Trust, privacy & responsible use
Useful guidance.
Clear boundaries.
P.A.Y. is an educational payroll resource and professional community. Understand the sources, assumptions and information handled by each feature.
Operated by Hartigos Consulting Group, LLC. This website does not process live employer payroll, retain employee pay statements, deposit taxes or file returns. Each active store offer identifies its separate checkout and fulfillment provider.
01 / Educational-use terms
Use the resource. Review the reasoning.
By creating a member profile, you accept these terms and acknowledge the privacy notice. Free feature access does not require newsletter or promotional-email consent. The service supports employee education, professional learning and practical research. Your self-declared audience tailors resources; it does not verify professional credentials or grant access to any company’s records.
Payroll All Year is operated by Hartigos Consulting Group, LLC. Lessons, checklists, calculators, prompts and community summaries provide educational information. They do not establish an attorney-client, accountant-client, tax-adviser or payroll-provider relationship.
Check the facts, jurisdiction and date.
A result can depend on work and residence locations, employer facts, dates, tax year and other circumstances. Federal examples do not resolve every state, local, territorial, international or collective-bargaining rule. Open the applicable original sources before acting on a real case. Obtain qualified advice when the situation requires it.
Calculators are estimates within their displayed assumptions. They do not determine an employee's final tax liability, authorize pay, move money or file returns. Use fictional examples and verify calculations against your validated process. AI Lab suggestions and generated prompts require review before use in another tool; that provider's policies apply.
Academy progress and the P.A.Y. badge.
Required lesson and course exams use an 85% passing threshold. The current P.A.Y. educational badge requires at least 95% on every required lesson assessment and every course final across the five-level pathway. On a ten-question test, nine correct pass and all ten are needed for mastery. Three unsuccessful attempts require the stated lesson review before another cycle. Finite curated banks may repeat after review; questions are not generated live. Earlier issued records retain their stated policy.
The badge is an owner-issued, nonproctored educational achievement. It is not external accreditation, CPP/FPC, RCH, professional licensing or an assurance that a learner can handle every payroll situation. Paid challenges, standalone downloads and the badge are separate permissions; a payment cannot substitute for the required mastery evidence. LinkedIn sharing is voluntary and is not automatic.
Downloads, merchandise and intellectual property.
Free templates can be adapted for your own internal work, subject to any file-specific terms. Respect rights in eligible original content, source material, third-party images and team marks. We do not claim ownership of government facts or the overall idea of a payroll resource site. Do not copy or resell material where you lack permission.
A design brief is not a purchase or finished artwork. Use only reference art and marks you are entitled to provide. The shop reference image stays in the current browser session; it is not uploaded or automatically attached. After building a brief, you may open an email draft to the seller and choose to send it with permitted attachments. The seller must review a digital proof and retail quote, obtain customer approval and explicit permission before publicly displaying team/logo artwork. Private or unlisted listings and automatic AI generation are not promised. The active product listing, checkout, size guide, shipping estimate, care instructions and seller policies govern an actual merchandise purchase. Do not assume holiday delivery or a custom design is approved until the seller confirms it. Standalone paid downloads remain unavailable until their merchant and delivery setup is complete.
Features and source material may change or be corrected. This notice is not a certification of compliance in every jurisdiction or immunity from claims. It does not remove rights or duties that applicable law preserves.
02 / Privacy notice
Keep private records on your device.
The optional local reader in Understand Your Pay can read your own PDF, PNG or JPEG pay statement inside your browser. It does not upload that file or its extracted text to P.A.Y. or an AI provider. Outside that specifically labelled local reader, do not submit pay statements, tax-document images, Social Security numbers, bank or routing information, credentials, medical details or confidential employer information. Do not use another person’s document, and do not put sensitive identifiers into the question field or email them to us. Removing a name alone may not de-identify a payroll record.
The owner-only hiring-exercise preview can process a public job description after an explicit Generate action. Files are read locally; only the reviewed description text is sent to P.A.Y. for transient rule-based processing. This builder does not save descriptions, call an external AI service, accept paid orders, or assess applicants. Remove confidential, applicant and personal details before using the preview.
