How your automations work
A plain-English guide · DKT Digital, St Peter Port, Guernsey · [email protected]
Written to be read by a business owner, not a developer. No jargon.
What we actually do
We build small, reliable "robots" that do the repetitive admin your business runs on: chasing an unpaid invoice, sending a booking reminder, replying to a new enquiry, putting a weekly summary in your inbox. Each one does a specific job, on a schedule or when something happens (a form is filled in, a payment lands, a booking is made).
It is not a mysterious black box. We can tell you, in one sentence each, exactly what every automation does and what happens if it fails. If a supplier ever says "it's proprietary, we can't explain it". That's a warning sign. We explain ours.
What happens to your data
- Your data is yours. We hold it to run your automations, and you can take a complete copy at any time in ordinary spreadsheet / machine-readable formats (see "Leaving", below).
- It travels over encrypted connections and is stored securely, with the most sensitive items (like the keys that connect to your accounting or bank feed) encrypted a second time so they can't be read even from a copy of the database.
- We take encrypted backups every night and we have tested restoring from them: a backup you've never restored isn't really a backup.
- Your data is never used to train any AI. Where an automation uses AI (for example to draft a reply), it sends only what's needed for that one task, and we never send your personal or financial details to AI services in jurisdictions we don't trust for it.
The full list of the outside services involved (your email provider, payment provider, and so on) is written down in our Privacy Policy, not hidden.
Where a human is in the loop
Automations handle the routine. A person (the owner) stays in the loop where judgement matters:
- Setup and changes are always done by a human, and tested before they go live.
- Anything sensitive or unusual (an odd enquiry, a payment problem, a first-time action) is flagged to the owner rather than actioned blindly.
- The automations are designed to be helpful and safe, and to escalate when they're unsure rather than guess.
What happens when something fails, and how you find out
Things do occasionally break (a supplier has an outage, an account expires). Here's the honest version:
- We usually know before you do. The system checks itself every few minutes and has an independent outside monitor as a backstop. If an automation fails, or a backup goes stale, the owner is alerted automatically.
- We tell you if it affects you. If a failure touches your service, you'll hear from us: ideally with "it's already fixed", or with what's happening and when it'll be back.
- We handle incidents the same careful way every time (detect, triage, fix, review) rather than improvising.
- Your automations keep running even if we're away. They run unattended; what pauses if the owner is briefly unreachable is new changes, not the day-to-day, and your data stays fully portable.
We're honest that DKT is currently run by one person. That's why the monitoring, the tested backups, the written procedures, and your ability to take your data and leave at any time all matter: they're what make a small, focused supplier safe to rely on.
Leaving
There's no lock-in. If you leave, you get a complete copy of your data (spreadsheets plus a machine-readable file), a description of your automations, and a plain guide to what to do next. We revoke our access to your accounts and confirm in writing what was deleted and when. The notice period and other specifics are set out in our Terms of Service.