AutoHound

Privacy Policy

How AutoHound handles information used by collision repair shops to manage repairs and communicate with their customers.

Last updated October 14, 2026

AutoHound, LLC builds software that collision repair shops use to manage repairs and communicate with their customers.

Who this policy covers

This policy covers four groups, and our role depends on which one you are in:

If a repair shop is fixing your vehicle

The shop decides what information to collect about you and why, and uses AutoHound to do that work. We handle that information on the shop’s behalf and on its instructions; we do not decide how it is used and we do not use it for our own purposes. Separately from the shop’s own retention choices, AutoHound applies its own retention limit to ordinary records. We may delete those records once they are more than 7 years old, subject to the shorter and longer retention rules below. Start with Information the shop records about you.

If you use AutoHound at work

If your shop gave you a login, we hold information about your account directly. See If you use AutoHound at work.

If you try the demo

If you create a demo shop to try AutoHound for yourself, we hold the details you gave us and a record of how you used the demo, and we use them to follow up with you about AutoHound. See If you try the demo.

If you email a repair shop, or one emails you

If an email you send to a repair shop reaches its AutoHound reply address, or an email the shop sends you is copied to that address, we handle that email on the shop’s behalf, as we handle the rest of its records. See Email and replies.

Information the shop records about you

When you do business with a repair shop that uses AutoHound, the shop records what it needs to perform your repair: your name, phone number, email, mailing address, vehicle details (including VIN and license plate), insurance claim references, repair photos, payment records, any authorization or delivery form you sign, and messages you exchange with the shop.

Some of that information can reach us before you do business with the shop, and sometimes when you never do. Shops write estimates in separate estimating software, and a shop can authorize AutoHound to receive a copy of each estimate that software writes, as it is written. An estimate is written whenever the shop prices a repair, which includes pricing one for somebody who is only getting a quote. So we may hold your name, phone number, address, and vehicle details, including the VIN, for a repair that never happens. The shop chooses whether to turn this on and can turn it off at any time. We use those estimates only to match them to work the shop takes on, and an estimate that never matches a vehicle the shop works on is cleared on the schedule described in Retention, correction, and deletion.

How it is used

This information is used solely to manage your repair and keep you informed about it, including status updates, pickup notifications, and replies to your questions. It is not used for advertising.

Public booking requests

Some repair shops that use AutoHound publish a public booking page where anyone may propose a vehicle drop-off day. When you submit a request, you provide your name, a phone number and/or email address, a vehicle description, an optional note, and the proposed day.

This information is shared only with the specific repair shop whose booking page you used so it can respond to your request. It is not sold, shared with any other party, or used for marketing.

You receive one confirmation of your submission. The confirmation is sent by text message only if you explicitly checked the SMS consent box. Otherwise, it is sent by email if you provided an email address. This is a one-time transactional message, not a subscription.

If the shop declines the request or does not act on it, the request and its personal information are automatically deleted within approximately 60 days after the proposed drop-off day has passed, but if an email the shop sends you about the request is copied to the shop’s AutoHound reply address, that copy can be kept after the request is deleted: with the record it is filed with or, if it is never filed with a record, until about 90 days after it arrives, as described in Email and replies. If the shop accepts the request, the information becomes part of that shop’s customer records and is governed by the rest of this policy.

If you checked the SMS consent box, a record of that consent, including the date, time, and the phone number that consented, is retained even after the request itself is deleted. This record is retained as legal evidence of consent to receive text messages. Text messaging is additionally governed by that shop’s SMS Terms & Conditions.

Text messaging

With your consent, the shop may send you SMS text messages about your vehicle repair (status updates, pickup notifications, appointment reminders). Consent is recorded before messaging begins. You can opt out at any time by replying STOP, and re-subscribe by replying START if you previously opted in. See our SMS Terms & Conditions page for full details.

Message frequency varies with the status of your repair. Typically, a few messages are sent over the course of a repair order. Message and data rates may apply.

No mobile information will be shared with third parties or affiliates for marketing or promotional purposes. Text messaging originator opt-in data and consent will not be shared with any third parties.