| Feature | Information and purpose | Your control |
|---|---|---|
| Understand Your Pay · local statement reader and guided questions | Reader code and public recognition models are served from this site. Your selected file, recognized lines, questions and calculator entries are processed in this browser page, without an upload, AI request or application storage of their contents. Recognition can miss text or merge columns; it is not a payroll verification or document-redaction service. Ordinary hosting/identity requests still occur, but the local reader does not include document names or contents in those requests. | Use only your own statement. Select Clear to remove the file and extracted lines from the page. A line copied into the question field is also cleared if unchanged. Your original device file remains. Closing the page ends the local review; your browser controls its own device/history behavior. |
| Optional educational question review | If you explicitly submit the separate review form, we store your edited question, the guidance reference or reported response, source year, selected jurisdiction if supplied, review status, account reference and timestamps. The owner can review these privately and prepare a corrected educational answer. No statement file is attached, and local document excerpts are not automatically included. A separately reviewed and approved correction may be published as shared guidance; the original private review request is not a public discussion post. | Submission is optional and does not affect free access or marketing preferences. Remove names, identifiers and document details before sending. Published corrections require owner approval and can be withdrawn. Contact us using the details below to ask about a review request or request removal. |
| Membership and preferences | When enabled, Clerk handles member email-code and Google sign-in; existing ChatGPT sign-in remains available for the owner. The selected authentication service supplies a verified account identifier and sign-in email. Signing in does not create a saved P.A.Y. profile or subscribe you to marketing. A P.A.Y. sign-in-method preference cookie records which method to use or that you signed out; it does not grant access by itself. We store your display name, selected audience (employee, payroll professional, HR/People/Benefits professional, or employer), separate experience level, optional state, interests, notice version, channel choices and timestamps. Account-level counts of feature categories help us understand adoption. They do not include calculator entries or payroll records. The owner can view member segments and export currently opted-in recipients. | Edit your profile and email choices in My account. Both marketing choices start unchecked and are optional. |
| Year-end desk, calculators and AI Lab | Calculations and curated prompt matching run in your browser. Year-end task-board fields stay in the open page's memory; exported files are under your control. The separate recurring planner and saved jobs use the PAY browser records listed below. Do not place confidential information in notes. | Reset, reload or export as the feature explains. Clear saved browser records below. |
| Academy practice and assessments | Practice and graded records can include your account ID, course/version, notes, answers, issued question snapshots, scores, attempts, review checks, dates, graduations and credentials. These support learner progress, grading integrity and access control. Legacy browser-local practice can remain on the device. | View your own results, reset supported practice records or request account-data access, correction or deletion. Resetting practice is not account deletion. |
| Community and research | We store your display name, account ID, posts, replies, source links, tags, dates and moderation/report records. Member discussions and attributed research drafts are visible to signed-in members. Account email is not shown on posts. Extractive summaries organize contributions; they are not verified consensus. | Edit or remove contributions where supported, report content, or contact us. Soft removal from active views can retain moderation/database records. |
| Ideas and requests | We store request text, category, author ID, votes and status. Members can read requests. Owner notes and topic grouping stay private. Feedback does not authorize code execution or public release. | Use fictional examples and contact us about corrections or removal. |
| Gear and external checkout | Design brief text and selected image previews stay in your browser unless a feature explicitly says otherwise. The current brief does not upload an image to AI or place an order. Following a storefront link is a separate interaction. The checkout/fulfillment provider processes buyer, payment, shipping and order information under its policies; the seller may use order information for fulfillment and support. | Clear the brief or reference image. Review the actual seller and provider terms before buying or uploading artwork. A purchase is not consent to unrelated marketing. |
| Newsletter and offers | We keep separate newsletter and additional-offer choices. Brevo handles the addresses selected for an email and the delivery and suppression information needed to respect those choices. Anonymous reporting retains aggregate open and click statistics rather than recipient-linked open and click histories. Delivery, bounce, spam and unsubscribe records can still identify the affected address. Weekly audience delivery is not active. | Both choices are optional and your free profile works with both off. Change either choice in My account. Before weekly delivery starts, we verify an unsubscribe link that works without a P.A.Y. login. Registration or purchase does not opt you into marketing. |
| Hosting and authentication | Hosting, security and the selected authentication providers process the information needed for sign-in and account security. Clerk provides configured member sign-in and session renewal; Google processes a Google sign-in when you choose it. Existing owner sign-in uses ChatGPT. Authentication and request metadata can include IP address, browser details, essential session cookies and access/security logs. See Clerk’s privacy information and the chosen identity provider’s notice. P.A.Y. remains responsible for the member records it controls. | Manage browser/account settings. Contact us about records we control and the provider about its account records. |
Aggregate site activity · current release
From this release, first-party measurement counts named public page categories and selected navigation actions in daily America/New_York calendar buckets. This feature saves only the day, fixed page/action categories, aggregate count and one collection-start timestamp. It does not save account IDs, IP addresses, URL query strings or fragments, full referrers, form contents, visitor identifiers or browsing histories, and it creates no cookies. It uses existing P.A.Y. storage without an external analytics provider. These are recorded events, not unique visitors, sales or a reconstruction of earlier traffic.
