1. About these terms
1.1 These terms apply to your use of Handbook Portal, an online platform for publishing staff handbooks and policies. Handbook Portal is provided by HR On Call Ltd, a company registered in England and Wales (company number 16891106), whose registered office is at 3 Pethill Close, Plymouth, PL6 8NL ("we", "us", "our"). Our VAT number is 515981373.
1.2 By creating an account, ticking the box to agree, or using Handbook Portal, you agree to these terms on behalf of yourself and the business you represent ("you", "your"). If you do not agree, please do not use Handbook Portal.
1.3 These terms are for businesses. Handbook Portal is not offered to consumers.
1.4 Schedule 1 (data processing terms) forms part of these terms. How we handle personal data about you is explained in our privacy notice, and our use of cookies in our cookie policy.
2. Definitions
- "Account" means your Handbook Portal account, which you sign in to with your email address.
- "Workspace" means the signed-in area where you set up and manage handbooks.
- "Handbook" (or portal) means one online staff handbook for one organisation, with its own web address, branding, policies and staff.
- "Reseller" means an HR consultant or consultancy on the reseller plan, providing handbooks to its own clients.
- "End Client" means a business client of a Reseller for whom the Reseller runs a handbook.
- "Staff" means the people who read a handbook, whether they sign in individually or with a shared password.
- "Content" means the policies, documents, logos, branding and other material uploaded to a handbook.
- "Portal Data" means the personal data held in a handbook, such as Staff names, email addresses, groups, sign-in records and acknowledgement records.
3. The plans
3.1 Reseller plan. For HR consultants. You can add a handbook for each of your End Clients, present it under their brand, and charge them whatever you choose. Each handbook is billed to you separately.
3.2 Direct plan. For an organisation running a handbook for its own staff, for example an in-house HR professional or a business owner. The direct plan includes one handbook for your own organisation.
3.3 Every handbook includes the features described on our website at the time, including Word import, branding, branded PDF downloads, version history, acknowledgements (where individual Staff accounts are used), admins and groups. We may improve or change features over time, but we will not materially reduce the core service of a paid handbook during a billing period.
4. Your account
4.1 You must give us accurate details when you sign up and keep them up to date, including your billing details.
4.2 You are responsible for keeping your password secure and for everything done through your account, including by anyone you give admin access to. Tell us straight away at [email protected] if you think your account has been misused.
4.3 You are responsible for the Staff and admins you invite, the shared passwords you set, and the access settings you choose for each handbook.
4.4 You must be at least 18 and authorised to act for the business you sign up for.
5. Free trials and demo handbooks
5.1 Each new paid handbook starts with a 7-day free trial unless we agree otherwise. If you do not cancel the handbook before the trial ends, billing starts automatically at the price shown when you added it.
5.2 On the reseller plan you may create one free demo handbook to show prospective clients how Handbook Portal works. A demo handbook is clearly marked as a demo on every page, PDF and email, is limited to 10 people, and must not be used as a live staff handbook or sold or provided to anyone as a paid service. You can turn it into a paid handbook at any time.
5.3 We may withdraw or change free trials and demo handbooks for new sign-ups at any time.
6. Fees and payment
6.1 Our current prices are £20 + VAT a month for each handbook on the reseller plan and £30 + VAT a month for the handbook on the direct plan. The price that applies to a handbook is the one shown in your workspace when you add it.
6.2 All fees are exclusive of VAT, which we will add at the prevailing rate.
6.3 Card payments. Unless we agree invoicing with you, fees are paid monthly in advance by card through our payment provider, Stripe, starting when the free trial ends and then on the same date each month for each handbook. You authorise us to take these payments until you cancel.
6.4 Invoicing. Where we agree to invoice you, we will invoice monthly for each active handbook and payment is due on receipt of the invoice.
6.5 If a payment fails or an invoice is unpaid, we will let you know. If it is still unpaid 14 days after that, we may suspend the affected handbooks until payment is made.
6.6 We may change our prices by giving you at least 30 days' notice by email. The new price applies from your next billing date after the notice period. If you do not want to pay the new price, you can cancel before it takes effect.
6.7 Fees are non-refundable, and we do not give refunds or credits for part months, unused handbooks or periods of non-use, except where the law requires it.
