Privacy Policy

Effective date: August 30, 2026

This Privacy Policy describes the privacy design and data-handling practices of the standalone RanchAssist™ Water Requirement Calculator (the “Calculator”). It should be reviewed and adapted by the site operator before publication to reflect the final hosting environment, support contact, analytics choices, and any services added after this version.

1. OVERVIEW

The Calculator is designed around a session-first, user-controlled project model. It does not require a RanchAssist account for normal use and is not designed to permanently store standalone ranch project data in a RanchAssist-hosted project database.

The Calculator processes the information you enter so it can calculate livestock water demand, peak planning conditions, trough and storage capacity, reserve requirements, refill time, source-flow requirements, and related results.

2. INFORMATION YOU MAY ENTER

Depending on how you use the Calculator, project information may include:

- Project name

- Livestock group names

- Livestock classes

- Head counts

- Gallons-per-head-per-day planning assumptions

- Typical and hot-weather planning temperatures

- Forage condition

- Salt/feed adjustment

- Lactation setting and assumptions

- Safety factor

- Emergency reserve duration

- Peak drinking window

- Number and capacity of troughs

- Storage-tank capacity

- Available source flow in GPM

- Desired recovery period

- Water-point names and herd-allocation percentages

- Point-level trough capacity and source flow

- Project notes

You control what project information you enter. Avoid placing unnecessary sensitive personal information, credentials, financial information, or confidential information into project names, notes, or other free-text fields.

3. ACTIVE-SESSION STORAGE

The Calculator may use browser sessionStorage to protect the current active session from accidental refresh or same-tab navigation.

sessionStorage is intended for active-session resilience only. It is not represented as permanent project saving and is not a substitute for a RanchAssist .ra project file.

The current Calculator design does not use localStorage for long-term project persistence.

4. RANCHASSIST .RA PROJECT FILES

If you choose Save Project, the Calculator creates a user-controlled local .ra RanchAssist Project File containing the editable state needed to restore the project later.

A .ra file may contain project metadata, livestock groups, water-system inputs, conditions, water points, assumptions, settings, and notes. It is saved through your browser/device and is not RanchAssist cloud storage merely because the file was created by RanchAssist.

You are responsible for deciding where to store, back up, copy, or share your .ra files.

The Calculator is designed not to include private application secrets, API keys, authentication tokens, or executable code in .ra project files.

5. REPORT EXPORTS

When you choose an export or sharing action, the Calculator may create information that contains project inputs and results, including:

- CSV files

- Print/PDF output

- Copied text summaries

- Email summaries

Exports may contain project names, assumptions, notes, livestock information, water-system inputs, calculated results, warnings, and timestamps. Review an export before sharing it with another person.

6. EMAIL SHARING

In the Google Apps Script deployment, the Calculator can send an HTML summary using a server-side Apps Script MailApp handler.

If you use email sharing, the destination email address and the project summary required to send the message are processed for that requested action. The Calculator’s product design does not require the recipient’s email address to be stored as part of the saved RanchAssist project state.

Email delivery is also subject to the policies and technical behavior of the email and hosting services involved in the deployment.

7. ACCOUNTS AND PROJECT DATABASES

The standalone Calculator does not require a RanchAssist account for normal use.

Under the current product architecture, RanchAssist does not create a hosted project database merely to store Calculator project data between sessions. Longer-term project persistence is provided through user-controlled .ra files.

8. COOKIES, ANALYTICS, AND HOSTING METADATA

The current Calculator code is not designed to require application cookies or localStorage for project persistence and does not itself define a third-party analytics service.

The final website or hosting platform may independently process technical information such as IP address, browser information, request logs, security events, or similar operational metadata. Any analytics, advertising, consent tools, or additional services added by the site operator should be disclosed in the published version of this Privacy Policy.

9. THIRD-PARTY SERVICES

The current Water Requirement Calculator does not require a mapping API or user-supplied developer API key for its core calculation workflow.

Google Apps Script and related Google services may be involved when the tool is deployed as an Apps Script web app or when email sharing is used. Their processing is governed by their applicable terms and privacy policies.

If future versions add third-party APIs, analytics, support widgets, payment services, authentication, or other integrations, this Privacy Policy should be updated before or when those services are introduced.

10. SECURITY AND CREDENTIALS

RanchAssist tools are designed so end users are not asked to provide developer API keys or application secrets for normal use.

Do not submit passwords, private API keys, authentication tokens, or similar secrets through project fields, notes, support messages, or .ra files.

No internet-based system can be guaranteed to be perfectly secure. You should protect exported files and project files according to the sensitivity of the information you choose to place in them.

11. CLEAR SESSION

The Calculator provides a Clear Session / Start Over function for active project state. Clearing the session is intended to remove the current browser-session project state and reset the tool.

Clearing the session does not delete .ra project files, CSV files, PDFs, or other exports that you previously saved to your device.

12. DATA RETENTION

Because the standalone Calculator uses a session-first model, RanchAssist is not designed to retain normal standalone project state in a RanchAssist-hosted project database after you leave.

User-controlled .ra files and exported reports remain on the devices, storage services, email systems, or locations to which you choose to save or send them, subject to those systems’ retention practices.

Hosting providers may retain operational logs according to their own systems and policies.

13. CHILDREN

The Calculator is a livestock and ranch planning utility intended for general agricultural operations. It is not designed as a service directed to children.

14. YOUR CHOICES

You can choose to:

- Use the Calculator without creating a RanchAssist account

- Enter only the project information needed for your estimate

- Clear the active session

- Save or not save a .ra project file

- Export or not export reports

- Share or not share a summary by email

- Delete local project or export files from your own device or storage service

15. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY

The site operator may update this Privacy Policy as the Calculator, hosting environment, integrations, or legal requirements change. The effective date should be updated when material revisions are published.

16. CONTACT

Before publication, the site operator should add the current RanchAssist privacy contact method or support URL here. No specific privacy email address was supplied in the current project materials, so this draft does not invent one.

17. IMPORTANT SCOPE NOTE

This Privacy Policy describes the current standalone Water Requirement Calculator design reflected in the RanchAssist project materials and implementation. The published policy should be reviewed whenever the deployment adds analytics, advertising, authentication, payments, cloud project storage, support integrations, or other services that change data processing.