Privacy policy
Plain-English. Last updated 2026-09-30.
Who we are
BarkBus is a trading name of Tim and Lu Limited, a New Zealand company based in Central Otago.
What we collect on this site
- Contact requests: business name, contact name, email, phone, and any notes you choose to send.
- Newsletter signups: just your email.
- Basic request data: IP address and browser user-agent, kept on the same form submissions for spam triage. Not used for tracking.
What we don't do
- We use Google Analytics to count visits to this site. It does not see anything inside the BarkBus app.
- No advertising trackers.
- No selling your data — not now, not ever.
The BarkBus app
If you become a customer, the in-app privacy policy covers what BarkBus stores about your business and your customers. That's a separate document — ask us and we'll send it.
Bank feed (Akahu)
If your business chooses to connect its bank account to BarkBus, we use Akahu, a New Zealand open-banking provider, to read that account on your behalf. This section explains what that involves.
Connecting is your choice. Only an admin of your business can connect, from the Reconciliation screen. Akahu then takes you to your bank to approve access, and you choose which to share: one or more accounts. You log in with Akahu and your bank, never with us: BarkBus never sees your bank login or password.
What Akahu shares with us. Akahu's consent page lists it before you agree: your email address, and each account you pick with its name, number, balance and transactions.
What we read. The transactions on the accounts you chose: up to 12 months back when you first connect, then new ones as your bank sends them, usually once a day. For each transaction, Akahu gives us the date, the amount, the type, the bank's description, the particulars, code and reference, and the account number it came from.
What we keep: money coming in, and which accounts are connected. We store payments into the accounts (date, amount, description, particulars, code, reference, and the payer's account number) so we can match them to your customers' invoices, exactly as we would from a bank statement you upload. We also keep each account's bank, name and number, so you can see in BarkBus which one is connected. We don't use your bank data for marketing, advertising, or anything except reconciling your payments.
What we ignore. Akahu also shares your email address and your account balances; we don't use or store either. Money going out of the account (your bills, purchases and wages) is skipped as it arrives and never stored.
Why we keep the payer's account number. It's how we tell who paid. The name on a bank line changes from payment to payment, and two customers can share one, but an account number doesn't. Payment matching is kept separate for each business and never used across businesses.
Your customers' details. Payments carry your customers' names as their bank shows them, plus their account numbers. We hold these for your business, as part of your business records, on the same terms as the rest of your customer data.
How it's protected. Everything travels over HTTPS. The access token Akahu issues is encrypted in our database (AES-256-GCM). Your bank lines are only ever visible inside your own business in BarkBus.
Disconnecting. Disconnect any time from the Reconciliation screen. We stop reading your account straight away, cancel Akahu's notifications to us, and delete our access token. Payments already brought in stay in your ledger as part of your records, the same as an uploaded statement would; email us if you'd like them removed. You can also see and revoke the connection yourself at my.akahu.nz.
Akahu's part. Akahu Technologies Limited handles the connection to your bank under its own privacy policy (akahu.nz/privacy).
Your rights. Under the NZ Privacy Act 2020 you can ask what we hold, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email hello@barkbus.app.
Your rights (NZ Privacy Act 2020)
You can ask us at any time what we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it. Email hello@barkbus.app.
How long we keep things
Contact requests: kept until you ask us to delete them, or 12 months after the last contact, whichever is sooner. Newsletter: kept until you unsubscribe.
Contact
Privacy Officer · Tim and Lu Limited · hello@barkbus.app