A shul's records say who belongs to a community, what they can afford to give and when they lost someone. This page says exactly what we keep and why, in plain words.
Last updated 2 October 2026
Shul Services is operated by BI Analytix. Your synagogue decides what goes into its records and who in its office may see them. We run the software and hold the data on the shul's instructions. In the language of privacy law, your synagogue is the controller and we are its processor.
That matters in one practical way. If you want something in your record changed or removed, your shul office can usually do it fastest. If they cannot, write to us and we will.
Everything below comes either from you, or from your shul office entering its own records.
Your name, gender, email address, phone number and postal address. Your date of birth and your spouse's. Your spouse's name, gender, phone and email, because a household is one account that can have two sign-ins. Your children's names, genders and birthdays. Your marriage date. The names, relationships and Hebrew dates of yahrzeits you record. Your High Holiday seat, if your shul assigns one.
Your pledges, charges, payments, balance and any account credit. What you have bought, such as event tickets or seats. If you save a card, we store a token from the payment company along with the brand and the last four digits, so you can pay again without typing it out.
The card form on the payment page belongs to the payment company, not to us. Your full card number, expiry date and security code go straight to them and never touch our servers.
Your sign-in identity, which congregations you have access to and what you are allowed to do in each. If you turn on two-step sign-in, the method you chose. If you install the app and turn on notifications, a token that lets us send them to that device.
Whether a newsletter from your shul was opened and which links in it were clicked. Your shul uses this to tell whether an issue reached anyone. It is tied to your record, and it is not shared outside your shul.
Holding an account at a synagogue says something about your religion. The yahrzeit and Hebrew date fields say it outright. Several privacy laws treat that as a special category, and so do we. It is never shared outside your congregation, never used for advertising, and never sold.
Two things about your household appear on a calendar other members can see, and only if you tick the box yourself: a yahrzeit, and a birthday. Each date has its own tick box, they start off, and the year is never displayed — only the day and the month. Untick the box and the entry disappears.
We do not profile you, score you, or make automated decisions that affect you.
A short list, and every one of them works on our instructions rather than their own.
| Who | What reaches them | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Our payment company | Your card details, the amount, and the name on the account | Taking the payment. They are the ones holding card data, not us |
| Amazon Web Services | Everything, at rest and in transit | Hosting the database, the servers and the email delivery |
| Hebcal | A date, and a postal code if your shul shows prayer times | Converting between civil and Hebrew dates. No name or identity is sent |
We will hand information to a court or a regulator if the law genuinely requires it. If we are ever bought or merged, your records go with the service and this page is updated first.
Every record belongs to exactly one congregation and is stored under its name. If you belong to two shuls using Shul Services, you can sign in to both with one email, and the two records stay entirely separate. Neither office can see the other's.
Your shul's records are not deleted on a timer. A congregation's books, its pledge history and its receipts are documents it needs to keep. After five years, older records are moved into long-term archive storage, where they are still the shul's but are no longer part of the day-to-day system.
If you ask us to erase your personal details, we do, and we do not wait five years. See the next section.
You can ask for your personal details to be erased, from inside the portal or from the account deletion page. You do not need the app to ask.
What is erased, for good and not recoverable:
What your shul keeps, because it is the congregation's own financial record and not ours to destroy: the pledges, charges and payments on the account, under its member number, with your name removed from it.
Ask the office first if you may need a receipt for tax, or a statement of what you gave. Once your name is gone from the ledger, the shul cannot produce one.
The portal is for adult members. Children's names and birthdays appear only because a parent entered them, and only the parent and the shul office can see them. Children do not get sign-ins of their own.
Everything travels encrypted. Sign-in can require a second step. There is a longer account of how the whole thing is protected on the security page.
If we change how any of this works, we update the date at the top and, where the change matters to you, tell your shul so they can tell you.
Write to info@shulservices.com or call (214) 876-6031. By post: BI Analytix, REGISTERED-ADDRESS.
If you are unhappy with how your shul handles your record, raise it with the office first, since the records are theirs. If you are unhappy with us, write to the address above.
