Privacy Policy

Effective date: November 3, 2026

FormSignal LLC ("FormSignal," "we," "us," or "our") operates formsignal.co, the W9Finder application at app.formsignal.co, vendor upload pages provided through W9Finder, and the free tools on our website, including the Vendor Readiness Scanner.

This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we use it, how we disclose and protect it, and how you can contact us about your information.

W9Finder is offered to accounting and bookkeeping businesses in the United States.

Your FormSignal account is one sign-in for the FormSignal products your organization uses, currently W9Finder and AuditPrep. This policy also covers that sign-in and the account information it shares with AuditPrep.

Who this policy covers

This policy covers website visitors, people who use our free tools, customer account owners and staff, and people who contact us.

It also explains how we handle information about vendors and other individuals that our customers enter, import, or collect through W9Finder. This includes people whose information appears in a customer's records even if they never visit our website or upload a document themselves.

Our role and our customers' role

We determine how we use information to manage our own business, including account administration, billing, website analytics, support, and marketing, as described in this policy.

When we handle client and vendor records, uploaded documents, and related review and export information for a customer, we process that information to provide W9Finder under our agreement with that customer and its instructions. We refer to this information as "Customer Data."

A customer may use W9Finder for its own business or on behalf of its clients. The customer, and where relevant its client, determines the business purpose for collecting Customer Data and the instructions given to us.

Where applicable privacy law uses these terms, FormSignal acts as a service provider or processor for Customer Data. The customer's own role depends on its relationship with the people and businesses whose information it handles.

Questions about a vendor record or an uploaded W-9 should ordinarily go to the firm that requested or maintains it. You may also contact us for help identifying the appropriate firm.

Information we collect

Account and organization information

We collect information needed to create and administer an account, including your name, email address, password hash, firm name, account settings, and staff membership.

We also maintain authentication and session information, including session identifiers, IP addresses, browser information, and information used for two-factor authentication and account recovery when those features are enabled.

When you sign in to AuditPrep, you sign in at app.formsignal.co with your FormSignal account, and two-factor authentication is required. We keep a record of each AuditPrep sign-in, described under "Sign-in records."

We store passwords in hashed form rather than readable form.

Client and vendor information

Customers may enter or import business names, contact names, email addresses, postal addresses, tax classifications, payment context, taxpayer identification information, and notes.

Customer Data may include full taxpayer identification numbers, such as Social Security numbers or Employer Identification Numbers, when a customer or vendor provides them. Separately stored TIN fields and TINs contained within uploaded documents are handled as described under "W-9 documents and taxpayer identification numbers."

We also maintain request history, upload and review records, readiness information, generated exports, and an audit trail of account activity.

Vendor uploads

When you submit a document through a W9Finder request link, we receive the document and your confirmation that you are authorized to submit it.

Uploaded documents may contain names, addresses, tax classifications, signatures, and full taxpayer identification numbers. The IRS describes the purpose of Form W-9 here: https://www.irs.gov/forms-pubs/about-form-w-9.

We record information about upload attempts, including the time and outcome. The application's upload-security record uses hashed representations of IP and browser information. Hosting and security systems may separately process or log IP addresses and other connection information.

The firm requesting your document may already have supplied your contact information to W9Finder.

Billing information

Stripe processes subscription payments through its hosted payment services.

We receive information needed to administer billing, including Stripe customer and subscription identifiers, subscription status, and limited payment-method information such as card brand and last four digits.

We do not receive or store full card numbers through Stripe Checkout.

Stripe's handling of payment information is described in its privacy policy: https://stripe.com/privacy.

Website, technical, and delivery information

Our application and infrastructure providers process technical information needed to operate and protect the service. This can include IP addresses, browser and device information, requested pages, timestamps, session information, and error or security events.

Our email provider supplies delivery information, such as whether an email was delivered, bounced, or reported as spam.

Public-page analytics are described under "Cookies and analytics."

Vendor Readiness Scanner information

The scanner processes the vendor list you upload to generate readiness results. Values recognized as TIN-like are masked in report output.

The application reads the uploaded file once from the temporary location the web server assigns to it and does not copy, move, or store the file. The temporary file is removed when the request finishes, whether the scan succeeds or fails. Row-level data exists only in memory while the scan runs. The application keeps an aggregate summary in your browser session so that you can request an emailed summary or download the summary CSV: the row count, readiness score, issue counts, the labels of the top issues, and recommended next steps. That session record is discarded when your session expires. If you leave the page without finishing, the same handling applies, and no rows or file are retained.