7. Cancelling a handbook
7.1 You can cancel a handbook at any time from your workspace or by emailing [email protected]. You can choose to cancel straight away or at the end of the current billing period. Either way, billing for that handbook stops at the end of the period you have already paid for, with no further charges.
7.2 When a handbook is cancelled, Staff can no longer access it. We keep its Content and Portal Data for 90 days so that you can reactivate it and carry on where you left off. We will email you before the end of that period. After 90 days the handbook, including its policies, version history and acknowledgement records, is permanently deleted.
7.3 It is your responsibility to download anything you need to keep, such as the acknowledgement records export and PDFs, before a handbook is deleted. Some organisations need to keep acknowledgement records for several years, and you should keep your own copy for that purpose.
7.4 Only the account holder can cancel a handbook. On the reseller plan, End Clients and their admins cannot cancel or change billing.
8. Resellers
8.1 This section applies if you are on the reseller plan.
8.2 White label. You may present each handbook to your End Client under their brand, and you may describe it as a service you provide. Handbook Portal does not show our name to Staff. You must not claim to own or have developed the software.
8.3 Your clients. You are responsible for your relationship with each End Client, including marketing, pricing, billing, collecting payment, contracts, first-line support and any disputes. You may charge End Clients whatever you choose. We have no contract with your End Clients, and we will not bill them or contact them about billing.
8.4 Setup. You are responsible for setting up each handbook, including uploading and checking Content, branding, access settings and inviting Staff and admins. We provide the platform and do not set up handbooks or upload Content for you unless we agree otherwise in writing.
8.5 Client admins. You may give people at your End Client admin access to their handbook. You are responsible for what they do, and for which settings you lock.
8.6 Accuracy. You must describe Handbook Portal accurately to your End Clients and must not make promises about it on our behalf.
8.7 Data. You must have a written contract with each End Client that allows you to use Handbook Portal to process their Portal Data and that meets the requirements of data protection law. See Schedule 1.
8.8 Non-exclusive. The reseller plan is non-exclusive. We may work with other resellers anywhere and sell Handbook Portal directly.
8.9 You may not assign or sub-contract your rights as a reseller, or let another reseller use your account, without our written consent.
8.10 You may not use our name or logo, or the HR On Call name or logo, in your marketing without our written permission.
9. The direct plan
9.1 This section applies if you are on the direct plan.
9.2 The direct plan is for a handbook for your own organisation and its staff. You must not use it to provide handbooks to other organisations or resell it. If you would like to provide handbooks to clients, please ask us about the reseller plan.
9.3 If you need more than one handbook, for example for separate companies in a group, please contact us.
10. Acceptable use
10.1 You must not, and must make sure your admins and Staff do not:
- upload anything unlawful, defamatory, discriminatory, infringing or harmful, or anything containing malware;
- use Handbook Portal to store sensitive personal data it is not designed for, such as health records, disciplinary files or special category data about individuals;
- try to access other customers' handbooks or data, probe or test our security, or get around any limits or access controls;
- copy, reverse engineer, resell (other than as a Reseller under section 8) or build a competing product from Handbook Portal;
- overload the service, including by automated scraping or bulk downloading.
10.2 We may remove Content or suspend access if we reasonably believe these rules have been broken. Where we can, we will tell you first and give you a chance to put things right.
11. Your content
11.1 You keep all rights in your Content. You give us permission to host, copy, convert, display and deliver it (including converting Word documents and creating PDFs) only as needed to provide Handbook Portal to you.
11.2 You confirm that you have the right to upload your Content and to let us use it in this way.
11.3 You are responsible for your Content, including its accuracy, legality and compliance with employment law. We do not review, check or approve Content, and Handbook Portal is not legal or HR advice. On the reseller plan, you and your End Clients are responsible for the Content of their handbooks.
11.4 Our Word import splits documents into policies and sections automatically. You must check each import on the review screen before publishing. We are not responsible for errors in converted Content that you publish.
11.5 You will compensate us for any claims, losses or costs we incur because of Content uploaded to a handbook by you, your admins or (on the reseller plan) your End Clients, or because of your breach of these terms.
12. Our service and support
12.1 We will provide Handbook Portal with reasonable skill and care. We aim for 99% availability each month, excluding planned maintenance. We will try to carry out maintenance outside UK working hours and to give notice of planned downtime where we can.
