AI & Data Privacy

Last updated: July 16, 2026

LedgerBeaver is a back office where you bring your own AI. That's a real privacy advantage — you choose exactly which AI touches your books, or whether any third-party AI touches them at all. This page explains, in plain English, who sees what.

1. Who sees your data

Your data lives in your LedgerBeaver workspace. Invoices, bills, journal entries, contacts — all of it is stored in your company's database, isolated from every other company. It is never stored on your AI provider's servers by us.
Your AI provider sees data transiently while it works. When your agent reads an invoice or posts a bill through our MCP connection, the financial data in that conversation passes through your AI provider (Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, or whoever runs your agent) for processing.
LedgerBeaver never sells your data, never shares it for advertising, and never trains AI models on it. These commitments are written into our Data & Compliance statement and our Data Processing Addendum.

2. Choose your privacy level

What your AI provider does with the data it sees depends on how you connect. Three broad options, from most convenient to most private:

⚠️ Consumer subscription (Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, Gemini)

Depending on your plan and settings, consumer AI products may use your conversations to train their models. Most providers let you opt out — check your provider's data settings before connecting business books. Best for: personal use and testing.

✅ API key (Anthropic API, OpenAI API)

Major providers do not train on API traffic by default and offer stronger contractual terms for business data. If you run your agent against an API key (e.g., Claude Code, or any agent configured with your own key), this is the sensible default for business use.

🔒 Local model (Ollama, LM Studio, vLLM, llama.cpp)

The model runs on your own hardware, so no third-party AI provider ever sees your books. Data flows only between your machine and your LedgerBeaver workspace. Best for: maximum privacy. Setup guide below.

3. Running LedgerBeaver with a local model

Local runtimes like Ollama and LM Studio run the model — they don't speak MCP themselves. So you connect through an MCP-capable agent that uses your local model and talks to LedgerBeaver:

your local model → MCP-capable agent → LedgerBeaver
Ollama / LM Studio / vLLM / llama.cpp → Continue · Cline · OpenCode · Aider → our MCP endpoint

Install a local runtime. Ollama (ollama pull a model that fits your RAM — a capable tool-use model is strongly recommended for accounting work) or LM Studio (download a model, start the local server).
Pick an MCP-capable agent that supports custom / local model endpoints — for example Continue, Cline, OpenCode, or Aider. Point its model setting at your local runtime (Ollama and LM Studio both expose an OpenAI-compatible endpoint on localhost).
Connect the agent to LedgerBeaver. Generate an API key in the app (Connect AI page) and paste the ready-made MCP config snippet for your agent. Every snippet on that page auto-fills your key.

Honest scope: "local" here means the AI is local. Your books are still stored in your LedgerBeaver cloud workspace (that's what makes them available to your accountant, your team, and your other devices). What the local option removes is any third-party AI provider from the data path.

4. Practical ways to minimize exposure

Use an API key rather than a consumer subscription for business books.
Review your provider's data controls — most consumer products offer a training opt-out.
Use read-only periods: LedgerBeaver's write-authority controls let owners keep AI money-writes off until explicitly enabled.
Sensitive fields (email, phone, tax IDs) are masked by default in the views your AI reads.
For maximum privacy, go local (Section 3).

5. Your provider's policies

Because your AI provider is your choice, their privacy policy applies to what they see. The current policies for the most common providers:

Anthropic privacy policy (Claude)
OpenAI privacy policy (ChatGPT, GPT API)
Google privacy policy (Gemini)

6. Our commitments

Whatever AI you choose, on our side the rules don't change: your data is yours, encrypted in transit and at rest, never sold, never used for advertising, and never used to train models. The full detail lives in our Privacy Policy, Data & Compliance statement, and DPA. Questions: support@ledgerbeaver.com.