1. Who we are, and accepting these terms
pencilab (the “Service”) is operated by Bockins Holdings Inc., doing business as Pencilab (“Pencilab”, “we”, “us”, or “our”), a company incorporated in British Columbia, Canada.
By using the Service you agree to these Terms of Service (the “Terms”). This includes using it without an account — you do not have to sign in to build a pencil, and you are bound by these Terms either way. If you do not agree to them, do not use the Service.
These Terms incorporate our Privacy Policy by reference.
2. Definitions
- Pencil — one pro-forma scenario you build in the Service: a site, a unit mix, costs, financing, and an exit strategy, together with the figures calculated from them.
- User — anyone who uses the Service, whether or not they have signed in.
- Guest — a User who has not signed in, whose pencil is held against a token stored in their browser rather than against an account.
- Your Content — the assumptions, figures, addresses, names and notes you enter into a pencil.
3. Accounts and eligibility
You must be at least 18 years old, or the age of majority where you live, to use the Service. It is a tool for commercial real-estate analysis and is not directed at children.
Accounts are created by signing in with Google. We do not hold a password for you. You are responsible for keeping access to your Google account secure, and for everything done through your pencilab account. Tell us promptly if you believe someone else has reached it.
The information on your account must be accurate. You may not use someone else’s account, or let someone else use yours.
4. Guest pencils, and how you can lose one
You may build a pencil without signing in. Read this section carefully, because a guest pencil is easier to lose than one attached to an account.
- One at a time. A Guest may hold one pencil. Starting another means discarding the first, and we will ask you to confirm that before we do it.
- It lives in your browser. A guest pencil is tied to a token stored in a cookie on the device and browser you built it in. It is not reachable from another device, another browser, or a private window.
- Clearing cookies loses it. If that cookie is deleted — by you, by your browser’s privacy settings, or by software that clears site data — we have no way to connect you to the pencil again, and it is gone. We cannot recover it for you.
- Abandoned guest pencils are deleted. A guest pencil that is not signed in to and not returned to is removed automatically after a period of inactivity.
- Signing in keeps it. When you sign in, the guest pencil in that browser is attached to your account and stops being subject to any of the above.
If a pencil matters to you, sign in. That is the whole of our advice on the subject.
5. Plans and fees
The Service is offered on the plans described on our Pricing page. The Starter plan is free and lets an account hold 1 pencil at a time. When an account is at that limit, we will not let it start or duplicate another pencil until one is deleted. Signing in with a guest pencil always keeps it, even if that takes the account past the limit.
A paid Pro plan, at $49 (US dollars) a month for unlimited pencils, is announced but not yet on sale. Today nobody is charged for anything, there is nothing to enter payment details for, and we do not collect or hold payment information of any kind.
We will not charge you for anything without your agreement. You pay only if you choose to subscribe to a paid plan, and before you do we will show you its price and the terms of its billing. Continuing to use a free plan is never treated as agreement to pay for one. If we change the price of a plan or lower a free plan’s limit, we will publish the change on our Pricing page and give you notice before it applies to you. A lower limit never deletes a pencil you already hold.
6. Your Content
Your Content remains yours. We claim no ownership of the assumptions you enter or the scenarios you build from them.
You grant us the limited licence we need in order to operate the Service: to store Your Content, run calculations on it, and display it back to you and to anyone you deliberately share it with. That licence exists only to run the Service for you, and it ends when you delete the content or your account, subject to the retention periods in our Privacy Policy.
You are responsible for having the right to enter what you enter. If a pencil includes an address, a party’s name, or information from a third party, you confirm you are entitled to use it for this purpose.
7. The model is a tool, not advice — and not a valuation
This is the most important section of these Terms.
pencilab is a modelling tool. Every figure it produces is an estimate calculated from assumptions that you supplied. Change an assumption and the answer changes. The Service does not know your site, your market, your lender, your municipality’s charges, your construction contract, or your tax position.
Nothing the Service produces is:
- an appraisal or a valuation of any property;
- investment, financial, tax, accounting, legal or planning advice;
- an assurance that a project is feasible, financeable, permittable, or profitable;
- a substitute for professional advice from a qualified person.
You must not rely on the Service’s output for a financing, acquisition, disposition or development decision without independently verifying it with qualified professional advisers. We are not your adviser, and no relationship of trust or reliance arises from your use of the Service.
The Service’s calculations are tested against a reference model, but we do not warrant that they are free of error, that they suit your circumstances, or that they reflect the rules of any particular jurisdiction.
