The agreement between us

1. Who provides Bene

Bene is provided by Cotek App FZ-LLC (“we”, “us”), a Free Zone Limited Liability Company licensed by the Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone Authority (RAKEZ), United Arab Emirates. It is available at bene.cotek.app.

• Licence number 47031236
• VUNE0564, Compass Building — Al Hulaila, Al Hulaila Industrial Zone-FZ, Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates
• support@cotek.live

2. Accepting these terms

By creating an account, or by using Bene as part of a church that has one, you accept these terms. If you are creating an account for a church, you confirm you are authorised to accept them on that church’s behalf.

3. What Bene is — and what it is not

Bene is a record-keeping and workflow tool for church benevolence: it receives requests for help, routes them for decision according to rules the church sets, records what was decided, and keeps an account of money in and out.

Three things it is not, stated plainly because they matter:

• Bene does not hold or move money. It is not a bank, a payment processor or a money service. Every figure in Bene is a record of something a church did elsewhere. Making the payment, and getting it right, is the church’s own act.
• Bene gives no advice. Nothing in it is financial, legal, tax, safeguarding or pastoral advice. Approval limits, thresholds and routing rules are settings a church chooses, not recommendations from us.
• Bene makes no decisions. Every approval, refusal and payment is a human being’s decision, recorded against their name.

4. Accounts

A church account is created by one person, who becomes its first administrator. That administrator invites everyone else and sets what each may do. Administration can be transferred, and should be when the person holding it moves on.

Everyone is responsible for keeping their own password to themselves, and for telling the church promptly if they think someone else has it. Accounts are personal: they are not to be shared between people.

5. What the church is responsible for

By using Bene, a church agrees that it will:

• Use it lawfully, and in keeping with the data-protection law that applies where it operates.
• Tell the people who ask it for help what it collects and why — Bene provides a privacy note on the request page for exactly this purpose, and the church should make it its own.
• Have a lawful basis for the information it asks for, and ask only for what it genuinely needs.
• Give access only to people who ought to have it, and withdraw it when they no longer should.
• Keep its records accurate, and respond to people asking about their own information.
• Make its own decisions about money, and carry the consequences of them.

A church remains the controller of everything it holds in Bene. We process it on the church’s instructions and for no purpose of our own, as set out in our privacy notice.

6. Acceptable use

Bene may not be used to:

• Break the law, or help anyone else to.
• Store information a church has no lawful reason to hold.
• Harass, profile or discriminate against the people who come to it for help.
• Attempt to reach another church’s data, or to probe, scan or disrupt the service.
• Resell or rebrand Bene as a service of its own without our written agreement.

The public request link is meant to be public. A church may share it freely, and is responsible for where it puts it.

7. Status links, and looking after them

Somebody who asks a church for help is given a private link to follow their request. That link is the whole of the authorisation for it: anyone holding it can read the request, write to the church and upload receipts. It is sent to the email address given on the form and, where that address has asked this church for help before, it is sent there and shown nowhere else.

A church must not post such a link into a shared inbox, a group chat or a spreadsheet others can read, and must not ask a requester to forward it. Where a link may have gone astray, tell us and we will issue a new one, which retires the old.

Attempting to reach a case you were not given a link to — by guessing at links, by submitting a form in somebody else’s name, or by any other means — is a breach of these terms and, depending on where you are, of the law.

8. Telling us about a security problem

If you find a way to see something in Bene you should not, please write to support@cotek.live. Report it rather than exploring it: do not access, download, alter or delete anybody else’s data, and do not run tests that degrade the service for the churches using it. We will acknowledge you within a few days and keep you informed. We will not pursue anyone who reports a genuine problem in good faith and within those bounds, and section 6 is not intended to stop you from telling us.

9. Fees

Any fees, and what they cover, are as agreed in writing with the church. Where Bene is provided at no charge, it is provided on the same terms as everything else here — including the limits in sections 12 and 13 — and we may begin charging in future on reasonable written notice, which a church is free to decline by closing its account and taking its data with it.

10. Availability and support

We aim to keep Bene running continuously and to fix serious faults promptly. We do not promise uninterrupted service: hosting providers fail, networks fail, and maintenance is sometimes necessary. Where we can give notice of planned interruption, we will.

Support is by email at support@cotek.live.

11. A church’s data is its own

Everything a church puts into Bene remains that church’s. We claim no ownership of it and no right to use it beyond running the service.

A church may export its records at any time from the Reports page. On closing an account, we will provide an export on request and then delete the data as described in the privacy notice.

12. No warranty

Bene is provided as it is. We do not warrant that it will be free of faults, that it will meet every need a church has, or that its records will satisfy any particular auditor, regulator or denomination. A church should satisfy itself that Bene suits its own obligations before relying on it.

13. Limits on liability

Nothing here limits liability for fraud, for death or personal injury caused by negligence, or for anything else that cannot lawfully be limited.

Subject to that, we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, for loss of profit, goodwill or anticipated savings, or for any decision a church made about giving or withholding money. Our total liability in any twelve-month period is limited to the fees paid by that church in the same period, or to US$100 where Bene was provided at no charge.

14. Suspension and ending the agreement

A church may close its account at any time. We may suspend or end access where these terms are seriously or repeatedly broken, where required by law, or where continuing would put other churches’ data at risk. Except where the law or an immediate risk prevents it, we will give notice first and a reasonable chance to put matters right.

15. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms. Where a change materially affects a church’s rights, we will give at least 30 days’ notice by email to its administrators. Continuing to use Bene after that means accepting the change; a church that does not accept it may close its account and take its data.

16. Governing law

These terms are governed by the laws of the United Arab Emirates as applied in the Ras Al Khaimah Economic Zone. The courts of the United Arab Emirates have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute, except that we may bring proceedings to protect our intellectual property in any competent court.

Nothing here removes any right a consumer or a church has under the mandatory law of its own country where that law applies regardless of this clause.

17. General

If any part of these terms is found unenforceable, the rest continues to apply. A delay in enforcing something is not a waiver of it. These terms, together with the privacy notice and anything separately agreed in writing, are the whole agreement between us.