The terms of your subscription.

These terms are the agreement between your practice and us when your practice subscribes to Syntekta. They are written to be read. Where a word has a particular meaning, it is explained in section 3.

You can save or print these terms from this page at any time.

When you tick the box at sign-up to accept these terms and pay the onboarding fee, your practice enters into this agreement with us. The person who accepts confirms that they are authorised to bind the practice.

Before you accept: the points to note

The law asks us to point out, before you accept, the parts of these terms that limit what we are responsible for or that place a duty or a risk on your practice. They are:

• Your practice pays a once-off onboarding fee at sign-up, and the subscription from go-live (sections 5 and 6).
• The onboarding fee is refundable until the first onboarding session is held or the import of your practice's information has begun. A monthly subscription stops at the end of the month you have paid for. A year paid up front runs to its end. An individual has further rights, set out in section 12 (sections 6, 11 and 12).
• A failed payment never locks your practice out. If a payment is still unpaid 30 days after it first failed, Syntekta becomes read-only for your practice until it is paid (section 8).
• Our liability is limited. We are not liable for loss of profit or similar loss, and our total liability is limited to the fees your practice paid us in the 12 months before the claim. These limits never cover fraud, gross negligence or wilful misconduct, or anything the law does not allow us to limit (section 19).
• Your practice's professional work remains its own. A person in your practice checks what Syntekta works out or drafts before it is relied on (section 18).
• Your practice is responsible for who it gives access to, for keeping its users' sign-in details secret, and for having a lawful reason for the personal information it puts into Syntekta (section 18).
• The personal information your practice puts into Syntekta is stored in Ireland, in the European Union, and some of it is processed by our providers in the United States, as Schedule A explains.

1. Who the agreement is between

The agreement is between the practice named at sign-up ("you", "your practice") and the company that sells Syntekta ("we", "us"):

• Teleion Technologies (Pty) Ltd, a private company registered in South Africa.
• Registration number: 2026/845197/07.
• VAT: not registered for VAT.
• Physical address, which is also where we accept service of legal documents: 50 Eros Road, Olympus AH, Pretoria, 0081, Gauteng, South Africa.
• Email: info@teleiontechnologies.com.
• Telephone: +27 71 875 9976.
• Website: syntekta.app, where these terms are published.
• Director, and Information Officer under the Protection of Personal Information Act: Gerold Joubert.

We do not belong to an industry body or an ombud scheme for software, and we do not subscribe to a code of conduct or an alternative dispute resolution code. Section 21 explains how a complaint is handled.

2. What these terms cover

These terms cover your practice's subscription to Syntekta, the modules your practice switches on, onboarding, what your practice pays and how, its data, and how the agreement ends.

The investment that applies to your practice is the one shown to you in the sign-up when you subscribe, and on your invoices after that. These terms state no price.

3. Words used in these terms

• Syntekta: our practice management software for architecture practices, reached over the internet.
• The core: the parts of Syntekta every subscription includes.
• A module: a part of Syntekta your practice can switch on or off for itself, at an added monthly fee.
• Users: the people who sign in as members of your practice, such as its partners, directors and staff.
• Guests: your clients, consultants and contractors, and anyone else your practice invites to a project. Guests are never users, and your practice does not pay for them.
• Band: the size of your practice, set by the number of users, which decides the fees.
• Onboarding: setting your practice up on Syntekta, including the onboarding sessions we hold with you and the import of your practice's existing information.
• Go-live: the day your subscription fee starts, explained in section 6.
• Paid period: the month or the year your latest subscription payment covers.
• Practice data: everything your practice, its users and its guests put into Syntekta, including files, records and messages.
• Account owner: the person named as owner at sign-up, or the person your practice later makes owner in Syntekta.
• An individual: a practice that is a natural person, such as a sole practitioner who subscribes in their own name rather than through a company, close corporation, partnership or trust.

4. Your subscription and the modules

Your subscription gives your users and guests the right to use the core and the modules your practice has switched on, for your practice's own work, for as long as the agreement lasts.