8. Acceptable use
You agree not to:
- use the Service unlawfully, or to infringe anyone’s rights;
- attempt to gain access to another User’s pencils, account, or any part of our systems you are not authorised to reach;
- probe, scan, or test the vulnerability of the Service, or interfere with or circumvent any security or rate-limiting measure;
- automate access to the Service, scrape it, or place a load on it that is unreasonable or disproportionate to normal use;
- copy, resell, sublicense or redistribute the Service, or use it to build a competing product;
- reverse engineer, decompile or attempt to extract the source code or underlying models of the Service, except to the extent that restriction is unenforceable where you live;
- upload anything malicious, or use the Service to send unsolicited messages.
9. Intellectual property
The Service — its software, calculation models, interface, text and branding — belongs to us or our licensors and is protected by intellectual-property law. These Terms give you a limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable, revocable right to use the Service as it is provided, and nothing more. No other right or licence is granted, expressly or by implication.
If you send us feedback or suggestions, we may use them without obligation or compensation to you. You are not obliged to send us any.
10. Disclaimers and limitation of liability
To the fullest extent permitted by law, the Service is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranty of any kind, whether express, implied or statutory. We specifically disclaim the implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure, error-free, or that any figure it produces is accurate or complete.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, neither we nor our directors, officers, employees or suppliers are liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, exemplary or punitive damages, or for any loss of profit, revenue, business, opportunity, goodwill, data or anticipated saving, arising out of or in connection with your use of the Service — including any loss arising from a decision you made in reliance on the Service’s output, and including the loss of a pencil for any reason.
To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total aggregate liability arising out of or in connection with the Service and these Terms is limited to the greater of the total amount you have paid us for the Service in the twelve months before the claim arose, or one hundred Canadian dollars (CAD $100). While the Service is free of charge, that means CAD $100.
Some jurisdictions do not allow the exclusion of certain warranties or the limitation of certain liabilities. Where that is so, the exclusions and limitations above apply only to the extent permitted, and nothing in these Terms limits liability for fraud, fraudulent misrepresentation, death or personal injury caused by negligence, or any other liability that cannot lawfully be limited.
11. Indemnification
You agree to indemnify and hold us harmless from any claim, demand, loss, liability, cost or expense (including reasonable legal fees) brought by a third party and arising out of or in connection with: Your Content; your use of the Service in breach of these Terms or of any law; your infringement of a third party’s rights; or a decision you or anyone relying on you made on the basis of the Service’s output.
We will notify you of any such claim, and you may control its defence and settlement provided that any settlement releasing us requires our prior written consent. We may participate in the defence at our own expense.
12. Suspension and termination
You may stop using the Service at any time, and you may ask us to delete your account and its pencils — see the Your rights section of our Privacy Policy.
We may suspend or terminate your access, with notice where practicable, if you breach these Terms, if your use puts the Service or other Users at risk, or if we are required to by law. We may also discontinue the Service, or any part of it; if we discontinue it entirely we will give reasonable notice and, where practicable, a way to export your pencils.
Sections 6 (as to the licence already granted for content we still hold), 7, 9, 10, 11, 13 and 15 survive termination.
13. Governing law and disputes
These Terms and any dispute arising out of them or out of your use of the Service are governed by the laws of the Province of British Columbia and the federal laws of Canada applicable there, without regard to conflict-of-laws rules.
You and we submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the Province of British Columbia, and agree that the courts sitting in Vancouver, British Columbia are the proper venue. Nothing in this section prevents either of us from seeking injunctive relief in any appropriate forum, and nothing in it removes a right you have under the consumer-protection law of the place where you live to bring proceedings locally.
Before starting proceedings, please contact us and give us a reasonable opportunity to resolve the matter. Most disagreements are settled faster that way than by either of us instructing lawyers.
14. Changes to these Terms
We may update these Terms as the Service changes. The date at the top of this page always shows when it was last revised. If a change materially reduces your rights or increases your obligations, we will give notice — by email to account holders, or prominently in the Service — before it takes effect.
Continuing to use the Service after a change takes effect means you accept the revised Terms. If you do not accept them, stop using the Service and ask us to delete your account.
15. General, and how to reach us
These Terms, together with the Privacy Policy, are the entire agreement between you and us about the Service. If a provision is found unenforceable, the rest stays in force and that provision is applied to the fullest extent permitted. Our not enforcing a provision on one occasion is not a waiver of it. You may not assign these Terms; we may assign them in connection with a merger, acquisition or sale of assets, on notice to you.
Bockins Holdings Inc., doing business as Pencilab
British Columbia, Canada
legal@pencilab.com