When you request an emailed summary, we store your work email address, optional firm name and role, relevant source-page information, and aggregate results such as the number of rows scanned, readiness score, and issue counts.

Saved scanner lead records and emailed summaries do not contain the uploaded vendor rows or full TIN values.

Communications

When you contact us, we receive your contact information and the contents of your message.

Please do not send W-9 documents, full TINs, passwords, or payment-card details to our general support email address.

How we use information

We use information to:

• Provide W9Finder, including vendor imports, W-9 requests and reminders, document uploads, review workflows, exports, and activity records.
• Create and administer accounts, manage subscriptions, and process billing.
• Sign you in to AuditPrep with your FormSignal account and tell AuditPrep which organizations you belong to, your role in each, and whether an organization currently qualifies as a W9Finder subscriber.
• Send service communications, including verification emails, password resets, staff invitations, billing notices, and customer-directed W-9 requests.
• Provide scanner results and requested email summaries.
• Respond to questions, provide support, investigate errors, and maintain the service.
• Protect accounts and infrastructure against fraud, abuse, and unauthorized access.
• Understand use of our public website through the analytics described below.
• Send product communications according to the choices described in this policy.
• Meet legal obligations, respond to lawful requests, and establish or defend legal claims.

We do not use Customer Data, uploaded W-9 documents, or TINs to train AI models or for advertising.

Scanner reports and product emails

Requesting a scanner summary does not subscribe you to product marketing. We send scanner-related product follow-up only when you separately choose to receive it.

You can unsubscribe from product emails using the link in the message or by contacting us. Unsubscribing from marketing does not stop communications necessary to administer your account or provide services you or the requesting firm use.

If you want a firm to stop sending W-9 requests or reminders, contact that firm. You may also contact us for assistance.

W-9 documents and taxpayer identification numbers

W9Finder uses private document storage and access controls for uploaded W-9s. Request links use expiring tokens, and the application stores those tokens in hashed form.

Within a customer account, document access is limited to authorized users according to their permissions. Authorized FormSignal personnel and service providers may access information where necessary to operate, support, secure, or maintain the service, or meet legal obligations.

Where W9Finder stores a full TIN as a separate field, that value is encrypted. Routine displays of those fields show only the last four digits.

An uploaded W-9 may itself contain a full TIN. Masking a separate TIN field does not redact the original document, and an authorized document reviewer may see the information contained in that document.

Standard exports exclude full TINs. The separate full-TIN export is restricted to the customer's account owner, requires explicit confirmation, and is recorded in the audit trail.

Uploaded W-9s are reviewed by people at the requesting firm. W9Finder does not perform automated extraction or verification of those documents.

The requesting firm may download documents or export records for its own workflows. Its handling of those copies is governed by its own practices, agreements, and applicable obligations.

For questions about the purpose of a request, the accuracy of a vendor record, or how long the firm needs to retain it, contact the firm that requested or maintains the information.

Cookies and analytics

Cookies needed to operate the service

We use cookies and similar technologies to maintain sessions, protect forms against unauthorized requests, and support security controls.

Our hosting and security providers may also use cookies to detect bots and prevent abuse.

Blocking essential cookies may prevent sign-in, document submission, or other service functions from working correctly.

Public-page analytics

We use Google Analytics 4 on public marketing pages. It is not enabled on sign-in pages, vendor upload pages, or ordinary pages inside the signed-in application. Two signed-in pages load it only to record a conversion event: the billing settings page and the first dashboard view after registration. The application then forces a full page load before any other signed-in page is shown, which unloads the Google tag.

Analytics helps us understand public-page visits and selected interactions, such as the start of a scanner upload or a checkout journey.

Google Analytics uses cookies and browser or device information to distinguish visits and measure activity. Google explains that GA4 uses IP addresses at collection time to derive location information before discarding them: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/11598602.

Our custom analytics events exclude uploaded documents, vendor rows, TINs, email addresses, request-link tokens, and internal customer account identifiers.

Google Analytics' automatic page-view collection is turned off. Our site sends one page view for each public marketing page that carries the tag (the Privacy Policy, Terms of Service and Subprocessors pages do not), built from the page path and, where present, the campaign tags in the link you followed (the five utm parameters and Google's click identifier), without other query strings, fragments, or the referring page, and the Google tag script is loaded with the browser referrer suppressed. Custom events carry only a short list of approved fields, such as the source page, intent, platform, and billing interval. Google Analytics event data is retained for 2 months. No Google Ads tag is configured.

We do not use advertising tags or remarketing features on our website.