Your practice gets its own address on Syntekta, such as yourpractice.syntekta.app, where your users and guests sign in. It is set up as soon as the onboarding payment succeeds.

Your practice can switch modules on or off in Syntekta at any time, as section 9 explains.

We improve Syntekta continually. We may change how a feature looks or works, but we will not take away the substance of the core, or of a module your practice pays for, during a paid period.

5. Fees and VAT

Your practice pays a once-off onboarding fee, and then a subscription fee from go-live. The subscription fee is the fee for the core in your practice's band, plus the fee for each module your practice has switched on.

Your practice chooses to pay the subscription monthly, or for a year up front. A year paid up front is the investment of eleven months. The shortest subscription is one month.

Every figure we quote is shown without VAT and with VAT. VAT is charged at the rate in force when we invoice. We send a valid tax invoice for every payment, showing the amount without VAT, the VAT and the total, to the account owner by email. We send copies again at any time on request.

We charge no interest and no penalty on a late payment.

6. Onboarding and go-live

Your practice pays the onboarding fee when it signs up. We then agree the onboarding sessions with you.

Go-live, the day your subscription fee starts, is the day of your last onboarding session, or 30 days after you pay the onboarding fee, whichever comes first. If onboarding takes longer than 30 days, your subscription starts on the 30th day and onboarding carries on.

The onboarding fee is refunded in full if you ask before the first onboarding session has been held and before the import of your practice's information has begun. After either has happened, the onboarding fee is not refundable, except as section 12 explains for an individual. A refund is made within 30 days, to the card that paid it, and we issue a credit note against the onboarding invoice. When the onboarding fee is refunded, your subscription ends: at once if go-live has not yet happened, otherwise at the end of the paid period.

7. Paying by card

Your practice pays by card through Paystack, our payment provider. The onboarding fee is paid at sign-up. From go-live, the card your practice registers is charged at the start of each paid period: monthly on the same day of the month as go-live (or on the last day of a shorter month), or yearly on the anniversary of go-live.

Card details are entered on Paystack's own secure payment page. Your full card number never reaches us, and we never store it.

8. If a payment fails

If a payment fails, we tell the account owner by email and try the card again.

Your practice is never locked out for an unpaid fee. If a payment is still unpaid 30 days after the first failed attempt for that paid period, Syntekta becomes read-only for your practice until it is paid: everyone who signs in for your practice can still sign in, see everything and export your practice data, but nothing can be created or changed. Full use returns as soon as the payment succeeds. The account owner or a director of your practice can pay what is owed by card from inside Syntekta at any time.

9. Changing size or modules

Fees move by band, never by person. Every user counts towards your practice's band; guests never do.

When an added user takes your practice into a larger band, or your practice switches a module on, the higher fee applies at once. Your practice pays the difference for the rest of the paid period, worked out day by day, and the full new fee from the next paid period. We show you the amount before you confirm the change.

A module switched off stays on until the end of the paid period and is not charged after that. A move to a smaller band takes effect at the start of the next paid period.

10. Price changes

We may change our prices. We tell the account owner by email at least 30 days before a new price applies to your practice. A new price applies from the first paid period that starts after the notice ends. If your practice does not accept the new price, it may cancel before the new price applies, and it will not pay the new price.

A price your practice has already paid for a period never changes during that period.

11. Cancellation and refunds

Your practice can cancel its subscription at any time, in Syntekta or by email to the address in section 1. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the paid period in which your practice cancels. Your practice keeps full use of Syntekta until then and is not charged again. If your practice cancels before go-live, its subscription never starts, and section 6 says whether the onboarding fee is refunded.

The refunds are these:

• The onboarding fee is refunded as section 6 explains.
• A monthly subscription stops at the end of the month your practice has paid for. That month is not refunded.
• A year paid up front runs to the end of that year. No part of it is refunded, except as section 12 explains for an individual.
• If we stop offering Syntekta (section 20), or your practice cancels because it objects to a new provider (section 15) or to a transfer of this agreement (section 22), we refund what your practice paid for the time after the agreement ends.

