Security and your data
Where your data is kept, how companies are kept apart, who can see prices and pay, how you sign in, and what AI and connected apps may read.
Where it runs
Costimate runs on servers in the European Union, where its database and your files are kept.
Each company is its own
Every record belongs to one company, and everything Costimate reads is limited to the company of the person asking. A record of another company is not found, even by its address. Someone who belongs to two companies works in one at a time.
Signing in
- Members sign in with their email and a password, and can turn on two-factor authentication: a code by email at every sign-in.
- Anyone can add a passkey in Settings › Security, and sign in with their fingerprint, face, screen lock or a security key instead of the password. Windows Hello, Touch ID and Face ID, Android and Chrome, a phone held up to the screen and a YubiKey all work. The check happens on your device: we keep only the passkey's public key. A passkey cannot be phished, so it counts as two-step sign-in. Your password keeps working, and is how you get back in if you lose your devices.
- Add a passkey adds one on the device you are using, or on a phone or a security key.
- Two-factor authentication: a code by email at every sign-in.
- The switch that turns it on or off.
Who sees what
- What each member may do is their role, plus what was given to them or taken from them, module by module.
- Prices and pay have permissions of their own. Without them, those figures are never sent to your browser: not in a page, a list, a total, an export or a PDF. Selling prices, mark-ups, the price a bid was submitted at, a project's contract value and profit, quotations and invoices are for people who can see prices. What one person earns is for people allowed to see employees' personal details and pay.
- A suspended member opens nothing.
Files
Uploaded files are private. Each is served only to a person who may open the record it belongs to. Some categories need a further permission: an employee's passport or contract, and a project's signed contract, which states its price.
Outside experts
An expert you work with signs in to a portal of their own. They see only the bids they are on and the files you share with them, and nothing else of your company: no price, no other bid, none of your people beyond their contacts. When they are taken off a bid, they no longer open it.
Deleted records
A record someone deletes can be restored for a while. Contacts, meeting minutes, events and organizers are removed for good 30 days after they were deleted, with their files. See Restore something deleted.
AI
When you ask AI to read a document or a form, its text is sent to the AI provider to be read, and the answer comes back to you to check. Nothing it says is saved until you keep it, and it never sets a price. See What AI does here, and never does and the Privacy Policy for the providers we use.
Connected AI apps
On a paid plan a member can connect ChatGPT or Grok to Costimate. The app works as that member, in the company they chose, and sees only what they may see: no price they may not read, no record of another company. It can read and create opportunities, clients, suppliers, contacts, leads and notes, and ChatGPT asks before each change. It can never delete anything, and a stage move still waits for an approver. What it creates carries a purple mark. The company's owner can switch connected apps off, and anyone can disconnect their own. See Connect ChatGPT.