Terms of Service

These Terms of Service ("Terms") govern your access to and use of Novato, a product of NADAR & CO PTY LTD, trading as Novato Tech (ACN 671116091, ABN 36671116091), based in Australia ("Novato", "we", "us"). By creating an account or using Novato, you agree to these Terms.

1. Who these Terms apply to

A "Customer" is a business or individual who signs up for a Novato plan to manage their projects and compliance. A "Worker" is a subcontractor or tradie invited by a Customer, who creates their own account and agrees to these Terms to upload and manage their own compliance documents. A "Client" is a person a Customer invites to follow a project in the client portal. References to "you" apply to whichever role you hold.

2. The service

Novato helps builders and their subcontractors plan, run and record construction projects: a build plan with tasks and key dates, safety records such as method statements, permits and toolbox talks, subcontractor credentials and licence checks, costs, orders and claims, and a portal for the client. Reading documents and drafting content use AI-assisted tools ("assists"). See our AI Policy for what they do and what data they involve.

Novato is a record-keeping and checking tool, not a guarantee of compliance. Customers remain solely responsible for meeting their own legal, work health and safety, and licensing obligations, and for making their own judgement about whether a worker is fit to be on site. Automated checks reduce manual effort but can make mistakes. Customers should not rely on them as their only check for high-risk decisions.

AI-drafted content is a starting point, not a finished document. We do not guarantee that AI-drafted or AI-suggested content is accurate, complete, or suitable for your project. You are responsible for reviewing and editing it before relying on it or sending it to a worker, client, or third party.

3. Accounts

• You must provide accurate information when creating an account and keep it up to date.
• You are responsible for activity that occurs under your account and for keeping your sign-in details secure.
• Customers are responsible for the accuracy of information they provide about their business, and for the conduct of team members they add to their account.

4. Subscriptions and billing

• Paid plans are billed in advance on a recurring monthly basis and processed securely by our payment processor.
• Plans include limits (such as companies, active projects, subcontractors per project, texts and assist credit each month) as described on our pricing page at the time of purchase. Assist credit starts again each month. Packs you buy last 12 months.
• Subscriptions renew until cancelled. You can cancel at any time from your account settings. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing period.
• Except where required by the Australian Consumer Law, fees already paid are non-refundable.
• We may change our pricing with reasonable notice before it applies to your next billing cycle.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

• Upload documents you know to be fraudulent, forged, or belonging to someone else without authorisation.
• Use Novato to store or process information unrelated to your construction projects and their compliance.
• Attempt to interfere with, reverse engineer, or gain unauthorised access to the platform or other users' data.
• Use the service in a way that breaches any applicable law, including privacy and anti-discrimination law.

6. Content you upload, and AI-drafted content

You retain ownership of documents and information you upload to Novato. You grant us a licence to store, process, and display that content solely for the purpose of operating the service for you and the Customer you are associated with. You are responsible for ensuring you have the right to upload any document you provide.

Where you use an AI-drafting feature, the input you provide and the output Novato generates for you are treated the same as other content you create in Novato. You own it, and the same storage and processing licence above applies. See our AI Policy for how this content is processed by our AI provider.

7. Our intellectual property

The Novato platform, including its software, design, and branding, is owned by NADAR & CO PTY LTD, trading as Novato Tech. Nothing in these Terms transfers any of that intellectual property to you.

8. Termination

You may stop using Novato and close your account at any time. We may suspend or terminate accounts that breach these Terms, or where reasonably necessary to protect the security or integrity of the platform. Where practical, we will give notice before doing so.

9. Disclaimers and liability

Novato is provided on an "as is" basis. To the maximum extent permitted by law, we exclude all warranties other than those that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law. Nothing in these Terms excludes, restricts, or modifies any consumer guarantee, right, or remedy under the Australian Consumer Law that cannot lawfully be excluded.

Your data and backups. We take reasonable steps to protect the information held in Novato. This includes hosting it in Australia, keeping regular backups of our database, scanning uploaded files for malware, and controlling who can reach it. You remain responsible for keeping your own copies of the records you need and for exporting them regularly. We do not promise that Novato will be uninterrupted or free of errors, or that information will never be lost, corrupted or accessed without authorisation.

Events outside our control. To the maximum extent permitted by law, NADAR & CO PTY LTD, trading as Novato Tech, is not liable for loss or damage, including the loss, corruption or disclosure of data, caused by an event beyond our reasonable control. This includes a cyber attack, malicious software or unauthorised access by a third party, an outage or failure of a hosting or other supplier, and a failure of the internet, as long as we had taken the reasonable security steps described above. This does not limit our duties under privacy law, including telling you and affected people about an eligible data breach.

Limit of our liability. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the total liability of NADAR & CO PTY LTD, trading as Novato Tech, arising out of or in connection with these Terms or your use of Novato is limited to the amount you paid us for the service in the 12 months preceding the claim. We are not liable for indirect, consequential, or special loss, including loss of data, profit, revenue, contracts or goodwill, and loss arising from a worker being permitted on site based on information checked through the platform.

What these limits do not affect. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, wilful misconduct, death or personal injury caused by us, or anything else that the law does not allow us to limit. Where a consumer guarantee under the Australian Consumer Law can lawfully be limited, our liability for a failure to meet it is limited, at our choice, to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

10. Changes to these Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. We will notify account holders of material changes by email or in-app notice before they take effect.

11. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia. You submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of New South Wales for any dispute arising from these Terms or your use of Novato.

12. Contact us

Questions about these Terms can be sent to support@novato.com.au.