Legal
Last updated
These terms are the deal between you and Gauge when you use the Gauge app, Gauge Studio, and the pages Gauge publishes for you to your clients. They are written to be read.
The short version: your records are yours and we hold them for you. We charge what we say we charge and nothing else. You run your business lawfully, and we keep the thing running.
Gauge is operated by Gauge Ink Pty Ltd (ABN 68 703 666 522) of 17 Bassett Street, Fairy Meadow NSW 2519, Australia. In these terms, “Gauge”, “we” and “us” mean that business.
“You” means the person or business that holds a Gauge account: an artist, or a studio and the people it gives access to.
Questions about these terms go to hello@gauge.ink.
By creating an account or using Gauge you agree to these terms and to our Privacy Policy, which says how we handle personal information. If you do not agree, do not use Gauge.
You sign in with a code sent to your email. There is no password. Keep your email account secure: anything done in your Gauge account is treated as done by you until you tell us the account was compromised.
The records you keep in Gauge are yours: your clients, appointments, booking form answers, consent forms, notes, photos and payment history. We hold them for you. We use them only to run Gauge for you, as the Privacy Policy sets out, and for nothing else.
You are the one collecting your clients’ information. You decide what your booking form and consent form ask, including any health questions, and you are responsible for collecting that information lawfully, for telling your clients how you use it, and for keeping it only as long as you should.
When a booking sits on a studio’s floor, the studio’s team can see that booking’s records, including the consent form, and the artist can see them too. What each of you keeps when you part ways is between you and the studio, not something Gauge decides.
Keep your own copies. Download your data, in Account, gives you every record as spreadsheet files, any time, on any plan, including after your subscription ends.
You keep the rights in your designs and photos, and your clients keep the rights in the reference images they send you. You give us the right to store, copy and display that content inside Gauge so the service can work, and nothing more.
Gauge has a free plan and a paid plan, Gauge Pro, for artists. Studios pay a subscription for the studio. Prices are shown in Australian dollars before you buy, in the app or on your billing page.
On iPhone, Pro is an auto-renewing subscription bought through Apple’s App Store. Apple takes the payment, renews the subscription, issues the receipt and handles refunds under Apple’s own terms. You can cancel at any time in your Apple ID subscription settings; the subscription runs to the end of the period you have paid for. Where a free trial is offered, it converts to a paid subscription unless you cancel before it ends.
When a Pro subscription ends you drop to the free plan. You keep your account and your records and you can still export them. Nothing you have recorded is deleted because a subscription lapsed.
Gauge bills studios directly through Stripe: a monthly base price plus a charge for each artist seat beyond those included, as shown when the studio signs up and on its billing page. The seat count follows the artists on the studio’s team, so the charge moves when artists join or leave. If a studio payment fails we will tell you and retry before anything is suspended.
We give at least 30 days’ notice before a price change, and the new price applies from the first renewal after that. For App Store subscriptions Apple also asks for your agreement under its rules. App Store purchases are refunded by Apple under Apple’s policies. Studio subscriptions are not refunded for part of a billing period, except where the Australian Consumer Law says otherwise.
To take payments through Gauge you open a Stripe account through Gauge and agree to the Stripe Connected Account Agreement, which includes the Stripe Services Agreement. Stripe decides whether to give you an account, pays you out to your bank, may hold funds under its own rules, and handles disputes. Stripe’s processing fees come out of each payment on your Stripe account at Stripe’s rates.
We never hold your clients’ money. Every payment made through Gauge, whether a deposit, a balance, a payment link, Tap to Pay or a shop order, is charged directly on your own Stripe account. It does not pass through a Gauge account on the way.
Gauge charges you A$2 once per booking, on the first payment for that booking processed through Stripe via Gauge (a deposit, a balance or Tap to Pay). Later payments on the same booking carry no Gauge fee. Each shop order carries A$2. Stripe takes it out of the payment before the money reaches you. A booking paid only in cash you record in Gauge costs nothing. We give at least 30 days’ notice before this fee changes.
