Terms of use

Fred is a product of Makappen Ltd, registered in England and Wales (company no. 11985285), registered office 33 Boston Road South, Holbeach, Spalding, Lincolnshire, England, PE12 7LR. We work from Winchester. In these terms, 'we' and 'us' mean Makappen Ltd, and 'you' means the fire-protection firm with a Fred workspace, and the people who sign in under it.

When an owner creates a firm's workspace, they accept these terms on the firm's behalf, together with our Data processing addendum, which covers how we handle the firm's customer data. When a team member joins by invite, they accept these terms for themselves. We keep a record of who accepted, when, and which version.

Our Privacy notice and Cookie policy explain how we handle information. They sit alongside these terms.

Together, these terms, our Data processing addendum, and the subscription details we agree with you in writing when you join make up the whole agreement between us, and they replace any earlier discussions about Fred. So neither of us can later lean on something said in a sales conversation or an email that didn't make it into these documents.

The exception is dishonesty. If either of us deliberately lied to get the other to sign, this section is no defence, and the other side keeps every right the law gives them over that.

If those documents ever disagree: the subscription details we agreed with you come first on your plan and price, the Data processing addendum comes first on anything about handling your customers' data, and these terms cover the rest.

Fred is the operating system for independent fire-protection firms: asset registers for the sites you look after, statutory due-date tracking, certificates generated against British Standard references, quotes and invoices, visit scheduling and reminders, and pages you can share with your customers.

Fred is a record-keeping and admin tool. It doesn't inspect anything, and it doesn't make professional judgements - your engineers do. Fred's job is to make the recording and the paperwork quick and dependable.

Running a fire-protection firm carries duties Fred can't take off your hands. Using Fred, you're responsible for:

• The accuracy of what your team enters. Certificates, due dates and compliance statuses are generated from your data.
• The fire-safety work itself: the inspections, the professional judgements, and what a signed certificate declares.
• Confirming the standard, edition and service interval that apply to each system you look after. Fred carries references to work from, and the competent-person judgement on what applies where is your firm's.
• Your own duties as a business handling your customers' personal data - having your own privacy notice, registering with the ICO where required, and using the data lawfully.
• Being straight with your own team about what your firm records about their work in Fred - their register entries, their visits, and any working-time or absence records you keep. If you record why someone is absent, sickness is health data: record it only as a type from the fixed list, and only where you have a lawful reason to hold health data - normally your duties as their employer or engager. By recording it, you're confirming to us that you have that lawful basis.
• Keeping sign-in details safe, and making sure the right people hold the right roles in your workspace.
• Using Fred lawfully - never trying to break it, overload it, probe other firms' data, or use it to attack anyone else.

If someone on your team does something these terms don't allow, that counts as the firm doing it.

Fred generates certificates from the data your team records, and carries British Standard references and service intervals for your team to work from.

What Fred can't do is judge your installation. Whether a particular standard, edition or interval is the right one for a given system on a given site is a professional judgement, and it stays with your competent engineer.

The certificate itself is your firm's document. Your engineer reviews it, signs it, and stands behind what it declares, exactly as they would on paper. We are responsible for the software recording and reproducing faithfully what your team enters. You remain responsible for the professional content of every certificate your firm issues.

Fred gives you shareable pages for your customers: a site's compliance portal, quotes to accept, invoices to view and pay, and QR-code labels on assets. Two things to know:

• Anyone who has one of these links can open the page it points to. The addresses are long and effectively unguessable, but a forwarded link works for whoever receives it - so treat a link like the document itself.
• Your customers' choices on those pages are real: an accepted quote or a paid invoice updates your records.

Fred's capture and import features use an AI model to turn photos, dictated notes and existing registers into draft records. They run only when someone on your team uses them, and everything they produce stays a draft until a person has reviewed it.

AI use is metered: your plan includes an assessment allowance, and the meter is visible in your workspace. Our Privacy notice explains what's sent to our AI provider.

Ask Fred, the assistant in your workspace, is included with every seat. Each calendar month, every seat on your plan includes 100 requests, pooled across your firm. A request is one question or instruction given to it in your workspace, however much work it takes. Taking a change back with Undo is free. We don't count a request Fred couldn't process, or one made by Makappen staff supporting your firm.

If your firm uses more than its pool in a month, Ask Fred keeps working. Requests over the pool are charged at a flat 2p a request, and the month's total appears as one line on your next invoice. Your workspace shows your requests, your pool, anything over it and the total so far at any time. Where your firm has connected a mailbox, we'll also email you when you've used 80% of the pool in a month.

When your firm takes payment through Fred - card payments through Stripe, or Direct Debit through GoCardless - the payment runs on your firm's own account with that provider, under that provider's terms:

• Card and bank details go straight to the provider. They never reach Fred's servers.
• The payment contract is between your firm and your customer; Fred passes the payment through your provider account and records the result.

If a payment dispute arises, it's resolved between you, your customer and the provider. We'll help with the records where we can.