12.2 We provide technical support by email at [email protected] and aim to respond within 2 working days (Monday to Friday, 9am to 5pm, excluding UK public holidays). Support covers how the platform works. It does not cover drafting or reviewing policies, or queries from Staff, which should go to you (or, on the reseller plan, to the Reseller).
12.3 We keep backups of our databases. Backups are for our disaster recovery and are not a way to restore individual items you have deleted.
12.4 Handbook Portal relies on the internet and on third-party services. We are not responsible for problems caused by your own systems, internet connection or email provider, or by events outside our reasonable control.
13. Data protection
13.1 We are the controller of the personal data about you and your account, such as your name, email address, billing details and how you use the workspace. Our privacy notice explains how we use it.
13.2 For Portal Data, we act as a processor: we process it only to provide Handbook Portal, on your instructions. On the direct plan, you are the controller. On the reseller plan, your End Client is the controller, you are its processor, and we are your sub-processor. The data processing terms in Schedule 1 apply.
14. Confidentiality
14.1 Each of us will keep the other's confidential information confidential and use it only for the purposes of these terms. This includes the technical workings of Handbook Portal, our pricing arrangements with Resellers, and your Content and Portal Data.
14.2 This does not apply to information that is public (other than through a breach of these terms), that the other party already had, or that must be disclosed by law. This obligation continues for 2 years after these terms end, and indefinitely for personal data.
15. Intellectual property
15.1 We (or our licensors) own all rights in Handbook Portal, including the software, design and documentation. These terms give you a non-exclusive, non-transferable right to use it while your account is active. They do not transfer any ownership to you.
15.2 If you send us suggestions or feedback, we may use them freely.
16. Liability
16.1 Nothing in these terms limits or excludes liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for anything else that cannot be limited or excluded by law.
16.2 Subject to 16.1, we are not liable for any loss of profit, revenue, business, goodwill, anticipated savings or data (other than our obligations under Schedule 1), or for any indirect or consequential loss.
16.3 Subject to 16.1, our total liability to you under or in connection with these terms is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.
16.4 Handbook Portal is provided as described on our website. Except as set out in these terms, we give no other promises about it, including that it will meet your particular needs or those of your End Clients, or that it will be uninterrupted or error-free.
16.5 We are not responsible for claims, penalties or losses arising from Content, including out-of-date, inaccurate or unlawful policies, or from how you or your End Clients rely on acknowledgement records.
17. Suspension and termination
17.1 You can close your account at any time by cancelling your handbooks and emailing us.
17.2 We may end these terms, or stop offering a plan, by giving you at least 30 days' notice by email.
17.3 We may suspend or close your account or any handbook straight away if you seriously or repeatedly breach these terms, do not pay (see 6.5), use Handbook Portal unlawfully, or become insolvent.
17.4 If we end the reseller plan or close your account other than for your breach, existing handbooks will stay available for at least 30 days so that you and your End Clients can export what you need.
17.5 When these terms end, you must pay any fees due, and section 7.2 applies to all your handbooks. Sections 6, 11.5, 14, 15, 16 and 19, and Schedule 1 for as long as we hold Portal Data, continue after these terms end.
18. Changes to these terms
18.1 We may update these terms from time to time, for example to reflect new features, changes in the law or how we run the service. We will give you at least 30 days' notice of any change that materially affects you, unless the change is needed sooner for legal or security reasons.
18.2 When the terms change, we will ask you to accept the new version when you next sign in. If you do not accept, you can cancel your handbooks before the change takes effect.
18.3 The version and date of these terms are shown at the top of this page, and we keep a record of which version you accepted and when.
19. General
19.1 Events outside our control. Neither of us is liable for delay or failure caused by events outside our reasonable control, such as natural disasters, government action, failure of internet or hosting providers, or cyber attacks.
19.2 Assignment and sub-contracting. We may use sub-contractors and sub-processors to provide Handbook Portal (see Schedule 1), and we may transfer these terms to a business that takes over Handbook Portal. You may not transfer these terms without our written consent.
