Terms of Service

Agreement

These Terms of Service are an agreement between you and Watchtower Money, LLC ("Watchtower," "we," "us," or "our"). They govern your use of watchtower.money, app.watchtower.money, and the Watchtower API. By using those services you also agree to our Privacy Policy and Refund and Cancellation policy. If you do not agree, do not use Watchtower.

Creating an account and connecting a bank is use of the product, and these terms apply there too.

What Watchtower is

Watchtower is software for household budgeting: linked accounts, categorized transactions, monthly category budgets, and alerts when something needs a look.

Watchtower is not a bank, broker, advisor, tax preparer, or payment app. Balances, spent, remaining, and alerts are informational. You are responsible for your financial decisions. Nothing in Watchtower is investment, tax, or legal advice.

Who can use it

You must be at least 18 and able to form a contract. You must only connect bank accounts you are authorized to access. If you invite someone to a household, you are responsible for inviting people you trust. They will be able to see that household's financial data.

Accounts and households

You must provide accurate information and keep your login secure. Sign-in is handled by Clerk. Notify us if you think someone else has used your account.

A household is the shared set of accounts, transactions, and budgets. The subscription belongs to the household, not to an individual login. The household owner is the account holder for billing. Members can see billing status. Only the owner can start a trial, change plans, open the billing portal, or cancel.

The owner can invite members, remove members, and delete the household. Members can leave. Leaving never changes the subscription.

Bank connections

Bank linking uses Plaid. You authorize Watchtower to receive account and transaction data from Plaid so we can show budgets and activity. We do not collect your bank password. Plaid's own terms and privacy policy apply to that connection. See plaid.com/legal.

Eligible connections are checking, savings, money market, cash-management, and credit cards. We do not ingest brokerage, retirement, mortgage, or other long-term loan accounts. A mortgage payment on checking still appears as a transaction.

You can disconnect a bank in the app. Disconnecting is your choice to remove that connection and, as designed, its imported history. That is different from billing retirement, described below. We do not guarantee that every institution, account type, or transaction will sync, or that balances and categories will always match your bank. Sync can be delayed, incomplete, or wrong. You should still check your bank for the official record.

Subscription

Watchtower is a paid household plan. Current prices are on Pricing: $99 per year or $12.99 per month, same features. Prices are in USD. Tax may apply.

Payment is handled by Stripe. Watchtower does not store card numbers. Stripe's terms apply to the payment itself.

Features may change. We may limit how many households we support and which banks or account types you can connect. We may contact you about the product using the email on your account. Email and optional text alerts are included in the household plan. We do not sell SMS credits or a separate notification tier.

Alert texts

Texts are optional. They are off until you turn them on in Settings and confirm a US phone number. An unchecked box is not consent. We will tell you what the messages are (alerts that already exist in Watchtower), that frequency varies, that message and data rates may apply, and how to stop. We keep the time and the version of that disclosure. Household members do not share consent.

Launch texts do not include amounts, merchants, accounts, or categories. They tell you something needs a look and point you to the app. Watchtower texts come from a US business number. Message and data rates may apply. Frequency varies. Reply HELP for help. Reply STOP to unsubscribe.

Turning texts off in Settings, or replying STOP, stops further alert texts to that number until you opt in again. HELP replies with program information. This is not marketing mail.

Preview and trial

After you connect your first bank and the first useful sync finishes, you have 24 hours with your real accounts and transactions. That preview is Watchtower-only. It does not require a card. During preview you can connect one institution (any number of eligible accounts in it).

To keep editing and syncing after the preview, the owner starts a 14-day trial with a card. The trial starts when Stripe confirms the subscription. A card is required. It is not 14 days free with no card. One trial per household, ever.

A second institution needs an active trial, paid plan, payment grace, or complimentary access we have granted.

If the first useful sync never finishes, we retire that unused connection about 48 hours after it was created and release the preview allowance so you can try again. If preview ends and you never start a trial, we retire unused connections about 7 days after preview expiry. History already imported stays.

Charges, renewal, and plan changes

At the end of a trial, Stripe charges the card on file for the plan you chose, unless you cancel first. After that, the plan renews automatically at the same interval until you cancel.

You can switch between monthly and annual. The switch takes effect at the next renewal. There is no proration and no refund for unused time in the current period.

Households that already used a trial, or that ended after paying, subscribe without a trial and are charged when Stripe confirms checkout.

Cancellation

The owner cancels online in Settings → Billing, which opens Stripe. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current trial or paid period. You keep full access until then. You can reverse the cancel in Stripe until that date.

