WhatsApp and your data
Your number. Your permission. Your data.
BakiCheck reads the order messages your shops send to your WhatsApp Business number. It does this only with your permission. It writes them up as orders and shows you what each shop owes before you accept. This page says exactly how that connection is made, what we read, what we never read, and how you switch it off.
On this page
We connect to your own WhatsApp Business number. Not ours.
BakiCheck does not give you a new number. Your shops do not message BakiCheck. They message you, at the number they already have saved. You keep using the WhatsApp Business app on your phone as you do now. You can still call, reply, send photos and voice notes, and run your business from it.
The connection is made in your name, on your own WhatsApp Business account, on Meta’s own permission screen. BakiCheck is registered with Meta as a technology provider. That is Meta’s name for software that connects to a business’s own WhatsApp account, with that business’s permission.
Four things you agree to. One at a time. In plain words.
When you connect, you see four separate screens. You tap each one yourself. Nobody connects your number for you.
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Three things that change in your own WhatsApp.
Broadcast lists become read only. WhatsApp Web and Desktop are unlinked. You must open the WhatsApp Business app on your phone at least once every 13 days, or Meta pauses the connection. These are Meta’s rules for this kind of connection, not ours. We show them before you agree, not after.
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That we read the messages your shops send you.
To turn them into orders, and what we keep and for how long. The detail is below on this page, and in the privacy policy.
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How far back we look, once, to find your shops.
You choose 30, 90 or 180 days. We read that window one time, to find which numbers are shops and what they usually order. We do not read a year of your chats just because Meta would let us.
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Meta’s own terms, on Meta’s own page, in Meta’s words.
We do not shorten or restyle them. We never ask for your Facebook password anywhere in BakiCheck.
check that the consent wording on these four screens is adequate under the Digital Personal Data Protection Act 2023 without overstating what Meta’s own page covers.
We read:
- One to one messages sent to your business number from a phone number you have added as a shop: voice notes and texts.
- The sender’s phone number and the time the message came, to match it to the right shop in your own records.
- For a number you have not added: the number, the time, and the text if it was text. Held for 7 days so you can decide if it is a new shop. A voice note from an unknown number is not transcribed or played until you add the shop.
We do not read:
- Group messages. Not a policy. A fact: Meta does not deliver them to connected software.
- Anything you send to a shop. We only receive what comes in.
- Messages that do not look like orders. A greeting, a complaint, a forward, a family message that came to your business number is filtered on its shape before any content is read. Its content is never stored.
- Photos. A photo from a known shop becomes an empty card for you to type into. We do not download photos from unknown numbers at all.
- Any shop’s messages to anyone else, any shop’s contacts, or anything outside the one to one chat with your number.
- Your Facebook or WhatsApp login. Meta’s page handles it. We never see it.
Used for one thing. Then kept on a clock.
We use a shop’s message and the sender’s number for one purpose: to create an order card for you and attach it to the right shop in your records. That is the whole list.
We do not use it for advertising. We do not sell it. We do not share it with any other distributor, ever, even one who supplies the same shop. Each distributor’s account sees only that distributor’s data. The software enforces that, not just a policy.
The audio of a voice note is kept for 90 days so you can replay a disputed order. Then it is deleted. It is never used to train anything, ours or a vendor’s. The speech to text provider gets the audio for that one job only, and its contract bars keeping it or training on it. The full retention clock is in the privacy policy.
Disconnect any time. Here is what happens.
You can disconnect your WhatsApp number from BakiCheck from inside the app, in one tap, at any time. You can also remove BakiCheck’s access from your own Meta Business settings. That works just as well. You do not have to ask us. Nobody will phone you to talk you out of it.
- We stop receiving new messages from your number at once.
- Your WhatsApp Business app goes back to normal. Broadcast lists, Web and Desktop come back, under Meta’s rules.
- Your orders, shops and hisaab stay in your BakiCheck account. They are your books. You can keep using the app without the WhatsApp connection, or ask us for a full copy of your data as a file.
- Message audio, transcripts and raw messages stay on their normal deletion clock: 7 days for raw messages, 90 days for audio and transcripts.
When you close your account entirely, every message, transcript, audio file, unknown number row and connection record is deleted within 30 days. We write to you to confirm it. Before that, you can ask for a copy of your orders, shops and baki as a file. You will get it. No notice period. No lock.
If you want anything deleted sooner, write to [email protected].
The limits. Said once, in one place.
- The connection is not live yet. Meta is verifying our business. Until that is done, you cannot connect a WhatsApp number. You can still use the full product by entering orders in the app by voice or by typing, with the same baki answer. We will update this page the day the connection goes live. We will not write "live" one day before it is.
- Meta’s rules for this kind of connection apply. Broadcast lists read only. Web and Desktop unlinked. Open the app once every 13 days. The app reminds you before the 13 days run out.
- Audio older than 14 days cannot be fetched. When you first connect, we can find your shops from recent chats. But we cannot read voice notes older than 14 days, because Meta no longer holds the file. Your old orders are not backfilled.
- History is capped at 180 days when you first connect. That is Meta’s ceiling.
- Hindi, Hinglish and Indian English only for now. Tamil and other languages are not supported yet. If your shops order in Tamil, tell us. It is on our list. It is not here today, and we will not pretend it is.
- One WhatsApp number per account today.
- If Meta refuses our verification, there is no workaround that keeps the promise that your shops change nothing. We would tell you. You would still have the app without the connection.
What this is connected to
- Tally (optional add on) Not linked