Your Data & Privacy

YardPath is private by design. Your customers, jobs, mileage, and finances live on your devices and sync across them through your own iCloud account. There is no YardPath account to create and no YardPath server holding your records.

How sync works

YardPath uses Apple’s CloudKit to keep your data in step across your iPhone and iPad, stored in your private iCloud database. Start a job on the phone, finish invoices on the iPad, they stay in sync. Because it’s your iCloud, it also gives you an automatic off-device copy.

Works offline

The app is offline-first. Log jobs and miles with no signal down a dirt road; everything saves locally and syncs when you’re back in range. A quiet indicator lets you know when you’re working offline.

Backups & restore

Your business records are worth protecting, a lost phone, a cracked screen, an accidental mass delete, or a request from your accountant shouldn’t put them at risk. YardPath gives you two layers of protection, and neither depends on a YardPath server.

1. Automatic iCloud copy

Because your data syncs to your private iCloud (see How sync works), you already have an off-device copy that restores automatically when you sign in to iCloud on a new iPhone or iPad. That’s your everyday safety net.

2. A portable backup you control

Once a week, YardPath reminds you to export your data, a one-tap backup you keep yourself. The export:

• Is a ZIP of plain, spreadsheet-readable files, customers, jobs, invoices, line items, and mileage, plus a README, so your records are readable anywhere, not locked to the app. It also includes a complete backup file that YardPath can read back in when you restore.
• Covers your records, active and archived alike.
• Is generated entirely on your device, no network, and no upload to us.
• Works even if your subscription has lapsed, so a lapse doesn’t stand between you and your records.

Export any time from Settings → Data & Privacy → Export Data; the weekly reminder just makes sure a fresh copy exists. Keep a recent export in your own cloud drive or email and you have a backup that’s genuinely yours.

Why it matters

iCloud sync is convenient, but it’s a mirror: delete a customer by mistake and that deletion syncs everywhere. A dated export you keep on the side is the copy you can fall back on when a mirror can’t help, recovering after a lost device, undoing a bad bulk change, or handing clean records to your accountant at tax time. Backups are cheap insurance for the part of your business that’s hardest to recreate.

Restoring from a backup

If the worst happens, a lost device, a corrupted store, or an accidental mass delete, you can rebuild your full book of business from a backup without re-typing anything. In Settings → Data & Privacy → Restore from Backup, pick your backup ZIP and YardPath validates it, shows you a preview of what it contains, and asks you to confirm before writing anything.

A few design choices are meant to make restore dependable:

• It’s all-or-nothing by design. A restore is applied as a single transaction, so a bad or partial file shouldn’t leave you half-restored.
• It’s built not to create duplicates. Restoring into an app that already has data merges by matching records, so importing the same backup twice should be harmless.
• It brings back the details that matter, recurring-job schedules, invoice numbers and payment vs. credit, line-item amounts, per-customer pricing, mileage trips, and your business settings.
• It works on the free tier and after a lapse, so an expired subscription doesn’t block recovery.

Keep more than one dated export, and check now and then that a backup actually restores. Software is fallible and we hold no copy of your records, so your own backups are the real safety net, see the Terms of Use.

A couple of things are intentionally not restored: your subscription (that’s handled by the App Store) and job photos. If YardPath ever can’t open your local data at all, the recovery screen offers the same restore-from-backup path as a way back in.

Other ways to get your data out

• Customers can be exported back to iPhone Contacts.
• Mileage exports as a PDF you can hand to your accountant at tax time.
• Expenses export as a PDF or CSV, receipts included, see Expense capture & tax export.

What YardPath does not do

• No ads, no analytics profiles, no selling or mining your customer list.
• Location is used only for mileage, and only when you turn it on.
• Contacts access is used only for customer import/export, when you ask for it.

One clearly-scoped exception: if you write to us through the contact form, that message is held briefly on our infrastructure so it reaches us reliably, then deleted within 90 days. It covers only what you type (plus the PII-light diagnostics snapshot when you write from inside the app), never your business records. Details in the privacy policy.

If sync has trouble

YardPath handles iCloud hiccups gracefully, transient issues retry quietly, and only a persistent problem (like a full iCloud account) surfaces a plain-language banner with a fix. You can also export diagnostics from Settings if you ever need support.