You can manage cookies through your browser. Google also provides an opt-out browser add-on for supported browsers and implementations: https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Google's privacy policy is available at https://policies.google.com/privacy.

We also use our own cookies on our public website to record how you found us, such as the referring site or a campaign tag in the link you followed. They are kept for up to 90 days, and if you create an account we keep that information with your organization's account record.

Browser privacy signals

Our website does not currently change its behavior in response to the browser's Do Not Track setting.

Global Privacy Control is a separate signal used to communicate privacy preferences. Information about its treatment under California law is available at https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa/gpc.

When your browser sends the Global Privacy Control signal, our website does not set the cookies that record how you found us. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising, so there is no sale or sharing for that signal to opt out of. If our practices change, we will update this policy and honor the signal as applicable law requires.

How we disclose information

Customer-directed access and disclosure

We make Customer Data available to the customer and its authorized users to provide the service. Customers may download or export information and use those copies in their own workflows.

Service providers

We use providers for hosting, storage, payment processing, email delivery, security, error monitoring, and public-page analytics.

The providers described in this policy include:

Our hosting arrangements also involve infrastructure and security providers, including Cloudflare for network delivery and security and Neon for the database service behind Laravel Cloud's Serverless Postgres.

Our support mailbox runs on Google Workspace, which stores the messages you send us.

We configure error reporting to filter sensitive information before reports leave the application.

Providers receive information relevant to the services they supply. Some providers, including payment providers, also process information for their own purposes under their applicable privacy notices and legal obligations.

Legal and business circumstances

We may disclose information when required by law or a valid legal process, or when reasonably necessary to protect the rights, security, or safety of FormSignal, our customers, or others.

Information may also be disclosed in connection with a proposed or completed merger, acquisition, or sale of the business, subject to applicable confidentiality and privacy requirements.

Sale and advertising

We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Signing in to AuditPrep

When you sign in to AuditPrep with your FormSignal account, AuditPrep receives your account identifier, name and email address, when your email address was verified and when two-factor authentication was confirmed, and, for each organization you belong to, its identifier, name and time zone, your role, whether your membership has been deactivated, and which organization you last selected.

AuditPrep can also check with FormSignal whether a member is still active in an organization, and whether the organization currently qualifies as a W9Finder subscriber: it has a current W9Finder subscription, its billing is not waived, and its W9Finder data is not being deleted.

AuditPrep does not receive your password, your two-factor secret or recovery codes, or any W9Finder client, vendor, document, export or taxpayer identification information.

Retention and deletion

We retain information according to its purpose, our customer's instructions where applicable, and relevant legal or contractual obligations.

Customer accounts and Customer Data

We retain account information and Customer Data while needed to provide the service.

After a subscription ends, we keep the account's Customer Data for 30 days so that the account owner can ask for its return, then delete it from active systems within a further 30 days. Export access during that period is provided on request to hello@formsignal.co.

When we delete an organization's W9Finder Customer Data, its FormSignal account stays in place: the organization, its owner and staff memberships and its billing records remain until the account owner asks us to close the organization's account, because they are also how you use other FormSignal products. Each user's login is separate and stays until it is deleted.

To close the organization's account, the account owner emails hello@formsignal.co from the owner's address. We first confirm that the organization has no AuditPrep account, then delete the organization, its memberships and its billing and Terms acceptance records. User logins are separate: each user can delete their own login in Settings, unless they are the only active owner of an organization, or ask us at hello@formsignal.co to delete it.

An authorized account owner may contact us to request earlier deletion, subject to applicable obligations and any information we need to retain for the reasons described below.

Documents, exports, and related records

Account owners can use available deletion controls or contact us about deleting documents and exports.

Deleting a stored document does not, by itself, delete the associated vendor record, separately stored taxpayer identification information, request history, or audit trail.

Deletion from W9Finder also does not remove copies that a customer or another authorized recipient previously downloaded.

Scanner information

Temporary scanner uploads and row-level data are handled according to the cleanup practice described under "Vendor Readiness Scanner information."

We keep scanner lead contact details and aggregate report results for 24 months from the date you requested the summary, unless you ask us to delete them sooner.

When you unsubscribe from marketing, we may retain the minimum information needed to record and honor that preference. An unsubscribe request does not necessarily delete other information held for a separate, valid purpose.

Sign-in records

Each AuditPrep sign-in creates a one-time code that expires after 10 minutes, an access credential that expires after one hour, and a renewal credential that expires after 30 days. We revoke them when you sign out of AuditPrep, change or reset your password, turn off two-factor authentication, have your staff access deactivated, or delete your login. If a one-time code or a renewal credential that has not yet expired is presented again after it was used, we revoke the credentials of that sign-in.

