Terms of Service

1. What the service is

hoa.to is software that helps an association record and administer its own operations: dues and ledgers, violations, architectural requests, maintenance, documents, communications, meetings and votes. It is a record-keeping and workflow tool.

It is not a manager, an agent, a fiduciary, a bank, a money transmitter, a collection agency, an accountant, an auditor, a reserve specialist, an insurer or a law firm, and it does not act on your behalf with any owner, regulator, lender or court. Where the service generates a document, a calculation, a notice or a suggestion, it does so from the information you supply, and you are responsible for reviewing it before it is used or relied on.

2. Your responsibilities

• The accuracy and lawfulness of everything you and your users put into the service, including owner records, financial entries, violation notices and documents.
• Compliance with your own declaration, bylaws, rules and resolutions, and with the law of your state or province, including any requirement about how notice must be given, how a vote must be held, how records must be kept, and how money must be held and accounted for.
• Deciding whether an action the software makes possible is one you are permitted to take. The software does not and cannot determine that for you.
• Keeping credentials secure, managing who has access and at what role, and removing access when a person leaves the board or the company.
• Obtaining whatever consent or authority you need before adding a person's personal information, or before sending them communications through the service.
• Your own backups of anything you would be unable to reconstruct, in addition to the export tools we provide.

3. Templates, calculators, voting and AI features

The service includes document templates, calculators, electronic voting and features that use automated or machine-learning techniques, such as drafting meeting minutes or flagging a possible violation from a photograph.

All of these are assistive and none is authoritative. A template is a starting point, not a legal document for your jurisdiction. A calculator produces an estimate from the figures you enter and is not a reserve study, a depreciation report, an audit or a professional opinion. An electronic vote is valid only if your governing documents and your local law permit that method, which you must confirm before using it. An automated output may be wrong, incomplete or out of date, and must be reviewed by a person before it is relied on, sent to an owner, or recorded as a decision.

You accept that you are responsible for the review described above, and that we are not liable for a decision taken on an unreviewed output.

4. Payments, dues and money

Where the service supports collecting dues or other amounts from owners, payments are processed by a third-party payment processor under its own terms, and funds are held and moved by that processor and the financial institutions involved, not by us. We do not take custody of association funds and we are not a party to the obligation between the association and the owner.

You are responsible for the amounts you charge, for their basis in your governing documents, for any interest, late fee or penalty you apply, and for compliance with the consumer protection, collections and privacy rules that apply where your owners live. Processing fees, chargebacks, returned payments and reversals are between you, your owners and the processor.

A failure, delay or error of a payment processor, bank or network is not something we control, and section 9 applies to it.

5. Fees, the free period and changes

Current plans and prices are published on our pricing page. A free period, where offered, begins when your account is created and runs for the stated term, after which the plan you selected begins to bill unless you cancel before it ends. We will tell you before the free period ends.

Fees are stated exclusive of taxes, which are added where applicable. Subscriptions renew for the same term unless cancelled before the renewal date. Payment processing fees charged by a processor are separate from our fees.

We may change prices for a future term with at least thirty days' notice before that term begins. We do not change the price of a term you have already paid for.

6. Your data, and getting it out

You keep all rights in the data you put into the service. We use it to provide and support the service, to keep it secure, and as described in our privacy policy and data processing addendum, which form part of this agreement.

You can export your data at any time while your account is active. On termination we retain it for a limited wind-down period so you can export it, and then delete or anonymise it as described in the data processing addendum. We do not hold your records hostage and we do not charge an exit fee for an export.

We may use aggregated, de-identified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you, your association or any individual, to operate and improve the service.

7. Acceptable use

You agree not to use the service unlawfully, to harass or intimidate an owner or resident, to send communications you have no lawful basis to send, to upload content you have no right to upload, to attempt to breach its security or access another customer's data, to resell it without our written agreement, or to use it to make a decision about a person in a way that is unlawful where they live.