We agree your subscription with you in writing when you join, along with your AI assessment allowance. You pay per active seat at the rates on our pricing page - a manager seat covers desk and field, an engineer seat covers field work - and nothing is held back behind a bigger tier.

Ask Fred requests over your pool are charged at a flat 2p a request, the rate on our pricing page. We'll first charge them for November 2026, and the notice below applies to this rate like any other price.

We bill the way we've agreed with you - normally by invoice or Direct Debit - and we'll give you at least 30 days' written notice before any price change takes effect.

If a payment fails or an invoice falls overdue, we'll contact you first. If it stays unpaid after we've flagged it, we may suspend access until it's settled. Suspension pauses your team's sign-in; it never deletes your records.

You can cancel any time by telling us in writing - an email is fine. There's no minimum term. When you cancel:

• Your subscription runs to the end of the period you've paid for, and your team keeps access until then.
• We don't refund the remainder of a started billing period, unless we've materially failed to provide the service.
• After access ends, tell us whether you want your firm's data returned to you or deleted. We'll do whichever you choose within 30 days of your instruction, keeping only what the law requires us to keep - for example our own billing records.

The Data processing addendum sets this out in full for your customers' data.

We'll do as much as we reasonably can to keep Fred available, fast and working well, and to look after your data carefully - our Security page describes how. We can't promise the service will never be unavailable or completely free of faults, so to the extent the law allows, it's provided 'as is'.

We keep improving Fred, and features may change as it develops. If we ever plan a change that materially reduces something your firm relies on, we'll give you reasonable notice first.

When you ask us to help - setting your firm up, importing your existing records, or looking into a support question - members of our team may access your workspace to do that work. That access is limited to what the job needs, it's covered by the confidentiality commitments in our Data processing addendum, and if we join your workspace to help, you can see us in your team list and remove us at any time.

Support is by email at hello@fredfireops.co.uk. A named person on our team looks after your firm and answers it.

When you join, we set your firm up with you. We import your records, or build the register with you from paper, and you check them before you go live. We run a video call with your team to get Fred on their phones. The setup fee we agree in writing covers this, and support through your first service cycle.

Each quarter we'll offer your firm a check-in call to look at how you're using Fred and what to change. It's there if you want it, and nothing depends on taking it up.

You can tell us what slows your firm down, and we'll consider it for what we build next. What we build, and when, is our decision. We may invite you to try a new feature early in your own workspace, and an early feature may change or be withdrawn before it's released to every firm.

We're preparing short guides for new starters, and we'll tell you when they're ready.

If we break this agreement, we are responsible for loss you suffer that is a foreseeable result of our breach. We are not responsible for loss that was unforeseeable when you agreed to these terms, for loss caused by events outside our reasonable control, or - to the extent the law allows - for business losses such as lost profit, lost business or business interruption.

Our total liability to you, however it arises, is limited to the fees you have paid us in the 12 months before the claim, or £5,000 if that is greater.

Fred stores and organises your compliance records; responsibility for the fire-safety work itself, and for your firm's duties under fire-safety law, remains with you.

Where a claim is about your customers' personal data, our Data processing addendum sets out how any compensation is shared between us.

Nothing in these terms limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by our negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

Beyond cancelling - which you can do any time - either side can end the agreement early if the other materially breaks it (a serious breach, not a minor slip) and doesn't put it right within 30 days of being told in writing. We can also suspend or end access straight away if:

• your workspace is used unlawfully, or to attack the service or other firms' data, or
• fees stay unpaid after we've flagged them and given you time to settle.

If the agreement ends, the cancellation section above governs what happens to your data.

Fred - the software, the design, the name - belongs to us. Your subscription gives your firm the right to use it while the agreement runs; ownership stays where it started.

Your firm's records belong to you. You give us permission to host and process them purely to provide the service - which is what the Data processing addendum governs.

If you send us ideas or feedback, we can use them to improve Fred without owing you anything for them. Using an idea never means sharing your firm's records, and we won't name your firm as the source without your permission.

Yes - as Fred develops, or when the law or our pricing changes. We'll give you reasonable notice of any change that matters, and for material changes - ones that affect your rights or your costs - we'll ask you to accept the updated version in the app before you carry on. The version date at the top tells you when the current terms took effect.

The same common-sense rules cover the marketing site and the live demo:

• Everything in the demo is fictional. Any firm, person, site or certificate you see there is invented, and the demo may change or come down at any time.
• Please don't try to break, overload or misuse the site or the demo.

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales, and any dispute will be handled by the courts of England and Wales.

These terms are between your firm and us. No one else can enforce them - the Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999 gives no other person a right to rely on them.

Email hello@fredfireops.co.uk and we'll come back to you. That's the right route for anything to do with your account, your data or the service.

If you ever need to send us a formal legal notice, post it to Makappen Ltd, 33 Boston Road South, Holbeach, Spalding, Lincolnshire, England, PE12 7LR, and email a copy to hello@fredfireops.co.uk so we see it quickly.