Privacy Policy
Last updated 21 October 2026. This policy covers arborations.com.au and the Arborations software: the Arborations phone app, desktop app and QGIS plugin, during their beta.
The short version. Your tree, project, client and job data is written into your own organisation's Microsoft 365 tenant, not into a database we own. The one thing Arborations always sends us is your organisation's tenant identifier, to check its licence. A handful of optional features send more, and each is listed below with what it sends and the fact that it is off until you turn it on. This website does not track you.
1. Who we are, and who controls your data
Arborations is made by SG Arboricultural Consulting, an arboricultural consultancy based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. You can reach us at hello@arborations.com.au or on 0400 777 395. We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth).
Arborations is business software used by tree consultancies and contractors. The organisation using it is the controller of the data it records; we build and supply the software. If you are a client of such an organisation and have a question about data recorded about your property, contact that organisation. If you have a question about how the software itself handles data, contact us.
2. This website
Nothing is collected automatically. This site runs no analytics software, sets no cookies, embeds no tracking pixels, and loads no third party fonts or scripts. Our hosting provider, GitHub Pages, keeps standard server logs which may include your IP address and browser type; we do not have access to those logs, and GitHub's own privacy statement covers them. Downloads of Arborations are served by GitHub too, under the same terms.
When you submit the beta form, the name, organisation, email address, team size and notes you typed are sent to us through Formspree, a form-handling service, which delivers them to our email and keeps a copy in our Formspree account. We use them only to respond to you. We do not add you to a mailing list. If you ask us to delete your enquiry we will.
3. Where your data lives
Assessments, photographs, project records, council contract records, crew rosters, clients, quotes, invoices and reports created in Arborations are written directly into your organisation's own Microsoft 365 tenant, as SharePoint list items and files, in one SharePoint site your organisation creates and grants to Arborations. There is no Arborations database in the middle holding a copy. Your permissions, retention rules, auditing and backups apply to it exactly as they apply to everything else you keep in SharePoint. If your tenant is provisioned in Australia, the data sits in Australia.
You sign in with your existing Microsoft 365 account. We never see or store your password; Microsoft handles authentication. Arborations asks for two permissions: to read your own profile (your name and email, to show who is signed in) and to use the sites your administrator has explicitly granted it. It holds no credentials of its own and can do nothing when nobody is signed in.
If you allow it, Arborations records the GPS position of photographs and tree records so that field evidence can be tied to a place. That location is stored with the record in your own tenant. It is not sent to us and is not used to track a person's movements. You can decline location access and use the rest of the app.
4. What leaves your tenant, and when
This is the complete list. Everything in it goes over encrypted connections.
Always
Licence check. Each Arborations app sends your organisation's Microsoft 365 tenant identifier to our licensing service, hosted on Supabase in the United States, to confirm the organisation holds a licence and which parts of Arborations it covers. No person's name, no project and no tree data is sent with it. The apps keep working for a short grace period if the service can't be reached. When an administrator starts a free trial from Arborations' Licence page, the company name they type is sent with the tenant identifier and kept on the licence record.
Update check (desktop app). Arborations asks GitHub whether a newer build exists when it opens (you can turn this off in its Settings) and when you press Check for updates. GitHub receives the request like any web request; nothing about your organisation is sent.
On by default, and you can turn it off
Export column names (desktop app). When Arborations imports a council system's export, it sends our licensing service your tenant identifier and the names of the export's columns (for example "tree_id"), never the rows, values, trees, addresses or people. This lets us see when a council system changes its export format before it affects your reports. Arborations › Settings › "Share export column names" turns it off.
Only if you switch it on
Online quote acceptance (desktop app, Quoting). When on, each quote you issue is offered on a page we host (on Cloudflare) so your client can accept or decline it from a link. Our licensing service is sent the quote's number, version, total, valid-until date, the line descriptions and prices as they print on the quote, and your company's name. The client's typed name, their answer and the time come back to you. No client address, email or PDF leaves your tenant for this. Off until you enter the secret we give you under Quote settings.
Emailing quotes and invoices (desktop app, Quoting). Sent from the signed-in person's own Microsoft 365 mailbox through Microsoft, to the client's address, when you press Send; the PDF and wording go with it. Nothing passes through us.
Drive times (desktop app). To time a crew's day with real drive times, the desktop app can ask OpenRouteService (HeiGIT, Heidelberg, Germany) for the time between places. Only map coordinates are sent, under a key your organisation signs up for itself; never an address, a tree number, a job or a person. Off until a routing key is entered.
Map imagery (QGIS plugin). Unless you name a basemap of your own in the desktop app, the QGIS plugin opens each project over aerial imagery from Esri (Esri World Imagery, United States). As with any web map, Esri receives requests for the map tiles on screen: a zoom level and tile position, not a tree, an address or a person.
Address lookup (desktop app). To place a client's address on the map, the desktop app can look the address text up with OpenStreetMap's Nominatim service (OpenStreetMap Foundation, in the EU). That sends the address, which may identify a client's property. It happens only when you ask for an address to be placed.
Leave from your HR or payroll system (desktop app, crew board). If your organisation connects Employment Hero or Employment Hero Payroll, the desktop app reads your organisation's name, your people's names and email addresses (to match them to the crew board) and their approved and pending leave for the weeks ahead, and records that leave in your own tenant. Nothing is written back and nothing goes to us. The sign-in or key used stays on the computer that connected it; a sign-in passes once through a page we host whose only job is to return the sign-in code to that computer, and which keeps nothing.
Maps and directions. Map tiles and aerial imagery come from Esri and the Victorian Government's Mapshare as you pan around a map, which sends the area you are looking at. Tapping "directions" in Arborations hands one destination address to Apple Maps, Google Maps or Waze on your device, only when you tap.
5. What we don't do
We do not sell personal information and do not share it for advertising. We run no analytics or usage tracking inside Arborations. We do not reach into your SharePoint ourselves, except where you ask us for support and grant access for it, and we do not extract, copy or retain your client data for our own purposes. If Arborations crashes it writes a log file on that computer; nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose to send it to us.
6. Disclosure to others
The providers involved in delivering Arborations are Microsoft (your own tenant, under your own agreement with them), Supabase (the licensing service), GitHub (this website and the desktop app downloads), Cloudflare (the quote acceptance and sign-in return pages), Formspree (the beta form), and the optional services named in section 4 when you turn them on. We would disclose information if required to by Australian law.
7. Security
Because your data lives in your Microsoft 365 tenant, its security is governed by the controls your organisation already applies there, including multi-factor authentication and conditional access, which Arborations honours because it signs in through Microsoft's own page. Data in transit is encrypted. Keys and sign-ins for optional services are kept on the computer that entered them.
No system is perfectly secure. If we became aware of a data breach affecting your information we would notify you and the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as required under the Notifiable Data Breaches scheme.
8. Retention
Your data in your tenant is retained under your organisation's own Microsoft 365 policies; if you stop using Arborations it stays where it is, and there is nothing for us to return or withhold. Our licensing service keeps a licence record per tenant for as long as the licence stands, and quote offers for as long as the quote can be answered. Beta enquiries are kept until you ask us to delete them.
9. Your rights
You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct it, or ask us to delete it: email hello@arborations.com.au. For data inside your own tenant you already have full control. If you are unhappy with how we have handled your information, contact us first; if you are still unsatisfied you can complain to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au.
10. Children
Arborations is business software for professional arborists and tree contractors. It is not directed at children.
11. Changes to this policy
Arborations is in beta and still developing. When something new leaves your tenant, section 4 is updated before the feature ships, the date at the top changes, and beta participants are told directly.