Sharing

We use a small number of vetted service providers to operate AutoHound, including hosting and data storage, payment processing, text-message delivery, email delivery, error monitoring, and address lookup. Email sent to a shop’s AutoHound reply address, described in Email and replies, is received for us by Amazon Web Services, Inc. through its Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES). Each may process information only as needed to provide that service to us, under contract, and may not use it for its own purposes. A current list of these providers is available to shops on request.

Payments made to a shop through AutoHound are processed by Rainforest Pay, Inc. (Rainforest), the payment processor named in the shop’s Payment Processing Agreement Addendum. Card numbers and bank account details are entered only into Rainforest’s payment form, which appears inside AutoHound’s pages and is not received or stored by AutoHound. That form also collects device and browser signals, which Rainforest and its fraud-prevention provider use to detect fraudulent payments. Rainforest’s own privacy notice governs the information it receives.

Information is also shared, where applicable to your repair, with your insurance carrier. It is never sold, and it is never shared for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Accounting integrations

A repair shop may connect its own accounting software, such as Intuit QuickBooks Online, to AutoHound. When a shop enables such a connection, invoice, payment, and customer records are transmitted to that provider at the shop’s direction, and the provider’s own privacy policy governs the data it receives. AutoHound stores only the encrypted credentials needed to maintain the connection, transmits no data for advertising purposes, and the shop can disconnect the integration at any time from its settings. QuickBooks and Intuit are registered trademarks of Intuit Inc.

Estimating systems and the paint room

A repair shop may install AutoHound’s connector software on computers it controls. When the shop points that software at the export folders its estimating systems write to, we receive the estimates those systems write as they are written, including estimates for vehicles that never become jobs at that shop. The software only reads those folders: it never moves, renames, or deletes anything in one. The shop chooses which computers run it and which folders it watches, and stops it by removing those folders.

The same software can put a shop’s active repair orders on the PPG PaintManager screen in its paint room. When a shop turns that on, each active repair order transmitted carries its number and status, the customer name on the job, the vehicle where the shop holds those details (license plate, VIN, year, make, model, and color code), the refinish hours and body hours, the body labor rate, the paint materials rate and revenue, the insurance company name, the name of the estimator on the job, and the total cost of repairs. AutoHound keeps the paint usage and cost figures PaintManager sends back. That software is PPG’s, running on computers the shop controls under the shop’s own agreement with PPG, and PPG’s own terms govern the data it receives. A shop turns this off at any time from its settings. PPG and PaintManager are trademarks of their respective owners, and AutoHound is not affiliated with or endorsed by PPG.

Address autocomplete

When shop staff type a street address into AutoHound, the partial address text may be sent to Google’s Places service to suggest completions. Only the address text being typed is transmitted. Names, phone numbers, and other customer information are never transmitted, and Google’s privacy policy governs its handling of that text. Shops operate without this feature when it is not configured.

Email and replies

A repair shop can use AutoHound to write email about its work to the people it deals with, such as parts suppliers, insurers, and fleet customers, and that email goes out from the sender’s own email account or from a mailbox the shop has connected for everyone. This section describes what we hold if someone at the shop connects a mailbox to AutoHound, and what happens to replies that come back to AutoHound.

If you use AutoHound at work and connect your own Google or Microsoft mailbox, AutoHound can send the email you write in AutoHound from that mailbox, under your address, and it appears in that mailbox’s sent mail. Each email sent this way, with anything attached to it, goes to Google or Microsoft to be sent, and that provider’s own terms govern the mailbox. You approve the connection on Google’s or Microsoft’s own sign-in page, so we never receive your mailbox password. The permission you give lets AutoHound send email from that mailbox. It does not let us read, search, change, or delete anything in the mailbox. Connecting a Google mailbox also shares that Google account’s email address with us, and connecting a Microsoft mailbox shares your basic Microsoft profile with us, such as your name and email address. We store the permission encrypted, it belongs to your login alone, and we use it only to send the email you choose to send from AutoHound.

You can disconnect your own mailbox in AutoHound whenever you can sign in. We then delete the stored permission and, where Google or Microsoft lets us, ask them to revoke it. You can also remove AutoHound’s access from your Google or Microsoft account settings or, if an administrator approved AutoHound for everyone in your organization, ask that administrator to remove it. If you cannot sign in to AutoHound, for example while your shop’s account is suspended, email [email protected] and we will disconnect the mailbox for you.

