AI Use Disclosure

Effective Date: September 15, 2026
Contact Email: info@shinobimedia.ca
Domain: https://simpleloonie.ca
Applies to: the shared SimpleLoonie.ca cloud service and private instances

SimpleLoonie is built for Canadian small businesses and sole proprietors, and it uses artificial intelligence ("AI") to read the receipts and invoices you upload. This page explains exactly what the AI does, what leaves your account when it runs, where that data goes, and what you remain responsible for. It is written to be read alongside our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service.

1. What the AI Actually Does

SimpleLoonie has one AI feature: document extraction. When you upload a receipt, invoice or statement, the file is sent to a language model that reads it and returns structured fields, including:

• Merchant name, transaction name and description, and the date of issue
• Total amount and currency code (CAD by default, plus other ISO 4217 currencies)
• Tax rate and tax amount, covering GST, HST, PST, QST and foreign VAT
• A suggested category and project, chosen from the lists that already exist in your own account
• Individual line items, so a single receipt can be split into several transactions
• The full recognised text of the document (OCR), stored so you can search it later

Extracted values land in your Unsorted queue as an editable form shown beside the original document. Nothing becomes a transaction in your ledger until you review it and save it. You can edit the extraction prompt and the fields it targets under Settings → AI.

What the AI does not do: it does not give tax or accounting advice, does not file anything with the CRA or any provincial authority, does not move money, does not reconcile bank accounts on its own, and does not post transactions to your ledger without your confirmation.

2. AI Providers and Models

SimpleLoonie is provider-neutral. It tries the providers you have configured in priority order and uses the first one that returns a usable result. The default order and default models are:

• Google Gemini — gemini-flash-latest (tried first by default)
• OpenAI — gpt-4o-mini
• Mistral — mistral-medium-latest
• Any OpenAI-compatible endpoint — including a model your own organisation operates

You can change the order, the models and the keys in Settings → AI. On the shared service, scans run against keys we operate unless you supply your own. On a private instance, the keys and endpoints are yours throughout, so every scan runs under your own agreement with that provider. We are not responsible for the output of a model we do not run.

3. What Is Sent for AI Processing

Each scan sends exactly two things to the AI provider:

• The document itself — rendered as images, up to the first 4 pages of a multi-page file
• The extraction prompt — the field, category and project names in your account plus the short hints attached to them

Nothing else goes with it. We do not send your transaction history, your other uploaded files, your account email, your billing details or your usage data to the AI provider.

⚠️ Note: the document is sent as-is — not anonymized or redacted. Whatever appears on the receipt (names, addresses, card digits, licence or account numbers) is sent with it. By uploading a document you consent to that transfer.

4. Where Processing Happens (Cross-Border)

SimpleLoonie is a Canadian product, but the AI processing is not performed in Canada. OpenAI and Google process requests primarily in the United States; Mistral processes primarily in the European Union. The cloud service itself runs on Google Cloud infrastructure in the United States, with uploaded files held in Cloudflare R2 object storage.

This means your receipts leave Canada and, while they are outside Canada, are subject to the laws of the country where they are processed, including lawful access by foreign authorities. We disclose this so you can make an informed decision before uploading, consistent with our transparency obligations under PIPEDA.

If your data must stay in Canada — for example under a client agreement, a professional obligation, or a provincial public-sector rule — the shared service is not the right fit. Ask us about a private instance: a dedicated deployment in the region you specify, against a database you own and an AI provider or endpoint you choose.

5. What We Keep

• The structured result of each scan (parsed fields and recognised text) is cached against the uploaded file, so reopening a document does not re-run — and does not re-bill — a scan.
• Token counts per scan, used for plan limits and billing. These are numbers only, not content.
• We do not keep a separate log of raw prompts or model responses beyond that cached result.

On the provider side, retention is governed by that provider's own terms, not ours. We do not ask any provider to train on your documents, but whether a provider may do so depends on the provider and on the tier the API key belongs to. Free and evaluation tiers are frequently the exception — Google's free tier, for example, may use submitted content to improve its products — so if you bring your own key, check which tier it is on before scanning client records. Current terms: OpenAI, Google, Mistral.

6. Human Involvement

You are the human in the loop. Every extraction is presented for your review next to the original document, every field is editable, and nothing is recorded until you save it. Corrections you make stay in your account and are not used to train any model.

SimpleLoonie staff do not review AI output as a matter of course, and there is no internal accuracy-assurance process behind your scans. If an extraction is wrong in a way you think is a bug rather than a bad receipt, email us at info@shinobimedia.ca.

7. Accuracy, Limitations and CRA Records

AI extraction is probabilistic. In Canadian practice, the cases that go wrong most often are:

• Faded thermal receipts, creased paper, photos taken at an angle, and handwriting
• Receipts carrying two taxes at once — GST + QST in Quebec, GST + PST in BC, SK and MB — where the totals can be split incorrectly
• Bilingual and French-language receipts, and comma decimal separators
• Tips, deposits, bottle and eco fees, returns, and foreign-currency conversions on card slips
• Documents longer than four pages, of which only the first four pages are read

The AI does not verify that a supplier's GST/HST registration number is real or active, and it cannot tell you whether an expense is deductible or whether an input tax credit is claimable. Those determinations depend on documentary requirements you must satisfy yourself.

⚠️ Keep your originals. The original receipt or invoice remains your record of account, and the CRA generally requires you to keep records for six years from the end of the last tax year they relate to. An AI-extracted field is a convenience for bookkeeping — it is not a substitute for the source document, and deleting the original because SimpleLoonie has read it is not a safe practice.

⚠️ Important: we make no guarantee of accuracy or completeness. SimpleLoonie is not a CPA firm, is not a substitute for a Chartered Professional Accountant, tax preparer or legal counsel, and does not provide tax advice. Verify every figure before you file a GST/HST return, a T2125, a T2, or any other return. Use at your own risk.

8. Automated Decision-Making

SimpleLoonie makes no decisions about you. The AI reads a document and proposes values that you approve, edit or discard. It is not used to decide anything about your eligibility, credit, pricing, employment or access to a service, and we do not use it to profile you or to score your behaviour.

We treat PIPEDA and applicable provincial privacy legislation — including Quebec's Law 25 and the personal information protection acts of Alberta and British Columbia — as the framework governing this processing. Quebec's Law 25 requires that you be told when a decision is based exclusively on automated processing of your personal information. No such decision is made here: a person — you — approves every extracted value before it is recorded.

9. Your Choices

AI extraction is the core of the cloud service and cannot be switched off there. It is, however, avoidable:

• Enter transactions manually or import a CSV — both paths record data without sending anything to an AI provider.
• Bring your own key, so scans run under your own agreement with the provider and on the tier you choose.
• Ask for a private instance, so the database, the storage and the AI provider key are all in accounts your organisation owns.
• Don't upload it. If a document is too sensitive to leave Canada, keep it out of the cloud service.

10. Your Rights and How to Reach Us

You can ask for access to the personal information we hold, ask us to correct it, withdraw your consent, or ask us to delete your account and its data. Write to info@shinobimedia.ca.

If you are not satisfied with how we handle a privacy matter, you may complain to the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, or to your provincial privacy commissioner if you are in Quebec, Alberta or British Columbia.

11. Changes to This Disclosure

We update this page when the models, providers or data flows behind SimpleLoonie change. The effective date at the top reflects the most recent revision, and material changes to how your documents are processed will be announced by email before they take effect.