Last updated: October 6, 2026
Catering Calc's free tier is data-minimal and works offline: the free calculator (food, drinks, ice and supplies) never requires an account, and your guest counts and any custom defaults you set there are stored only on your own device. Nothing you calculate is ever sent anywhere. Pro requires a free Catering Calc account (email/password, or Google/Apple sign-in), and that account is how your purchase and your saved events (names, calculator inputs, and checklists) stay in sync between the app and this website. Account data and Pro saved events are stored on our behalf by Google Firebase (Cloud Firestore and Firebase Authentication); we never see your payment details, which Apple, Google, or Stripe handle directly.
We (the developer of Catering Calc, "Jack-High Software LLC", doing business as Catering Calc) do not operate our own backend server. account and Pro data is stored in Google Firebase, a third-party service we configure but which does the actual hosting. Using the free tier without signing in (including the free calculator for food, drinks, ice and supplies, on the web or in the app) sends nothing you calculate: your guest counts, calculation inputs, and any custom defaults you set stay on your own device. What the app does send is described below: the free tier's banner ad, and usage analytics if you allow them.
If you sign in, which is required to buy or use Pro and optional otherwise, we collect the email address and authentication identifier your sign-in method provides (Google, Apple, or the email/password you choose). While signed in with an active Pro subscription or lifetime purchase, we store your subscription/purchase status (so it can be checked from any device you sign into) and the saved events you create, meaning their names, the calculator inputs behind them, their checklist items and the quote details you write on them (such as your client's name and the venue), so they're available on both the app and this website. If you fill in a business profile for your client quotes, we store it on your account too: your business name, phone, email, address, quote terms and quote defaults, and the logo image you choose from your photos. None of this applies to the free tier: it never asks you to sign in and never syncs anything.
The free tier of the mobile app shows a single banner ad, served by Google's AdMob SDK. AdMob may collect device and advertising identifiers, approximate location, and app-usage data to serve and measure ads, per Google's own privacy policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy. This data collection is performed by Google, not by us directly, and stops entirely once you upgrade to Pro (which removes ads). You can limit ad tracking through your device's system privacy settings at any time.
The mobile app uses Google Analytics for Firebase to see which features get used, and in particular which Pro features a free user taps on: when you tap a Pro calculator or Saved Events without Pro, the app records which one, and nothing else. If you answer who you are planning for, your own event or your clients', it also records that answer as one of those two words. It carries no guest count, no price, no event name and nothing you typed. The app asks you once, on its home screen, and you can change your answer at any time under About, Usage analytics. Until you accept, and if you decline, analytics storage is denied: Google Analytics sets no app instance identifier and receives only consent-mode signals, which it uses for aggregate modelling. Those signals still carry the events above, the app's version, your phone's model, system version, language and time zone, and Firebase's installation identifier, but nothing that tells your visits apart. With your consent it uses an app instance identifier to tell visits apart. In every case it is never given your account, your email or your name, never reads your phone's advertising identifier, never personalises ads, and Google signals are off. Google may derive an approximate location from your IP address, as it does for the website. This applies to every user of the app, free or Pro.
Subscription and lifetime purchases are processed entirely by Apple's App Store or Google's Play Store. We never see or store your payment card details. Apple and Google handle billing directly, and the app only receives a confirmation that a purchase was completed.
This website uses Google Analytics 4 to understand traffic and which pages and calculators people use: for example how many visitors try the free calculator, reach a Pro feature that needs an upgrade, or start a checkout. Full analytics, with cookies, runs only after you accept the cookie banner. If you accept partway through a visit, the pages and calculators you used on that page before accepting are sent then, once. Until you accept, and if you decline, the tag is set to deny analytics and advertising storage and no analytics cookie is written, but it still sends Google cookieless signals with nothing in them that tells your visits apart, which Google uses only to estimate visits and ad results in aggregate. The choice you make is stored in your browser so you are asked once for the whole site. If you arrived from one of our Google ads and accepted the banner, Google Ads also records whether that visit led to a sign-up or a purchase, so we can tell which ads work. We don't use Google's ad personalisation or remarketing. With consent, Google Analytics sets cookies and a device identifier to tell visits apart, and we receive aggregate, non-personally-identifying usage data. Google signals and ads personalization are turned off for this property. Nothing you calculate is sent: guest counts are reported only as a range, and inputs, costs, event names and notes never leave your browser. If you answer who you are planning for on the free calculator, your own event or your clients', the answer is kept in your browser and reported as one of those two words, nothing more. Analytics data is not linked to your Catering Calc account. If you sign up for launch email updates, we store the email address you provide solely to notify you when the app goes live, and never sell or share it with third parties.
The mobile app carries no crash-reporting software. Its third-party data collection is the AdMob banner on the free tier and the usage analytics described above.
Catering Calc is a professional planning tool intended for caterers, personal chefs, and event planners, and is not directed at children under 13. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children.
For the free tier, the primary control is on-device: deleting the app removes all locally-stored guest counts, checklists, and custom defaults immediately and permanently. There's no account or server-side data to begin with. If you have an account, you can delete it yourself from About in the app or from your Account page on this site; that removes your sign-in identity, your synced saved events and your Pro entitlement record. Details, including what happens to a store subscription, are on the support page under Deleting your account. Usage analytics in the app can be turned off at any time under About, Usage analytics. For ad-related data collected by Google, use your device's ad privacy settings or visit https://adssettings.google.com.
If how the app or this site handles data changes again, we will update this page and change the "Last updated" date above.
Questions about this policy can be sent to support@cateringcalc.com.