Privacy Policy

Helio for iPhone, version 2.0 · last updated 13 October 2026

Need help rather than a policy? See Helio support. The privacy notice of the Helio Family Finance website is here.

Who we are

Helio is a household budgeting app run by Oleksandr Slobodianiuk, an individual based in Porto, Portugal. There is no company behind it yet. He is the controller of your personal data under the GDPR. Contact: hello@heliofamily.com.

What Helio collects

• Your sign-in. You sign in with Apple or with Google, through Firebase Authentication. This gives us your account identifier, and the name and email address your Apple or Google account shares with us. We never see your Apple or Google password.
• Your household's data. The expenses and income you enter or import (date, amount, currency, title, category, notes), your categories and goals, and your household's settings and members.
• Your subscription. If you subscribe, the App Store transaction is sent to our server, which checks it with Apple's signature and links it to your account with an identifier that the app attaches to the purchase. We do not receive your card or payment details; Apple handles payment.
• AI usage counters. To enforce daily and monthly limits, our server counts how many AI requests (and voice minutes) your account has used. The counters do not contain the content of the requests.

Sharing with your household

A household can have several members. You can invite a person with a link. Members of a household see its data, including the operations you add to it. Joining or leaving a household is your choice.

AI features and OpenAI

Voice entry, receipt scanning, importing a PDF statement and the Assistant use OpenAI. Before the first use, the app shows a consent sheet; none of these features sends anything to OpenAI until you tap Allow, and you can withdraw the consent at any time in Settings. When you use them:

• Voice entry: the recording of what you said is sent for transcription, and the transcript with your category names is sent to turn it into expenses.
• Voice chat with the Assistant: your voice is streamed to OpenAI during the call.
• Receipt scan: the photos of the receipt are sent.
• PDF statement import: the text of the PDF is read on your phone (a password you enter opens a locked file on the phone only) and the text is sent in parts. The PDF file itself is not sent.
• Assistant questions: your question is sent, and for a question also the household operations and categories that are needed to answer it.

The requests go through Helio's server, which holds the OpenAI key and does not put your content into our database or logs; it only counts the requests. The consent sheet states that OpenAI does not use this data to train its models. OpenAI processes it under its own terms. Our server keeps no AI request content. OpenAI may keep API requests for a limited period under its own terms and does not use API data for training.

AI answers, scans and transcripts can be wrong. Check amounts before you save them. Helio does not give financial, tax or legal advice.

CSV statements are read entirely on your phone and are not sent to OpenAI.

Analytics, tracking and advertising

The app contains no analytics or advertising SDK, does not track you across other companies' apps or websites, and does not sell your data. It declares no tracking in its Apple privacy manifest.

From version 2.3 the app sends crash reports through Firebase Crashlytics (Google). When the app crashes or records an internal error, it sends a technical report: where in the code it happened, the app and iOS versions, the device model and a random installation identifier. Reports do not contain your transactions or amounts, are not linked to your account and are used only to fix bugs.

Device permissions

The app asks for the camera (to photograph a receipt), the microphone (to add an expense by voice and to talk with the Assistant) and your photos (you pick photos to scan a receipt; the photo is not stored). Each is optional and can be turned off in iOS Settings.

Where it is stored and who processes it

Your account and household data are stored in Google Cloud Firestore and Firebase Authentication, in the project slk-family-finance. The database is in europe-west1 (Belgium), inside the European Union, and our server functions run in the same region. Google (Firebase) is our processor; OpenAI is a processor for the AI features above; Apple provides sign-in, the App Store and subscriptions. We do not sell your data or share it for advertising.

Why and on what basis

We process this data to give you the service you signed up for (GDPR Article 6(1)(b)). Data sent to OpenAI is sent on your consent (Article 6(1)(a)), which you can withdraw at any time.

How long we keep it

Until you delete it. Backups of our database are taken daily and each is kept for 30 days, so deleted data can remain in backups for up to 30 days before it expires.

Deleting your account

In the app, open Settings and choose “Delete account”. You confirm by signing in again. It cannot be undone.

• If you are the only member of your household, the whole household is deleted: operations, categories, goals and everything under it.
• If other members remain, you leave the household and your pending drafts are deleted. The operations already in the household stay with it, and ownership passes to another member if you were the owner.
• In both cases your usage counters, your subscription-purchase link and your sign-in account are deleted. If you signed in with Apple, the Apple sign-in token is revoked.
• An App Store subscription is not cancelled by deleting the account. Cancel it in your Apple account (see support). If other members remain, the household keeps its paid access until the paid period ends.

Helio 1.0. If you used the earlier version 1.0, that version kept its data in a separate project. Deleting your account in version 2.0 does not delete that old copy; it may remain there. Write to us and we will delete it.

You can also ask us to delete your data by email.

Your rights

Under the GDPR you have the right to access your data, to have it corrected, to have it erased, to receive a copy in a portable format, to object to processing and to restrict it. Write to hello@heliofamily.com and we will answer within one month. You also have the right to complain to the supervisory authority. In Portugal that is the CNPD (Comissão Nacional de Proteção de Dados, cnpd.pt).

Changes

If this policy changes, the new version goes on this page with a new date at the top.

Contact

hello@heliofamily.com