You may add a service fee to a booking’s payments. You set the amount, it is disclosed to your client on your booking form and at payment, it is charged once per booking, and it is yours: Gauge takes none of it. You can waive it on any booking. You are responsible for making sure the fee is allowed where you work and described accurately to your clients.
Tap to Pay uses Apple’s Tap to Pay on iPhone and Stripe Terminal. When you set it up you agree to the Tap to Pay on iPhone terms Apple presents and to Stripe’s Terminal terms. You take card payments in person on your own Stripe account, under the same fee as above.
Refunds to your clients, chargebacks and disputes are yours to handle, through Stripe. Our platform fee is not returned when you refund a client. You are responsible for your own tax on what you earn, including GST. Our fees are in Australian dollars, and any GST that applies to them will be shown.
Gauge emails your client a receipt for each payment made through Gauge, in your name.
Gauge publishes pages for you: your booking link, your flash and shop, the slot picker, deposit and payment pages, consent forms, and a studio’s own page. Your content on them, including your prices, policies, photos and words, is yours and your responsibility.
Do not use Gauge to:
You can delete your account at any time from Account in the app. Consent forms, medical records and payment history are kept for up to seven years for legal compliance; everything else is deleted or anonymised, as the Privacy Policy explains. Your Stripe account is yours and stays with Stripe.
We may suspend or close your account if you break these terms, if a studio subscription payment fails after reminders, if the law requires it, or if your use puts Gauge, other artists or their clients at risk. We will tell you why, unless the law stops us, and where we can we will give you the chance to export your records first.
If we ever stop offering Gauge, we will give at least 60 days’ notice and a way to take your records with you.
Ending the agreement does not cancel anything you owe, and sections 4, 6, 10, 11 and 14 keep applying.
Gauge, including its software, design, name and wordmark, belongs to us. These terms give you a licence to use it, not ownership of it.
Your content stays yours. You give us a licence to host, copy, display and transmit it as needed to run Gauge for you. That licence ends when the content is deleted, except for records we keep for legal compliance.
If you send us feedback or suggestions, we can use them without owing you anything.
We provide Gauge with reasonable care and skill and we work to keep it available. We do not promise it will never be interrupted: maintenance, outages and failures at Stripe, Apple, your phone carrier or other providers happen, and we are not responsible for those providers.
Gauge changes over time. We may add, change or retire features. We will not remove something you pay for without telling you first.
Nothing in these terms excludes the guarantees in the Australian Consumer Law. Where the law lets us limit our liability for failing to meet a guarantee, our liability is limited to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.
To the extent the law allows, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, lost revenue, lost bookings, loss of data you have not exported, or anything arising from a third party’s service. Our total liability to you in any 12 months is capped at the fees you paid us in those 12 months, or A$100 if you paid none.
You are responsible for claims that arise from your work, your content, your clients or your breach of these terms, and you will cover us for any such claim brought against us.
If you got the Gauge app from Apple’s App Store, the following also applies. It is what Apple requires of any developer’s own licence agreement, and it holds between you and us.
Purchases made through the App Store are also governed by Apple’s Media Services Terms and Conditions.
When we change these terms we post the new version here with a new date. For changes that matter, such as fees or your rights, we tell you in the app or by email at least 30 days before they apply. Using Gauge after that date means you accept the new terms. If you do not, delete your account before then.
These terms are governed by the laws of New South Wales, Australia, and the courts there have jurisdiction. Before anything formal, write to hello@gauge.ink and we will try to sort it out with you within 30 days. Nothing here stops you taking a matter to a court, to the ACCC or to your state’s fair trading body.
If part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest still stands. These terms, the Privacy Policy and the prices shown to you are the whole agreement between you and Gauge. You may not transfer your account or this agreement to anyone else; we may transfer it to a business that takes over Gauge, and we will tell you if we do.