Nothing in these terms takes away a right the law gives your practice, including the Consumer Protection Act's right to have a service that falls short put right, or to have a reasonable part of the price refunded. Where the law gives your practice a better right than these terms, the law applies.

12. If your practice is an individual

The law gives an individual rights that it does not give a company. If your practice is an individual, these apply as well as everything else in these terms:

• Seven days to change your mind. Under section 44 of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, you may cancel within seven days after you sign up, without a reason and without a penalty, and we refund everything you have paid within 30 days. Signing in and setting up does not end this right. It ends if, within those seven days, you ask us to hold an onboarding session or to begin the import and we do, because the service has then begun with your consent.
• Cancelling a year early. Under section 14 of the Consumer Protection Act, you may cancel a year paid up front at any time by giving us 20 business days' notice. We then refund what you paid for the year, less the monthly subscription fee for each month that has begun by the day the cancellation takes effect. In effect, the months you used are charged at the monthly fee instead of the year's lower rate, so you give up no more than the one month the year gave you free. If that comes to more than you paid, nothing more is owed.
• The end of a year. Between 80 and 40 business days before a year paid up front ends, we write to you with the date it ends and any changes that would apply after it. A year never renews for another year unless you choose that. If you do not choose, your subscription continues month by month at the monthly fee, and you may cancel it as section 11 explains.

13. Your data belongs to you

Your practice owns its practice data. We claim no ownership of it.

Your practice gives us the right to store, process, copy and display practice data only to provide Syntekta to your practice, to keep it secure, to support you, and as the law requires. We do not sell practice data, and we do not use it to advertise to anyone.

Your practice can export its practice data at any time while the agreement lasts, in common formats that other software can read, together with the files your practice has stored in Syntekta.

For 90 days after the agreement ends, your practice keeps read-only access to Syntekta, so that it can see and export everything. After those 90 days we delete the practice data, and the copies in our backups expire within 30 days after that. We confirm the deletion in writing on request. What the law requires us to keep, such as our invoices to your practice, we keep for as long as the law requires.

14. Personal information in practice data

Practice data includes personal information about your users, your clients and others. For that personal information, your practice is the responsible party and we are its operator, as the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 uses those words.

Schedule A to these terms is the written contract between your practice and us that the Act requires, and sets out how we look after that information.

15. Our providers, and where practice data goes

We run Syntekta with the providers named in Schedule A, clause A8, each under written terms that bind it to process information only for us and to protect it. Practice data is stored in Ireland, in the European Union, and some of it is processed in the United States, on the grounds set out in clause A10. We tell the account owner by email at least 30 days before we add or replace a provider that processes practice data. If your practice objects and we cannot meet its objection, your practice may cancel, with a refund as section 11 explains.

An AI or voice provider receives only what a feature needs to do its work.

By subscribing, your practice instructs us to store practice data in Ireland and to have it processed by these providers. Ireland is in the European Union, whose General Data Protection Regulation gives personal information protection substantially similar to the Protection of Personal Information Act. We use a provider outside South Africa only under a binding agreement that gives that level of protection, which is what section 72 of the Act asks of a transfer outside South Africa. Your practice may tell its clients and others where their information is kept by referring to this section.

16. Information we hold about the people who sign up

For the information we need to run your practice's account, we are the responsible party ourselves. It is the name, email address and telephone number of the account owner and of each user; the practice's name, invoicing name, address and VAT number; the record of payments, which never includes a full card number; and the record of sign-ins, kept for security.

Our privacy notice at syntekta.app/privacy says why we collect it, who receives it and where, how long we keep it, and how to see, correct or delete it, or complain to the Information Regulator.

17. Availability, backups and support

We work to keep Syntekta available at all times, apart from planned maintenance, which we announce in advance and schedule outside South African business hours where we can. If Syntekta is interrupted, we restore it as quickly as we can and tell the account owner what happened. Section 19 governs any claim.

