Privacy Policy — RotaCell

The short version: RotaCell has no user accounts, no login, no analytics or advertising SDKs, and does not sell or share your data with anyone. Your rota, pay details, and personal notes are stored only on your device and, if you turn on iCloud Backup, in your own private iCloud account — never on a RotaCell server, because RotaCell doesn't operate one that stores your personal data.

RotaCell (“RotaCell,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) makes a shift-work rota, pay, and leave-tracking app for iOS. This Privacy Policy explains what data the app handles, where it lives, and what — if anything — ever leaves your device.

1. Data you create in the app

When you set up your rota, jobs, pay rate, leave, mileage log, notes, tips, or childcare tags, that information is stored locally on your device using Apple's on-device database framework (SwiftData). We do not have a server that stores this data, and we cannot see it.

If you enable Cloud Backup (Settings → Data & Backup), a snapshot of this data is written to your own iCloud Drive, under your own Apple ID. This is a one-way backup you control — RotaCell does not access, read, or transmit that backup anywhere else. It is subject to Apple's own iCloud terms and privacy policy, not ours, because Apple — not RotaCell — operates iCloud.

2. Camera, Photo Library, and Calendar access

RotaCell asks for these permissions only when you use the matching feature, and only for that feature:

Camera — used only for “Scan a Printed Rota.” The photo is processed entirely on your device (on-device text recognition) to detect shift codes; it is never uploaded anywhere.
Photo Library — used only if you choose to scan a rota photo already saved on your device, processed the same way, on-device only.
Calendar — used only if you choose to import shift-like events from your phone's existing calendar app. Read locally, never uploaded.

You can revoke any of these permissions at any time in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security; the related feature simply won't work until re-granted.

3. Location & commute estimates

RotaCell does not collect or track your live GPS location, and does not request “Location” permission from iOS. The “Time to Leave” / commute-estimate features work from an address you type in yourself (e.g. a saved “Home” address or a shift's location). When you use these features, that address text is sent to Apple's MapKit / Maps service to calculate a route and travel time, and to open Apple Maps directly when you tap “Open in Maps.” That exchange is governed by Apple's own privacy policy, not RotaCell's — we do not operate the mapping service and do not receive or store the result on any server of ours.

4. Other network requests the app makes

RotaCell is offline-first — nearly everything works with no network connection at all. The few network calls it does make are:

Public holiday lookup — when relevant, the app asks a public holiday API for the list of public holidays for a given country and year (e.g. “UK, 2026”). No personal data is included — just a country code and a year.
Tax reference data — the app fetches a static, publicly-hosted reference file describing country tax bands/rules, used only to show a plain-English “how tax roughly works here” card. No personal or usage data is sent with this request.
Apple's own services — iCloud (backup, if enabled), MapKit (commute estimates, if used), and Apple Push/local notification delivery. These are governed by Apple's privacy policy.

None of these requests include your name, your rota, your pay figures, or any other personal data you've entered into the app.

5. Notifications

Shift reminders, Leave-By alerts, and the Fatigue Risk notice are scheduled and delivered as local, on-device notifications — RotaCell does not operate a push-notification server and does not send your schedule to Apple (or anyone else) to trigger them.

6. Apple Watch app

If you use the RotaCell Apple Watch app, your shift/rota data syncs directly between your iPhone and your own paired Apple Watch via Apple's on-device WatchConnectivity framework. It does not pass through any RotaCell server.

7. Analytics, advertising, and tracking

RotaCell contains no third-party analytics SDK, no advertising SDK, and no crash-reporting SDK that transmits data off your device. We do not track you across apps or websites, and there is no “Do Not Track”-style setting needed because there is nothing to opt out of.

8. Children's privacy

RotaCell is not directed at children and is not knowingly used to collect data from children under 13 (or the relevant minimum age in your country). Since the app collects no data on any server in the first place, there is no data of this kind for us to hold.

9. Data retention & deletion

All of your data lives on your device (and, only if you opted in, in your own iCloud account).

Deleting the app removes its on-device data.
Deleting a Cloud Backup — from within RotaCell's Data & Backup settings, or directly in your iCloud Drive — removes the backup copy from iCloud.
Because we never held a copy in the first place, there is no separate “request my data be deleted from RotaCell's servers” process — there's no server copy to delete.

10. Your rights (GDPR / UK GDPR / CCPA, etc.)

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, or export your personal data, and to object to certain processing. Because RotaCell does not collect or store your personal data on any server, most of these requests are already fully in your control on-device (see §9). For anything else, contact us using the details below.

11. Changes to this policy

We'll update the “Last updated” date above when this policy changes, and — for any material change — aim to surface it in the app itself (e.g. via a Settings/About notice) rather than silently.

12. Contact us

support@rotacell.com
Rodolfo Zorrilla, developer of RotaCell