1. The Client-Side Guarantee

PaperTrail is designed around a thick-client, browser-first architecture. When you upload or drag spreadsheets (.xlsx, .xls, .csv, .tsv) into this application, all data parsing, format type checks, alignment logic, and print previews are performed entirely on your own computer using client-side JavaScript.

🛡️ We do not store, upload, copy, or transmit your spreadsheet data, file records, column labels, or company letterhead credentials. Your files never touch our servers.

2. What We Collect

Because this is a business formatting tool, we only collect minimal, non-identifiable usage statistics to evaluate utility and performance. The parameters captured are:

Usage Telemetry: An anonymous counter logs when a file is dropped (upload event), parsed (process event), or downloaded/saved (print event) along with row and column limits (e.g. "processed a sheet with 150 rows and 8 columns").
Network & Diagnostic Metadata: We track visitor IP addresses and User Agent details for system health auditing, server performance tuning, and security purposes.

3. Google Analytics

We use Google Analytics, a web analytics service provided by Google LLC, to understand aggregate, anonymous traffic patterns — such as page views, approximate region, browser type, and referral sources. This helps us improve the tool's usability and performance. Google Analytics may set its own cookies or identifiers in your browser and process the data described above on Google's servers. Importantly, your spreadsheet files and their contents are never shared with Google Analytics or any third party — analytics only measures how the site itself is used, not the documents you format. You can opt out using Google's browser opt-out add-on, and Google's handling of this data is governed by the Google Privacy Policy.

4. Local Storage Usage

We do not store cookies on your machine. Instead, we use the browser's native localStorage API to save layout presets, visual theme preferences, table grid styles, and company letterhead input fields. This information remains local to your device and is never sent to our database.

5. Open Source & Contact

PaperTrail's source code is publicly available on GitHub at github.com/mxTuhin/PaperTrail, where you can review exactly how your data is handled or open an issue. If you have questions about our client-side architecture or privacy implementations, contact us directly.