The company behind Plain Estimate
Plain Estimate is a product of BrightScale Labs Limited, a small independent software company registered in England and Wales and run by its founder.
- Registered name
- BrightScale Labs Limited
- Company number
- 16990009
- Registered in
- England and Wales
- Registered office
- 8 Flay Field, Tithebarn, Exeter, England, EX1 3YA
- ICO registration
- ZC171322
- Contact
- contact@brightscalelabs.com
What we build
BrightScale Labs builds small tools that show their working. Plain Estimate is the one for getting paid: estimates, invoices and the paperwork around a job, for people who do the job themselves. There is no sales team, no call centre, and nobody here whose job is to move you toward an upgrade.
What we are not
Plain Estimate is software, not an accountant. It adds up what you type and applies the tax rates you set it. It does not know your jurisdiction's rules, it does not file anything on your behalf, and nothing in the app or in the guides on this site is accounting, tax or legal advice. Before a decision that matters, ask somebody qualified where you are.
How it is paid for
The app is free to use and does not require an account. Running the hosted parts (publishing a document to a client, syncing between devices, sending an email) cost money, and that cost is currently carried by the company rather than by you.
That will not hold forever, and it is more useful to say so than to imply otherwise. The likely routes are advertising on the public pages and on a single banner at the foot of the app, and affiliate links in guides where they are honest. The editorial policy sets out what neither is allowed to buy.
That banner is in place today, and it carries our own tools and nothing else. It is there before there is anything to sell in it on purpose, because a space that appears fully loaded one morning is the thing people resent. It is marked as an advertisement. It is one banner rather than a page of them. It never appears on a document you print or on the page your client opens. It fetches nothing at all. The picture in it is part of the app rather than something loaded from another address, which is both why the app still opens with the signal off and why nothing in that space can watch you. An advertiser from outside will be said plainly here and in the app before it happens rather than after.
What is not on the table is selling what you put in. No advertiser, broker or data buyer receives your figures or your clients' details, and no part of the product is funded by handing them on.
Your data
We do not connect to your bank. Your documents are written to your own device and stay there unless you sign in to sync them or publish one to a client. Signed in, the fields that identify a person are encrypted before they reach our database. The privacy notice sets out what is stored, for how long, and how to delete all of it, which you can do yourself, from the app, at any time.
Contact
For company, legal or press enquiries, email contact@brightscalelabs.com. For anything about the software itself, a bug or a question or a total you think is wrong, the contact form reaches the same person faster, and hello@plainestimate.com reaches them too.