Our acceptable use policy sets this out in more detail and forms part of this agreement. We may suspend access where we reasonably believe it is being used in breach of it, and will tell you why.

8. Availability and support

We work to keep the service available and we do not promise uninterrupted or error-free operation. Maintenance, third-party failures, and events outside our reasonable control will sometimes interrupt it. Any committed availability or response time applies only if it is stated in a written agreement signed by us; a published plan description is not such a commitment.

Support is provided by the channels described on our pricing page, during our normal working hours.

9. Disclaimers and limitation of liability

To the fullest extent the law allows, the service is provided as is and as available, and we disclaim all warranties not expressly stated here, including implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy and non-infringement.

To the fullest extent the law allows, neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost revenue, lost business, lost goodwill, lost or inaccurate data, or the cost of substitute services, even if advised of the possibility.

To the fullest extent the law allows, our total aggregate liability arising out of or relating to this agreement and the service, whether in contract, tort including negligence, statute or otherwise, is limited to the fees you actually paid us for the service in the twelve months immediately before the event giving rise to the liability. Where you are in a free period and have paid us nothing, our total aggregate liability is limited to one hundred Canadian dollars.

We are not liable for a decision you or your board takes, for a notice or communication you send, for an amount you charge an owner, for the adequacy of a reserve or budget, for the validity of a meeting or a vote, or for your compliance with your governing documents or with any law. Those are yours.

Nothing in this agreement limits liability that cannot lawfully be limited, including liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for death or personal injury caused by negligence. Some jurisdictions do not allow certain limitations, in which case the limitations apply to the greatest extent permitted there.

10. Indemnity

You will defend, indemnify and hold harmless Four Cents, its affiliates and their directors, officers and personnel from and against any third-party claim, demand, proceeding, loss, liability, damage, fine, penalty, cost or expense, including reasonable legal fees, arising out of or relating to: the data and content you put into the service; a communication, notice, charge, fine, lien or collection step you take using it; a decision of your board or your association; your use of a template, calculator, automated output or electronic vote; your breach of this agreement or the acceptable use policy; your infringement of a third party's rights; or your failure to comply with your governing documents or with any law that applies to you, including privacy, consumer protection, collections, elections and records law.

We will tell you promptly about a claim we are seeking indemnity for, let you control its defence and settlement provided any settlement does not impose a non-monetary obligation or admission on us, and cooperate reasonably at your expense.

11. Suspension and termination

You may cancel at any time, effective at the end of your current term. We may suspend or terminate for material breach that is not cured within thirty days of notice, for non-payment, or immediately where we reasonably believe continued access creates a legal, security or safety risk.

On termination your right to use the service ends, accrued fees remain payable, and the wind-down and deletion process in the data processing addendum applies.

12. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. For a change that materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations we will give at least thirty days' notice before it takes effect, and continuing to use the service after that date means you accept it. If you do not accept it you may cancel before it takes effect and we will refund the unused portion of any prepaid term.

The current version is always at this page, with the date it was last updated at the top.

13. General

This agreement, together with the privacy policy, the data processing addendum and the acceptable use policy, is the entire agreement between us about the service. If a provision is unenforceable the rest continues to apply. A failure to enforce a provision is not a waiver of it. You may not assign this agreement without our consent; we may assign it to an affiliate or in connection with a reorganisation or sale of the business.

This agreement is governed by the laws of the Province of Ontario and the federal laws of Canada that apply there, without regard to conflict of laws rules, and the courts of Ontario have non-exclusive jurisdiction. Where a mandatory consumer protection or privacy law of your own jurisdiction gives you rights that cannot be overridden by contract, this clause does not take them away.

Notices to us can be sent to info@fourcents.ca or by mail to hoa.to, c/o Four Cents, 49 Thorncliffe Park Drive, East York, Toronto, Ontario, M4H 1J6, Canada. Notices to you will be sent to the email address on your account.