Guard Your Pay — Privacy Policy

Last updated: October 2026

    The short version: Guard Your Pay has no servers and no accounts, so we never receive any of your personal or financial data. Everything you enter stays on your device. The only exception: to work out your home-to-duty distance, the app sends your home and duty station postcodes to two free public mapping services.
  

Who we are

Guard Your Pay is an independent app for iPhone and Android, built for British Army personnel to help them understand their pay, track spending, and calculate allowance entitlements. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or produced by the Ministry of Defence or the British Army.

What data we collect

We do not collect any personal data. Guard Your Pay does not require you to create an account, and nothing you enter into the app is ever sent to us. The only information that leaves your device is the two postcodes described under Distance calculations below.

The information you enter — your rank, pay, accommodation type, posting location, and spending — is stored locally on your device only, in the app's own private storage, which other apps cannot access. Deleting the app deletes this data. If you back up your phone (iCloud on iPhone, Google backup on Android), that backup may include the app's data; it stays in your own account and we cannot access it.

Analytics and tracking

Guard Your Pay does not use any analytics software, crash reporting tools, or advertising SDKs. We do not track how you use the app, and we do not share any information with third parties for advertising or marketing purposes.

Bank connections

Guard Your Pay does not connect to your bank account. There is no Open Banking integration, and we do not have access to your bank account details at any point.

Distance calculations

Home to Duty (HTD) and Get You Home (Travel) entitlements depend on the road distance between your home and your duty station. To calculate it, the app sends your home postcode and your duty station postcode to two free, independent public services:

postcodes.io — converts each postcode into map coordinates
OSRM (project-osrm.org) — works out the road distance between those coordinates

Only the postcodes (and the map coordinates derived from them) are sent — never your name, street address, rank, pay or anything else you enter. As with any internet request, these services can see your device's IP address. They are run by third parties, not by us, and we never receive any of this information.

This only happens when you open or edit the Home & Duty Station page, or when a calculation that couldn't run earlier (for example because you were offline) is retried. Nothing is sent for overseas duty stations.

Payslip upload

You can optionally upload a PDF of your JPA payslip so the app can fill in your pay figures for you. The PDF is read entirely on your device — it is never uploaded anywhere. The app saves only the figures it extracts (such as your net pay, tax and allowances), not the payslip itself. When you pick the file, your phone places a temporary copy in the app's private cache, which other apps cannot access. The phone clears this cache automatically, and it is removed if you delete the app.

Uploading a payslip is optional — you can enter your figures manually instead.

Children

Guard Your Pay is intended for use by adults serving in the British Armed Forces. We do not knowingly collect data from anyone under the age of 18.

Changes to this policy

If we make any material changes to this privacy policy, we will update the "Last updated" date at the top of this page. We encourage you to review this page periodically. Continued use of the app after any changes constitutes acceptance of the updated policy.

Contact

If you have any questions about this privacy policy, please email hello@leftform.co.uk.