19.3 Notices. We will send notices to the email address on your account. You can send notices to [email protected].
19.4 Third parties. No one other than you and us has any right to enforce these terms, including End Clients and Staff.
19.5 Entire agreement. These terms (including Schedule 1) are the whole agreement between us about Handbook Portal and replace any earlier agreement, including the earlier Handbook Portal Reseller Programme terms. Nothing in them limits liability for fraudulent misrepresentation.
19.6 Severability and waiver. If any part of these terms is found to be unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. If we do not enforce a right straight away, we can still enforce it later.
19.7 Law. These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction.
20. Contact us
HR On Call Ltd (trading as Handbook Portal)
3 Pethill Close, Plymouth, PL6 8NL
Email: [email protected]
Company number 16891106 · VAT number 515981373
Schedule 1: Data processing terms
This schedule sets out the terms required by Article 28 of the UK GDPR for the Portal Data we process when providing Handbook Portal.
1. Roles
1.1 On the direct plan, you are the controller of Portal Data and we are your processor. On the reseller plan, the End Client is the controller, you process Portal Data on its behalf, and we are your sub-processor. In this schedule, "the controller" means you (direct plan) or the End Client (reseller plan).
1.2 On the reseller plan, you confirm that your contract with each End Client authorises you to appoint us as a sub-processor on terms that give at least the same protection as this schedule, and that you will pass on any instructions, notices or requests from the End Client to us.
2. Details of the processing
| Subject matter and purpose | Hosting and delivering an online staff handbook: sign-in, displaying policies, PDF downloads, emails to Staff (invitations, updates, reminders), acknowledgement tracking, reporting and activity logs. |
|---|---|
| Duration | For as long as the handbook exists, plus the 90-day period after cancellation described in section 7.2, after which it is deleted. |
| Data subjects | Staff, admins and other people invited to a handbook. |
| Personal data | Names, work email addresses, roles and groups, sign-in and activity records (including IP addresses and timestamps), acknowledgement records, and any personal data included in Content. |
| Special category data | None intended. Handbook Portal must not be used to store special category data (see section 10.1). |
3. Our obligations
We will:
- process Portal Data only on the controller's documented instructions, which are these terms and the way you configure and use Handbook Portal, unless the law requires otherwise (in which case we will tell you unless the law prevents us);
- make sure everyone we authorise to process Portal Data is bound by confidentiality;
- take appropriate technical and organisational security measures, including encryption in transit (HTTPS), hashed passwords, access controls, separation of each handbook's data, sign-in throttling and regular backups;
- taking into account the nature of the processing, help the controller respond to requests from data subjects exercising their rights, and help with security, breach notification, data protection impact assessments and consultation with the ICO;
- tell you without undue delay, and where possible within 48 hours, after becoming aware of a personal data breach affecting Portal Data, with the information you reasonably need;
- at the end of the service, delete Portal Data as described in section 7.2 (you can export acknowledgement records and PDFs before then), unless the law requires us to keep it;
- make available the information reasonably needed to show that we meet these obligations, and allow for and contribute to reasonable audits, on reasonable notice and at the controller's cost.
4. Sub-processors
4.1 You give general authorisation for us to use sub-processors. Our current sub-processors are:
| Sub-processor | What for | Location |
|---|---|---|
| InMotion Hosting, Inc. | Hosting the platform, database and uploaded files | United States |
| Cloudflare, Inc. | Network security and delivery of web pages | Global network |
| Brevo (Sendinblue SAS) | Sending emails to Staff and admins | European Union |
| Google LLC | Web fonts, which receive the visitor's IP address | Global network |
4.2 We will give you at least 30 days' notice by email before adding or replacing a sub-processor. You may object on reasonable data protection grounds, and if we cannot address the objection, you may cancel the affected handbooks without charge for the period after the change.
4.3 We put a written contract in place with each sub-processor giving at least equivalent protection, and we remain responsible to you for their performance.
5. International transfers
Where Portal Data is transferred outside the UK, including to the United States for hosting, we make sure the transfer is protected by an adequacy decision or appropriate safeguards, such as the UK International Data Transfer Agreement or Addendum, or the UK Extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.
6. Controller responsibilities
The controller is responsible for having a lawful basis to process Portal Data, for giving Staff a privacy notice that covers their handbook, for the Content it uploads, and for its instructions complying with data protection law.