Terms of Service

These terms govern your use of Common Ground (the "Service"), operated by Common Ground ("we", "us", "our"). By creating an account, you agree to these terms.

1. What Common Ground is

Common Ground is a software-as-a-service application for residents' associations, body corporates, lifestyle villages, and similar self-governing residential communities in New Zealand. It provides:

• Notice board and discussion
• Issue tracking
• Meeting management and minutes
• Voting (ordinary, special, and written resolutions)
• Maintenance scheduling
• Budget and levy management
• Document storage
• Members register

We are a software provider. We do not act as your body corporate manager, legal advisor, or accountant. The Service helps your community govern itself; it does not govern itself on your behalf.

2. Eligibility

You may use the Service if:

• You are 16 or older
• You are authorised to act on behalf of a residents' association, body corporate, or similar community
• Your use of the Service does not violate New Zealand law

If you sign up on behalf of an organisation (your "Community"), you confirm that you have the authority to bind that organisation to these terms.

3. Your account

• One person, one account. Don't share login credentials.
• You're responsible for activity under your account. Notify us immediately if you suspect unauthorised use.
• Authentication is by email code. We send one-time codes to your email when you sign in. Keep your email account secure.
• You can delete your account at any time — Settings → Danger zone → Delete my account. See our Privacy Policy for what happens to your data.

4. Free trial and paid plans

We offer a 60-day free trial with all features unlocked. No payment method is required to start.

After the trial:

• Subscribe to a paid plan to continue posting new content. Plans are documented at https://thecommonground.nz/#pricing.
• Or don't — your Community enters read-only mode for 180 days. Members can still sign in and view all historical content but cannot post new content. Subscribe at any point during these 180 days to resume.
• After 180 days of read-only, the Community is archived and, 90 days later, permanently deleted.

If your Community is on a paid plan:

• Payment is by credit card via Stripe
• Subscriptions auto-renew unless cancelled
• You can cancel anytime from Settings — your Community keeps access until the end of the paid period
• No refunds for partial periods — but no auto-charge after cancellation
• Annual plans: if you cancel mid-year, pro-rata refund will be issued at our discretion for the unused portion
• If a payment fails, we'll retry over the next 21 days (Stripe Smart Retries). After that, the Community enters read-only mode for 180 days. Resubscribe any time during read-only to resume. After 180 days the Community is archived and, 90 days later, permanently deleted.
• Prices are shown in New Zealand dollars. Where GST applies, it is included in the displayed price.

5. Content and conduct

You and the other members of your Community will create content — posts, comments, issues, meeting minutes, votes, uploaded files. You retain ownership of your content; you grant us a limited licence to host, display, and process it as required to run the Service.

You agree not to use the Service to:

• Post unlawful, defamatory, harassing, threatening, or discriminatory content
• Upload viruses, malware, or files designed to cause harm
• Attempt to access another Community's data without authorisation
• Reverse-engineer or scrape the Service
• Resell, sublicense, or whitelabel the Service without our written agreement
• Use the Service to send unsolicited commercial communications to anyone

We may, in our reasonable discretion, remove content or suspend accounts that breach these rules. We try to give notice before doing so, except where urgent action is required.

6. Community responsibilities

Your Community administrators are responsible for:

• Inviting and managing members
• Setting your Community's voting thresholds, quorum, and other governance config
• The accuracy and lawfulness of content posted within your Community
• Compliance with your own constitution, Unit Titles Act (where applicable), and other governing law

We provide the tools. Your Community decides how to use them.

7. Our obligations

We will:

• Provide the Service substantially as described in our marketing and documentation
• Use commercially reasonable efforts to keep the Service available (target: 99.5% uptime, calculated monthly excluding scheduled maintenance)
• Back up your data daily
• Notify you of material changes to these terms or our Privacy Policy at least 30 days in advance
• Promptly investigate any reported security issues

We do not promise that the Service will be error-free, uninterrupted, or fit for any specific purpose. The Service is provided "as is" except as expressly stated in these terms or required by the Consumer Guarantees Act.

8. Consumer Guarantees Act

Nothing in these terms limits or excludes any non-excludable rights you have under the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993, the Fair Trading Act 1986, or other consumer protection law that applies in New Zealand.

If you are using the Service for business purposes (which most Communities will be, given the governance nature of the product), some Consumer Guarantees Act protections do not apply, and we expressly contract out of them under section 43 of that Act.

9. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by law:

• We are not liable for indirect, consequential, special, or punitive damages
• Our total liability under or in connection with these terms is capped at the total fees you paid us in the 12 months preceding the claim (or NZD $100 if you're on a free plan)
• We are not liable for loss of data, loss of profits, or loss of business opportunity

We do not contract out of liability for:

• Death or personal injury caused by our negligence
• Fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation
• Anything else that cannot be excluded as a matter of law

10. Indemnity

You will indemnify us against claims and losses arising from:

• Your breach of these terms
• Your Community's content posted on the Service
• Any breach by your Community of applicable law, including the Privacy Act 2020, Unit Titles Act 2010, and the rules of your own constitution

This indemnity is mutual: we will indemnify you against third-party claims that the Service itself (independent of how you use it) infringes their intellectual property rights, provided you tell us promptly and let us conduct the defence.

11. Intellectual property

The Service, including all software, design, branding, and documentation, is owned by us (or our licensors). Nothing in these terms transfers any IP to you.

Your Community's content remains yours.

Feedback you give us about the Service is owned by us, royalty-free, with no obligation to use it.

12. Sub-processors

We use third-party services to operate Common Ground:

• Google Firebase (hosting, database, authentication, file storage)
• Postmark (transactional email)
• Stripe (payment processing)
• Cloudflare (DNS)

Each operates under their own terms and privacy policy. We have selected these providers based on their security and privacy practices. Where they handle personal information, our Privacy Policy describes how.

13. Termination

By you: delete your account at any time (Section 3). Cancel a paid subscription at any time (Section 4).

By us: we may suspend or terminate your account immediately if you materially breach these terms, or with 30 days' notice for any other reason. If we terminate without cause, we will refund any prepaid fees for the unused period.

After termination: we will retain your data per our Privacy Policy retention schedule. You can request export of your Community's data within 30 days of termination via the in-app export, or by emailing us.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Material changes will be:

• Announced via an in-app notice and email to your Community administrators at least 30 days before they take effect
• Effective from the date stated at the top of these terms

Your continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance. If you don't agree, you can delete your account.

15. Disputes

These terms are governed by New Zealand law. We both agree to attempt informal resolution first (by email), and if that fails, the courts of New Zealand have exclusive jurisdiction.

For Communities outside New Zealand: if and when we expand internationally, we will offer applicable terms for those jurisdictions.

16. Severability and entire agreement

If any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.

These terms, together with our Privacy Policy and any other published policies, are the entire agreement between you and us regarding the Service.

17. Contact

Email: hello@thecommonground.nz