We back practice data up regularly and test that it can be restored.

Support is by email to the address in section 1, during South African business hours.

18. What your practice is responsible for

Your practice is responsible for:

• who it gives access to, for keeping its users' sign-in details secret, and for telling us at once if it believes someone has signed in who should not have;
• the practice data it puts into Syntekta, including having the right to put it there and, for personal information, a lawful reason to process it;
• using Syntekta lawfully, and not trying to break, overload or get around its security, or to reach another practice's data; and
• its professional work. Syntekta helps your practice run its projects. What it works out or drafts, including fee calculations and anything written by its AI features, is checked by a person in your practice before it is relied on or sent to a client or an authority. The professional judgement, instructions, certificates and advice your practice gives remain your practice's own, as does its duty to its clients and to the South African Council for the Architectural Profession.

19. Our liability

We provide Syntekta with reasonable care and skill. If something goes wrong, tell us and we will put it right.

We are not liable for loss of profit, revenue, fees, business, contracts or goodwill, or for any other loss that does not arise naturally from what went wrong and that neither of us could reasonably have foreseen when the agreement was made.

Our total liability to your practice for all claims under or about this agreement is limited to the fees your practice paid us in the 12 months before the claim.

These limits do not apply to loss caused by our fraud or dishonesty, by gross negligence or wilful misconduct by us or anyone acting for us, or to anything else the law does not allow to be limited. Where the Consumer Protection Act applies to your practice, nothing here takes away a right it gives your practice.

20. Suspension and ending the agreement

We do not suspend your practice's access for an unpaid fee: section 8 explains how an unpaid fee makes Syntekta read-only until it is paid. We may suspend access at once, for the users or the parts of Syntekta concerned, only if that is needed to protect Syntekta, other practices or practice data from serious harm. We tell the account owner why straight away, and restore access as soon as the reason is resolved.

Either of us may end the agreement by written notice if the other materially breaches it and has not put the breach right within 20 business days of being asked to in writing, or if the other is placed in final liquidation or sequestration.

If we stop offering Syntekta, we tell the account owner at least 90 days before, and refund what your practice paid for the time after the agreement ends.

When the agreement ends, your practice's full use of Syntekta ends, and section 13 governs its practice data.

21. Complaints and disputes

If something goes wrong, tell us first, by email to the address in section 1. Say what went wrong and what you would like done about it. A person reads it, and we answer. If our answer does not settle it, ask for it to go to our director, who will look at it himself and reply.

If it is still not settled, either of us may suggest mediation. Mediation is optional: it happens only if we both agree, we then share its cost, and it is never a condition of going to court.

A practice to which the Consumer Protection Act applies may also take a complaint to the National Consumer Commission, and anyone may take a complaint about personal information to the Information Regulator. Nothing in these terms closes either route.

22. General

South African law governs this agreement, and any South African court with jurisdiction may hear a dispute about it. Nothing here requires your practice to give up its right to approach a court.

We send notices by email to the account owner, and your practice sends them to the email address in section 1. A notice by email is received on the next business day after it is sent. For the service of legal documents, our address is the physical address in section 1, and your practice's is the address it gave at sign-up for its invoices, or a later one it gives us in writing.

We may update these terms. We tell the account owner by email at least 30 days before an update applies to your practice. An update applies from the first paid period that starts after the notice ends, unless the law requires it sooner, and it never applies backwards. If your practice does not accept it, it may cancel before the update applies, and the update never applies to it. The version your practice accepted is recorded with its sign-up, and we send a copy of it, free, on request.

We may transfer this agreement to another company that takes over Syntekta, if we tell the account owner at least 30 days before and that company takes on all our duties under these terms. If your practice does not accept the transfer, it may cancel before it happens, with a refund as section 11 explains.

These terms, with the investment shown at sign-up and your invoices, are the whole agreement between us about Syntekta. If a court finds part of them unenforceable, the rest still applies. A delay in enforcing a right is not a waiver of it.

