Terms of Service

coupler. is a software-as-a-service platform operated by Apex Build Systems Limited("we", "us", "our"), a company registered in England and Wales, company number 17279570, registered office 29 Birchfield Close, Addlestone, KT15 1QZ. We provide scaffolding business management software to contractors in the United Kingdom.

By accessing or using coupler. you ("you", "your", the "Customer") agree to these Terms. If you are agreeing on behalf of a company or other legal entity, you confirm you have authority to bind it. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

You must register an administrator account to use coupler. You agree to give accurate registration details and to keep them up to date. You are responsible for keeping your login credentials confidential and for everything done under your account, and you agree to tell us promptly if you believe your account has been accessed without your permission.

You control who in your business has an account and what they can see. Adding or removing people is done by your directors and office users from within the platform.

coupler. is a cloud-based administration and job management platform for scaffolding businesses. It includes leads, quoting, invoicing, job records and files, scheduling and dispatch, overhire tracking, and modules for recording compliance paperwork such as handover certificates, site inspections and RAMS.

Timesheets and site check-in are a paid add-on, charged in addition to your per-person subscription. A director can add or remove it at any time from Settings → Subscription; removing it stops access straight away and the month already paid for is not refunded.

We may add, change or withdraw features. We will not remove a material feature you rely on without reasonable notice.

New customers get a 14-day free trial. You must provide valid card details to start the trial. Your card is not charged during the trial.

At the end of the 14 days your subscription starts automatically and your card is charged for the first month. You do not need to do anything to continue. If you do not want to continue, cancel before the trial ends and you will not be charged. The platform shows you how many days of your trial remain.

The trial is for new customers only. Businesses already using coupler. before it became a paid service were given notice and pay from their first billing date, without a trial.

coupler. is sold per person, per month, with no minimum term beyond the current month:

• £15 per month for each scaffolder or supervisor
• £50 per month for each office user or director
• £20 per month for the Timesheets and site check-in add-on — a flat charge for the whole company, whatever your headcount (see clause 3)

All prices exclude VAT, which is added at the prevailing UK rate (currently 20%). You are billed monthly in advance, on the anniversary of the date your subscription started. Archived staff are not charged for.

Payments are taken by Stripe, our payment processor. We never see or store your full card details. By subscribing you authorise us to charge your card each month through Stripe until you cancel. Your invoices and card details can be managed at any time from Settings → Subscription.

Adding people takes effect immediately. Your next invoice is adjusted pro-rata for the part-month they were added.

Removing people takes 30 days.When you archive someone, we give 30 days' notice on that part of your subscription, and the reduction applies from the following billing date. You continue to pay for that seat during the notice period, and the platform shows you the date the reduction takes effect. If you add someone back to the same tier before the notice matures, the reduction is cancelled.

If Stripe cannot take a payment, it will retry automatically over the following days. We will show a notice in the platform telling you what has happened and how long you have.

If payment is still outstanding after 5 days, coupler. becomes read-only. You keep full access to view, open, download and print everything in your account — including handover certificates, inspection records and RAMS — but nothing can be saved or created until the balance is settled. We do this deliberately: your safety records are documents you may be legally required to produce, and a billing dispute is not a reason to put them out of reach.

Access is restored as soon as payment succeeds.

You can cancel at any time from Settings → Subscription, which opens your Stripe billing portal, or by emailing us at info@apexbuild.systems.

Cancellation takes effect at the end of the month you have already paid for. You keep full, unrestricted access until then. We do not take a further payment after you cancel.

We do not give pro-rata refunds or credits for part months, unused seats, or time remaining when you cancel. Payments already taken are non-refundable.

This is the most important section of these Terms. Please read it.

coupler. is a record-keeping and administration tool. It stores, organises and transmits the information you put into it. It does not verify, validate, inspect or guarantee the structural integrity, engineering accuracy or safety compliance of anything.

• Physical safety remains entirely yours. The design, erection, alteration, inspection and dismantling of any scaffold, and the safety of any site, are your sole legal and operational responsibility.
• A completed digital record is not proof of a safe scaffold. Completing a handover certificate, inspection sheet or checklist in coupler. records only that somebody entered that information on that date. It is not an engineering assessment, and it does not mean the structure is safe, compliant or fit for use.
• Competent persons. You are responsible for ensuring that all physical inspections and sign-offs are carried out by suitably qualified and legally recognised competent persons, in line with the regulations that apply to you.
• No liability for physical outcomes. To the fullest extent the law allows, we accept no liability for structural failure, collapse, site accidents, injury, death, property damage or regulatory penalties. Storing a compliance record with us does not move any operational, civil or criminal responsibility from you to us.

You own your data. We do not sell it, and we do not use it to train anything or share it with other customers.

For personal data in your account — your staff, your subcontractors, your clients' contacts — you are the data controller and we are the data processor under UK GDPR. You decide what goes in and why; we process it on your instructions to run the platform for you.

As processor we will: act only on your instructions; keep our staff and contractors under confidentiality obligations; apply appropriate technical and organisational security measures; help you respond to requests from individuals exercising their rights; and tell you before we add any new sub-processor. Our Data Processing Agreement forms part of these Terms and is available at /dpa. How we handle data is described in our Privacy Policy.

Both of these are self-serve, from Settings → Privacy & Data. You do not have to ask us and you do not have to wait for us.

Export. Download everything we hold about your company — clients, jobs, quotes, invoices, compliance documents, files and email logs — as a single file, at any time. That is your right to data portability under UK GDPR Article 20.

Delete. A director can permanently delete your company and everything in it. You confirm by typing your company name, and it removes your company, all user accounts, clients, jobs, quotes, invoices, compliance documents, files and logs. That is your right to erasure under Article 17. It cannot be undone, so export first if you want a copy.

These keep working even if your account is read-only for non-payment. Settings stays reachable whatever your billing status, so being behind on an invoice can never stop you taking your data out or having it erased.

Jobs you send to the bin are recoverable for 30 days and are then deleted automatically.

If you leave without deleting your account, we keep your data for 60 days after your final paid month so you can still export it, and we will delete it on request at any point. Billing records and invoices are kept separately for as long as tax and company law requires. Exporting the compliance records you are required to keep is your responsibility.

Do not use coupler. to break the law, to store material you have no right to store, to attempt to gain access to another business's data, to probe or disrupt the service, or to resell access to it. We may suspend an account that is doing any of these, and will tell you why.

We aim to keep coupler. available at all times but do not guarantee uninterrupted service. We may take it down for maintenance, and will give notice where we reasonably can. Support is by email at info@apexbuild.systems and through the help widget in the platform, during UK business hours.

The software, its design, code, structure and branding belong to Apex Build Systems Limited. These Terms give you a limited, non-exclusive, revocable right to use the platform for your own business while your subscription is active. They do not transfer any ownership to you. Your data remains yours.

Nothing in these Terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of profit, loss of business, or loss of data. Our total liability for all claims in any 12-month period is limited to the total subscription fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim.

Section 9 applies in full to anything concerning physical safety.

We may update these Terms. If a change materially affects you — pricing, notice periods, or what happens to your data — we will tell you by email at least 30 days beforehand, and you may cancel before it takes effect. The date at the top of this page shows when it last changed.

These Terms are governed by the laws of England and Wales, and the courts of England and Wales have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

Apex Build Systems Limited, 29 Birchfield Close, Addlestone, KT15 1QZ. Email info@apexbuild.systems for legal, data protection or billing enquiries.