate liability arising out of these terms is limited to [LIABILITY CAP].

You are responsible for keeping your own copies of anything you cannot afford to lose. We take backups, but a backup is not a substitute for your own export.

11. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. If a change materially affects your rights we will give you reasonable notice by email to the address on your account before it takes effect. Continuing to use NorthStar after that date means you accept the updated terms.

12. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of [JURISDICTION], and the courts of [JURISDICTION] have exclusive jurisdiction — except that consumers keep any rights they have to bring proceedings in their own place of residence.

13. Contact

Questions about these terms: [SUPPORT_EMAIL], or [COMPANY LEGAL NAME], [POSTAL ADDRESS].