Schedule A: How we handle your practice's personal information

Your clients and staff trust your practice with their details. This schedule sets out how we look after the personal information your practice keeps in Syntekta, so that your practice can show its clients, its people and the Information Regulator that it is in safe hands.

The agreement

A1. What this schedule is

This schedule is the written contract between your practice and us that the Protection of Personal Information Act requires when a responsible party has an operator process personal information for it. Accepting the subscription terms at sign-up accepts this schedule. Where this schedule and the rest of the terms say different things about personal information, this schedule applies.

A2. Who decides, and who does the work

Your practice is the responsible party for the personal information in its practice data: it decides why that information is processed and how. We are its operator: we process that information for your practice, under this contract, and we do not decide what it is used for.

For the details we need to run your practice's account (section 16 of the terms), and for people who visit syntekta.app or book a demonstration, we are the responsible party ourselves, and our privacy notice at syntekta.app/privacy applies.

A3. The information, the people and the purpose

The people: your practice's users; its guests, such as clients, consultants and contractors; its employees, where your practice uses the people and leave features; and anyone your practice names in a project record, a file, a message or a voice note.

The information: names, contact details, roles and sign-in records; project records, registers, minutes, site diaries, snags, photographs and files; messages, voice notes and their transcripts; time records; fee, invoice and payment records; leave records, including sick leave; and anything else your practice chooses to put in.

The purpose: to provide Syntekta to your practice, to keep it secure, to support your practice, and to meet the law. Nothing else.

A4. We act only on your practice's instructions

Your practice's instructions are these terms, the settings your practice chooses in Syntekta, what its users do in Syntekta, and anything the account owner asks of us in writing. We process the information only on those instructions. If a law requires us to do something else with it, we tell your practice before we do, unless that law forbids us to.

We never use your practice's personal information for our own purposes. We do not sell it or use it to advertise, and we use AI and voice providers only on terms under which they do not train their models on it.

A5. Confidentiality

Everyone who works on Syntekta for us is bound in writing to keep your practice's information confidential, and reaches it only when their work needs it. We disclose it only to the providers in clause A8, to the services your practice connects (clause A9), or where the law requires it.

Keeping it safe

A6. The safeguards

We keep technical and organisational measures in place that protect the information against loss, damage, unauthorised destruction, and unlawful access or processing. These are in place today:

• Each practice's information is kept apart from every other practice's inside the database itself, by rules the database enforces on every request, not only by the app.
• Every connection to Syntekta is encrypted, and stored information is encrypted at rest by our database provider.
• Our people reach into your practice's information only when your practice grants access, for a limited time, or in an emergency through a separate, labelled route. Every such access is recorded. Our staff sign in with a second factor.
• The database's master key stays on our server, is used by one named part of our code for a listed set of jobs, and every use is recorded.
• Card numbers never reach us: they are typed on Paystack's own page.
• A picture of your screen when you ask for help, and one at each step while it guides you. Pictures are never stored. While it points at a step, it notices when you click there, so it can move on. It never reads your keys.

We identify the risks to the information that we can reasonably foresee, keep safeguards against them, check regularly that the safeguards work, and update them as risks change. We follow generally accepted information security practice for software of this kind, and review these measures at least once a year and after every significant change to Syntekta.

A7. Syntekta on the desktop

The desktop helper counts time only after your practice switches time counting on and each person agrees on their own computer. It records which program and file were open and for how long, on that computer, and sends a day to Syntekta only when the person confirms it. It never takes a screenshot to count time.

A picture of your screen when you ask for help, and one at each step while it guides you. Pictures are never stored. While it points at a step, it notices when you click there, so it can move on. It never reads your keys. We record that the person asked, when, and in which program.

Your practice tells its people about the helper before it switches time counting on.

Who else handles it, and where

A8. Our providers

These providers process your practice's personal information for us. Each works under a written agreement that binds it to process the information only on our instructions, to keep it confidential and to protect it to the standard of clause A6.

