Privacy policy

Pit Lane is a workspace for car dealership service departments, built and operated by Out The Lot. This policy explains what Pit Lane stores, why, who can see it, and what you can ask for. In it, “the dealership” means the dealership whose staff use this copy of Pit Lane, and “we” means Out The Lot.

The short version

• Your dealership’s data belongs to your dealership.
• We don’t sell, rent, trade or share it with third parties, and we don’t use it for advertising or marketing.
• We use it only to run Pit Lane for your dealership.
• No tracking or advertising cookies.

Who is responsible

The dealership decides what goes into Pit Lane, who uses it, and is responsible for the information its staff enter, including having the right to enter it. Out The Lot ([legal company name], [mailing address], Ontario, Canada) hosts and runs Pit Lane for the dealership as its service provider.

Questions about a customer’s or employee’s information: contact the dealership. Questions about how Pit Lane handles data: anouar@outthelot.com.

What Pit Lane stores

• Accounts: name, username, email address (optional, used for email notifications), role, access levels and last sign-in. Passwords are stored only as one-way hashes, so nobody can read them back, us included.
• Signed-in devices: a hashed sign-in token, the browser used and its internet (IP) address. Failed sign-in attempts are recorded with the IP address to stop password guessing.
• Work records staff enter: customer cases (names, contact details, vehicles, repair order numbers, notes), warranty claims and receivables (claim numbers, VINs, amounts), manufacturer cases, declined services, loaners, parts on order and comebacks.
• Team records: staff names, roles, schedules and days off, and anything else the dealership chooses to add.
• Personal items: each person’s tasks, notes, follow-ups and calendar events, plus a calendar link or file if they choose to add one.
• An activity log of every change to a shared list: who changed what, when, and the old and new value.
• Spiffs: the ROs and operation codes each advisor logs, their QC’d jobs, and the monthly scores and pay amounts the manager enters (TSR/CSI, warranty labour gross, surveys, Google reviews). Only that advisor, the service manager and the people the manager names as viewers can see them.

Pit Lane doesn’t collect payment card numbers. Please don’t enter health details, Social Insurance Numbers or banking information.

Why it is used

Only to provide Pit Lane to the dealership: tracking customer follow-ups, warranty claims and manufacturer cases, scheduling the team, and keeping Pit Lane secure. Sign-in and activity records are used to protect accounts and show who changed a record.

Who can see it

• Items marked Only me are visible only to the person who added them, admins included.
• Shared lists are visible to the people the dealership’s Pit Lane admin gives access to. The server enforces this, not just the screen.
• Admins manage accounts and access, but they can’t open another person’s private items.
• If you @mention someone in a shared record, they get a notification with the sentence you wrote and a link to it. If they couldn’t open that record before, the mention gives them access to that one record (to change it if you can, otherwise to view it), but not to the rest of the list. Records marked Only me are never shared this way, and the record’s history shows who shared it with whom.
• If email notifications are on, the person you mention or assign something to also gets an email. It says who did it and what kind of record it is (for example “a warranty claim”), with a link. The record’s contents and the sentence you wrote stay in Pit Lane. Each person can switch these emails off on their Profile.
• Out The Lot can reach the server to maintain it, make backups and fix problems. We look at records only when that work requires it or the dealership asks us to.
• We disclose information only if the law requires it, such as a court order, and we tell the dealership first unless the law forbids it.

We don’t share your data

We never sell, rent, trade or give your dealership’s data to third parties for their own use. The only outside companies involved are the ones Pit Lane needs in order to run. They act only on our instructions and may not use the data for anything else:

• Hosting: Hetzner Online runs the server and database in Hillsboro, Oregon, USA. Each dealership’s Pit Lane uses its own database.
• Optional AI help: off unless the dealership switches it on. When it is on, text a user submits to Paste email, Review summary or Polish with Claude is sent to Anthropic’s API to produce a suggestion. Under Anthropic’s commercial terms, that data isn’t used to train its models and is deleted after a limited period.
• Email notifications: if switched on, Resend (Resend, Inc., USA) delivers them. It receives the recipient’s email address, the name and email address of the person who mentioned or assigned them (so a reply reaches that person), and the kind of record, but no record contents.
• Calendar links: if a user adds an Outlook calendar link, the server fetches that calendar from Microsoft.
• Typefaces: your browser loads Pit Lane’s fonts from Google Fonts, which receives your IP address but no Pit Lane data.

Some of these providers process information outside Canada, where it is subject to the laws of that country.

Cookies and browser storage

• pl_auth keeps you signed in. It ends after 4 hours without activity. Scripts can’t read it, and it is sent only over HTTPS.
• pl_form is a one-time security code that protects the sign-in form.
• Pit Lane keeps a working copy of your data in your browser so it opens quickly and copes with a dropped connection. It is wiped when you sign out.

How long it is kept

• Work records stay until a user deletes them or the dealership asks us to remove them.
• A sign-in ends after 4 hours without activity, and failed sign-in records are deleted after 30 days.
• Up to 30 earlier versions of each area are kept as safety copies.
• Nightly backups are kept for [number] days, then deleted.
• When a dealership stops using Pit Lane, it can export everything. We then delete its data, including backups, within [number] days.

Your choices

You can ask to see the personal information Pit Lane holds about you, ask for a correction, or ask how it has been used. Ask the dealership, or email anouar@outthelot.com, and we’ll help the dealership respond within 30 days. Pit Lane is designed to support compliance with Canada’s Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA). If you aren’t satisfied with the answer, you can contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

If something goes wrong

If we become aware of a breach of security affecting a dealership’s data, we will tell that dealership without delay and help it notify the people affected and the Privacy Commissioner where the law requires.

No guarantee

We take reasonable steps to protect data, but no system is completely secure, and Pit Lane is provided as is and used at your own risk. See the Terms of use.

Changes to this policy

When we change this policy we update the date at the top. Important changes are announced in Pit Lane’s notifications.