We normally delete expired sign-in records after a seven-day retention period. An expired access-credential record can remain longer while its renewal credential is still valid. Cleanup runs hourly.

Billing, support, audit, and security records

We may retain limited records needed to document payments and contractual matters, resolve support issues or disputes, investigate security incidents, honor privacy choices, or meet legal obligations.

We keep application audit records and upload-security records for as long as the related W9Finder Customer Data exists and delete them with it. Infrastructure logs and error events are kept by our hosting and monitoring providers for their standard periods, currently no longer than 90 days for error events. Support correspondence is kept for 24 months after the matter is closed.

Backups and prior file versions

Deleting information from active systems may not immediately remove copies held in backups or prior file versions.

Our database provider retains point-in-time recovery for the previous 14 days. Prior versions of stored documents and exports, including deleted ones, are kept in storage version history for 30 days after the deletion or replacement. After that they become eligible for removal, and an automated lifecycle process removes them asynchronously, with no maximum time. A retention lock stops the application from deleting a stored version earlier. If we restore from a backup, we first retrieve the deletions recorded after the restore point from the database that was in use, re-apply them, and only then return the restored data to service.

Where information must be retained after a deletion request, we limit its use to the purpose that justifies keeping it.

Your privacy choices and requests

You can contact us to ask about the personal information we hold about you, request a correction or deletion, or ask for a copy.

Depending on your location, the information involved, and whether the relevant law applies to our processing, you may have additional privacy rights.

California residents may have rights under the California Consumer Privacy Act to access, correct, or delete personal information, obtain a portable copy, opt out of sale or sharing, and limit certain uses of sensitive personal information, subject to the law's scope and exceptions. Official information is available at https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa.

Other applicable state laws may provide additional rights, including a right to appeal certain request decisions. For example, New Jersey's official privacy-law information is available at https://www.njconsumeraffairs.gov/ocp/Pages/NJ-Data-Privacy-Law-FAQ.aspx.

How to contact us

Send privacy requests to hello@formsignal.co or to the postal address below.

You do not need a W9Finder account to contact us about privacy. If you have an account, contacting us from its email address can help us identify the relevant information.

We may ask for information reasonably needed to verify your identity or authority before providing access to, correcting, or deleting information. Please do not send a full TIN, password, payment-card number, or identity document in your initial email.

Where applicable law permits an authorized agent to act for you, we may request evidence of the agent's authority.

We will respond within the period required by applicable law. If we cannot fulfill a request, we will explain the reason to the extent permitted by law.

Where you have an applicable right to appeal, you may submit an appeal to hello@formsignal.co with the subject line "Privacy appeal."

We will not unlawfully discriminate against you for exercising privacy rights.

Requests involving Customer Data

If your information is held in a customer's W9Finder account, we will ordinarily refer your request to that customer and assist it as appropriate.

We also remain responsible for handling requests concerning information we process for our own purposes and for meeting any obligations that apply directly to us.

Security

We use administrative, technical, and organizational safeguards designed to protect information.

These include private document storage, access controls, encrypted storage of separately maintained full TIN values, hashed and expiring request-link tokens, HTTPS, activity records, and two-factor authentication, which is optional for W9Finder and required to sign in to AuditPrep.

No method of transmission or storage can guarantee complete security.

If we become aware of a personal-information breach, we will provide notifications required by applicable law and our contractual obligations. Where Customer Data is involved, we will provide the affected customer with reasonably available information to support its response.

Children

Our services are intended for business use and are not directed to children.

If you believe a child has provided personal information directly to us, contact hello@formsignal.co. We will review the circumstances and take appropriate action.

Information included in a customer's records is handled according to our role, the customer's instructions, and applicable obligations.

United States service and processing locations

FormSignal is based in the United States, and W9Finder is offered to United States businesses.

Our application servers, database, and private document storage are hosted in the United States, in the US East (Ohio) region.

Our providers may process certain information in other countries. For example, Stripe describes international transfers in its privacy policy: https://stripe.com/privacy.

The location of our application hosting does not describe every location used by providers for payment processing, email delivery, analytics, security, or support.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our services, practices, or obligations change. We will post the revised policy and update its effective date.

For material changes, we will notify account owners by email or provide a prominent notice through the service. We will provide any additional notice or obtain any consent required by applicable law before applying a change.

Contact

FormSignal LLC
725 River Rd, Suite 32, Edgewater, NJ 07020
United States
Email: hello@formsignal.co