An AI or voice provider receives only what a feature needs to do its work, when a person uses that feature.

One public service receives a place, never a person: MET Norway receives the coordinates of a project site, to four decimal places, to give the site diary the day's weather. It receives no name and no other detail.

Paystack takes the card payments for our own invoices to your practice. It receives no practice data.

We tell the account owner by email at least 30 days before we add or replace a provider that processes your practice's personal information. If your practice objects and we cannot meet its objection, it may cancel, with a refund as section 11 of the terms explains.

A9. Services your practice connects

When your practice connects its own account at Xero, Sage, Payfast or SimplePay, we send that service what it needs for the job your practice connected it for, and receive its answers. That service works for your practice, under your practice's own agreement with it. Your practice can disconnect it in Syntekta at any time, and we then stop sending to it.

A10. Information sent outside South Africa

Your practice's personal information is stored in Ireland and is sent to these countries, for these purposes, on these grounds:

By subscribing, your practice instructs us to send its information to these countries for these purposes. We give at least 30 days' notice, as clause A8 says, before the stored information moves out of Ireland. Your practice may point its clients and staff to this clause to tell them where their information goes.

When something goes wrong, and when people ask

A11. If information is compromised

If we have reasonable grounds to believe that personal information in your practice's data has been accessed or acquired by someone not authorised to, we tell the account owner immediately: as soon as we have those grounds, not after our investigation ends. As we learn them, we give your practice:

• what happened and when, and which information and which people it touches;
• what it may mean for those people;
• what we have done and will do about it;
• what the people concerned can do to protect themselves; and
• who the unauthorised person is, if we know.

We help your practice notify the Information Regulator and the people concerned as soon as reasonably possible, in the form the Regulator prescribes. The notice to the people concerned may be delayed only if a public body responsible for preventing, detecting or investigating offences, or the Regulator, decides that it would impede a criminal investigation. We keep a record of every compromise and of what was done about it.

A12. Requests from the people the information is about

A person may ask your practice whether it holds information about them, to see it, to correct or delete it, or to object to its use. Your practice answers, and can correct and delete records in Syntekta itself. For anything it cannot reach, we do it on the account owner's written instruction.

If such a request reaches us instead, we pass it to your practice within two business days and do not answer it ourselves unless your practice asks us to. When your practice needs our help to answer, we give it in time for your practice to meet the 30 days the law allows.

How long, and the end

A13. Keeping, returning and deleting

While the subscription lasts, your practice decides how long it keeps each record, and we keep it for as long as your practice does.

When the agreement ends, your practice keeps read-only access for 90 days, to see everything and export it in common formats, with its files. After those 90 days we delete your practice's information so that it cannot be rebuilt, and the copies in our backups expire within 30 days after that. We confirm the deletion in writing on request.

We keep only what a law requires us to keep, for as long as it requires: our own invoices to your practice, never your practice's data.

A14. Showing that we comply

Once a year, and after any compromise, we answer your practice's reasonable written questions about how we meet this schedule, in writing and free of charge, and give it what it reasonably needs to show the Information Regulator that its operator meets the Act.

A15. What your practice looks after

As the responsible party, your practice:

• has a lawful reason for each piece of personal information it puts into Syntekta;
• tells its clients, its people and others what it collects and why, and may point them to clause A10 for where it goes;
• keeps special personal information and children's information in Syntekta only where the law allows it, such as the sick leave records an employer keeps;
• keeps the information accurate, and decides how long to keep it; and
• tells its people about the desktop helper before it switches time counting on.

A16. How long these promises last

Our duties of confidentiality and security last for as long as we hold any of your practice's personal information, after the agreement ends as well.

A17. Claims, and people's own rights

Section 19 of the terms governs claims between your practice and us. Nothing in this schedule or in the terms limits a right that a person whose information it is has under the Act, including the right to complain to the Information Regulator and to claim damages.