Owner, audience-preview, test/preview-host and hidden/prerender activity is excluded. Browser Do Not Track and Global Privacy Control signals and the device preference below disable collection. Blocked scripts and safety caps can omit events. Daily buckets older than 90 Eastern calendar days are removed on the next eligible collection request. Existing account-linked feature-category adoption counts remain separate.
You can turn off this aggregate measurement on this device. Only a one-bit opt-out preference is saved in browser storage; it is not an identifier or browsing record. The choice affects future events and cannot separate or remove a person's contribution from earlier anonymous aggregates. Clearing all site data can remove the preference. The separate browser-record removal below preserves this preference.
Checking this device preference…
Purpose and retention.
We use these records to operate accounts and learning features, support collaboration, honor choices, handle support and protect the service. We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising. Advertising trackers and targeted-advertising integrations are not implemented in the current application.
Browser records remain until you clear them or the browser removes them. Hosted records support the active account, learning history and moderation/security needs. No automatic hosted-account deletion schedule currently runs. An assessment's submission expiry closes the attempt; it does not erase the record. On a verified request, we review deletion or anonymization of personal records, explain applicable exceptions and retain only information needed for a lawful security, legal or dispute purpose. Provider backups/logs follow their practices; deletion from every backup may not be immediate.
Requests and applicable rights.
Contact rob@hartigos.com with PAY privacy request to request access, correction, deletion or help exercising a right. Give the account email and a safe description. We may need reasonable identity verification; do not send government identifiers or payroll records. Applicable rights, verification, response periods, exceptions and appeals depend on law and the circumstances. This notice does not limit them. If you disagree with a response, reply with PAY privacy appeal for further review.
The service is designed for professional adult use. It is not designed to collect children's information or host employee personnel files. Future tracking, AI-provider processing, payroll hosting or materially different data use will need its own notice and controls.
Clear PAY browser records.
This clears selected PAY planner, saved-job and legacy practice records on this device. It does not delete your hosted account or files you downloaded.
Remove those PAY browser records from this device?
03 / Community participation
Share the reasoning and its source.
Post only material you may lawfully share. Use a non-identifying display name and fictional cases. Do not post employee data, confidential employer information, harassment, discriminatory content, copied paid materials or misleading claims.
You retain rights you hold in your contributions. By posting, you give PAY permission to host, display, organize, moderate and excerpt the contribution with attribution to operate member discussions and searchable research drafts. This permission does not claim ownership of your unrelated work. A source link or community answer is not independently verified advice. We may limit or remove content that breaches these guidelines or threatens service security.
Edit/remove options and reports are available in the community. Removal from active discussions also removes those contributions from newly built active research views; moderation/security records can remain as described above. Feature ideas are feedback, not instructions to run tools or deploy changes.
04 / Accessibility
Tell us where you encounter a barrier.
We aim for keyboard-operable controls, readable contrast, clear labels and understandable error messages. The website has not been certified against every accessibility standard or device. Contact rob@hartigos.com with PAY accessibility, the page and the task you could not complete. We can work toward an accessible alternative; no particular response-time guarantee is made here.
05 / Security and service scope
Education and service scope.
Owner planning and product-review pages use server-side owner checks. Member feature APIs require a current member profile and audience selection. The detailed imputed-income guide and its explanatory script use server-side payroll/HR audience checks. Audience selection is self-declared and does not create employer, manager or employee access to company records. Marketing consent is separate. Private assessment answer banks and paid review bundles are excluded from public browser assets. These are specific controls, not a promise that no incident can occur.
Live employer payroll, employee accounts, retained pay statements, address-based licensed tax calculations and paid AI coaching are not public services on this website. Owner-only fictional prototypes are separate. Do not use an educational output to issue pay, file a return or replace an employer's validated controls.
Report a concern with PAY security concern to the contact below. Describe the page and issue without attaching secrets, employee data or another person's account records.
06 / Coverage
A source directory is a starting point.
The compliance directory links all 50 states and D.C.; educational examples cover defined federal and selected state topics. It is not a complete statement of each jurisdiction's payroll, privacy, consumer, website or AI law. The year-end desk identifies the scope and source dates of its tasks. Customer and employer circumstances can change what applies. We do not claim legal certification across all states.
07 / Contact
Start with a safe description.
Operator: Hartigos Consulting Group, LLC
Email: rob@hartigos.com
Use PAY privacy, PAY accessibility, PAY content correction or PAY security concern in the subject. Do not send passwords, payment-card data or employee records. This contact is not an emergency or round-the-clock service.
Original guidance informing these controls
- FTC · Start with Security
- DOJ · Web Accessibility
- New York Attorney General · SHIELD Act
- California Privacy Protection Agency · FAQ
Links are research references, not approval of this website.