Canceling is not a refund of time already paid, except where the first-payment guarantee in the Refund and Cancellation policy applies.

Failed payments

If a trial conversion or renewal payment fails, you have 7 days of grace from the first failed attempt on that invoice. During grace you keep full access. Update the payment method in Settings → Billing. If the invoice is still unpaid when grace ends, the household becomes read-only and bank connections are removed.

Refunds

The first paid charge has a 30-day money-back guarantee, once per household. How to request it, what it covers, and what happens to access are in Refund and Cancellation. Email legal@watchtower.money.

After access ends

When a trial ends unpaid, a cancel takes effect, grace expires, a complimentary grant ends without a paid plan, or a guarantee refund is completed, the household becomes read-only. History stays readable while the household exists. You cannot edit or sync. Stopping payment never deletes history.

Bank connections do not outlive access. We ask Plaid to remove them and we drop the connection token. A connection is retired only after Plaid confirms. History stays. To use Watchtower again you subscribe (without a second trial if you already used one) and reconnect banks. Matching accounts can reattach to the history you already have.

Taxes and price changes

Prices on Pricing are in USD. Tax may apply depending on where you are and how Stripe is configured. Stripe collects what it is told to collect.

If we change the household plan price, we will post the new price on Pricing and update these terms before we charge a household a different amount than it already agreed to. Existing subscriptions keep their current price until that notice and the next renewal after it.

Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Use Watchtower for anyone else's accounts without permission
• Probe, scrape, or overload the service, or bypass household access rules
• Reverse engineer the product except where the law allows
• Upload malware or try to disrupt Watchtower or other users
• Use Watchtower to break the law

We may suspend or close an account that violates these terms, harms the service, or creates a security risk.

Your content

You keep whatever rights you have in the information you provide (including bank data Plaid sends us on your behalf, categories you set, and budgets you enter). You grant Watchtower a limited license to store and process that information solely to operate the product for your household.

Watchtower, the Horizon Mark, the site, and the app are ours (or our licensors'). These terms do not give you ownership of the product. You may not copy, resell, or present Watchtower as your own service.

Third parties

Watchtower relies on other companies to run: Clerk for sign-in, Plaid for bank connections, Stripe for payments, Vercel for hosting the site and app, Google Cloud for the API and database, and other infrastructure and error monitoring as described in the Privacy Policy. Their terms apply to their services. We are not responsible for outages or changes on their side.

Privacy and security

How we collect and use personal information is in the Privacy Policy. How we handle bank connections is described on Security. That Security page is current practice, not a warranty against breach, and not a SOC 2, PCI DSS, ISO, or similar certification.

Ending use and deletion

You can stop using Watchtower at any time. You can disconnect banks, leave a household, delete a household you own, or delete your account in settings. Deleting data and leaving are never blocked because of billing.

If the owner deletes the household, we cancel the Stripe subscription immediately, without proration. That household's accounts, transactions, and budgets are deleted as designed. Stripe keeps invoices as its business records. We keep Stripe ids and dates needed to reconcile that cancel, without copying names or emails onto those billing rows.

We can stop offering the service, or close an account, if we need to for the product, for these terms, or for security.

Disclaimers

Watchtower is provided as is and as available, to the extent the law allows. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, accurate, or error-free, or that it will meet a particular financial need. Categories, spent, remaining, and alerts can be wrong. Always confirm important amounts with your bank.

Limits on liability

To the extent the law allows, Watchtower Money, LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, or the cost of substitute software, even if we were told those damages were possible.

Our total liability for claims arising out of Watchtower is limited to the greater of (a) the amounts you paid us for Watchtower in the twelve months before the claim, or (b) one hundred U.S. dollars.

Some places do not allow certain limits. If those rules apply to you, some of this section may not apply, and you may have additional rights.

Indemnity

If your use of Watchtower (including connecting accounts you are not allowed to access, or inviting someone who then misuses a household) causes a claim against us, you will defend and pay the costs we reasonably incur, to the extent the law allows.

Governing law

Watchtower Money, LLC is a Texas limited liability company. These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Texas, without regard to conflict-of-law rules. Courts located in Texas will hear disputes, except where applicable law requires otherwise.

Changes

We will post updates on this page and change the effective date. If you keep using Watchtower after an update, you accept the revised terms. If you do not, stop using the product and delete your household and account.

Contact

Watchtower Money, LLC

Legal and billing: legal@watchtower.money

Privacy: privacy@watchtower.money

Security: security@watchtower.money