About

The development of this application

This application is an initiative of the Luangwa Valley Apostolate of the Catholic Diocese of Chipata. It was developed in Lumimba Parish, Zambia. The developer is Bernhard Udelhoven, who can be reached under bernhard@fenza.org.

Safety

The application is in production use and under continuous development; it is safe to use, and updates arrive often. If you meet a bug, please inform the developer. All files from this website have been signed by the developer. You should only use a version that is downloaded from the official website parishrecordkeeper.com.

No data is shared with third parties.

What is encrypted, how it is encrypted and what is not: see the security fact sheet (also as PDF).

Privacy and Legal

Your data

Parish Record Keeper stores all parish data locally, in the User's own data files. The Developer does not access, own, or claim any rights over records of parishioners, financial data, contribution records, sacramental records, or any other information entered into the Software. All such data belongs exclusively to the parish that owns it.

The Software itself does not intentionally transmit parish data to the Developer. The parish is solely responsible for maintaining adequate backups of its own data files, and for complying with any data protection, privacy, church, diocesan, civil, or financial regulations that apply to the data it enters into the Software.

Website and server logs

The hosting server may log technical information, including IP addresses, when the Software, Setup package, updates, or documentation are downloaded from parishrecordkeeper.com. These server logs are used solely for server security, troubleshooting, abuse prevention, and update management, and are not sold or shared with third parties except where required for hosting, security, or legal compliance.

Apart from these standard server logs, neither the Software nor the hosting server intentionally collects, stores, or transmits personal data from the User to the Developer.

Member accounts and online services

If you register for a member account on this website, we store the details you provide (contact name, email address, parish name) together with a securely hashed password. This information is used only to operate your account and the online services connected to it, and is never sold or shared with third parties.

Members may choose to upload a copy of their parish database to make it searchable online by their own workspace. Such uploaded data remains the property and responsibility of the parish that uploaded it: the parish decides what to upload, who belongs to its workspace, and can delete the online copy at any time by replacing or removing it. The data is stored on our hosting provider's servers (Hostinger), is not accessible to other users outside the parish's own workspace, and is not used by the Developer for any other purpose. This data is encrypted at rest on our server.

Where a parish or group of parishes also uses its Workspace to share one datafile among several members, the parish data kept on the server, the security copies, the versions members send and their change notes are likewise stored encrypted on our server. Once downloaded, a file is as readable as the parish's own copy; a parish that wants the file itself protected can add a database password to it within the Software before uploading. What is and is not encrypted is listed in the security fact sheet. Full details are set out in the Cloud Service Agreement and Data Protection Policy.

Cookies

This website does not use analytics, advertising, or tracking cookies, and therefore shows no cookie banner. A single technical session cookie is set when you log in to the members area; it is strictly necessary for the login to function and is deleted when you log out. If you choose a language from the language menu, a small preference cookie remembers that choice for a year; it holds nothing but the language code.

Third-party content

Fonts, stylesheets, and scripts are served from our own server — no requests are made to Google or other third-party servers when you browse this site. Tutorial videos play from YouTube in its privacy-enhanced mode ("youtube-nocookie"). Until you press play, the page shows a picture kept on our own server and makes no contact with YouTube; only a video you choose to play is loaded from YouTube, which may then set cookies.

Licence

Parish Record Keeper is in production use, is updated frequently, and is free to install and use in full, without a licence fee, a trial period, or a record limit. Donations in support of the work of Lumimba Parish, Zambia, are warmly welcomed but never required; the optional online Workspace — the whole online package of shared datafile, online search, phone app, transport register and shared report logins — is charged separately, as a single contribution covering one, two or three years (from ZMW 400 / USD 20 a year; see how to get access). The full terms governing use of the Software, including ownership, warranty disclaimers, and limitation of liability, are set out in the End User Licence Agreement (EULA).