If an Owner or Admin at a shop connects a mailbox for the whole shop, such as its main address, they do it in the shop’s settings by signing in to that mailbox’s Google or Microsoft account, and the permission, what it lets AutoHound do, and what the connection shares with us are the same as described above, for that account. Anyone working in the shop’s account whose role lets them send email from AutoHound can then send the email they write in AutoHound from that mailbox, under its address, and it appears in that mailbox’s sent mail. The record AutoHound keeps of an email sent this way names the person who sent it. We store the permission encrypted, it belongs to the shop rather than to the login of the person who connected it, and we use it only to send the email that people working in the shop’s account choose to send from AutoHound.

An Owner or Admin can disconnect the shop’s mailbox in AutoHound, and we then delete the stored permission and, where Google or Microsoft lets us, ask them to revoke it. The shop’s mailbox stays connected when the person who connected it leaves the shop or changes role. If the address is yours and you can no longer disconnect it in AutoHound, the ways to remove AutoHound’s access described above for your own mailbox apply to it too, and you can email [email protected] from that address and we will disconnect it. A shop’s Owner can also ask us to disconnect the shop’s mailbox.

AutoHound’s use of information received from Google APIs will adhere to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the Limited Use requirements.

A shop’s AutoHound reply address is an address at reply.autohound.io that belongs to that shop. Email that AutoHound sends from a connected mailbox names the address it was sent from and then the shop’s reply address as the addresses for replies (the Reply-To line), and copies the reply address (the CC line). When AutoHound adds the reply address as a copy to an email that someone at the shop sends from their own email app, a reply to everyone on that email reaches the reply address too. If an email you receive from a repair shop lists an address at reply.autohound.io, a reply that includes that address comes to AutoHound. AutoHound receives only the email sent to a reply address, including email that someone at the shop forwards to it, and nothing else from a shop’s mailbox.

An email that reaches a shop’s reply address, including the shop’s own outgoing email when it was copied there, is filed, with its attachments, with the record it is about, such as a repair order, purchase order, or sublet, when we can match it to one, and is then kept with that record. Only shop staff whose role already shows them the financial details of that record can see its email, and technicians are not shown it. An email we cannot match to a record is listed for shop staff to file with a record or set aside as not about a record, and only staff whose role shows them financial details on the shop’s records can see that list; technicians are not shown it. Email that is never filed with a record, whether or not anyone sets it aside, is cleared on the schedule described in Retention, correction, and deletion. Email that turns out to be junk or arrives unreadable is not filed or shown to anyone at a shop, and neither is email sent to a reply address that belongs to no shop. The service that receives this email for us is named in Sharing.

We handle this email on the shop’s behalf, as we handle the rest of its records, and we use it only to provide the service to the shop, secure it, and support it. To ask about an email of yours that a shop keeps in AutoHound, contact that shop, or contact us and we will route your request to it.

If you use AutoHound at work

When your shop creates your account, we hold your name, work email, and role, along with the security material that protects the account: a hashed password, your two-factor settings and, if you enroll in SMS two-factor, a phone number, and a hashed PIN if your shop uses shared devices. If you connect your own Google or Microsoft mailbox to AutoHound, we also hold the permission to send email from it, as described in Email and replies. A mailbox connected for the whole shop is the shop’s rather than part of your account, and that section describes it too. We record sign-ins and keep a log of actions taken in the shop’s account, so your shop can answer "who changed this."

If your shop turns on technician planning, it also records, for each person it plans: the kinds of work you do, the hours it plans for you on each weekday, the days or parts of days you are out and whether that is vacation, training or something else (never a reason), its plan for your work on each vehicle, and a daily record of your planned and available hours. These are the shop’s own records, kept with its other records and used on its instructions. Your shop’s owners, admins and the office staff it permits can change them, except the daily record, which is kept as it was each day, and you can adjust the hours left on your own work if your shop allows it. Other office staff at your shop can see the plan: your trades, your hours to plan, your time off and your work on each vehicle. Other technicians see none of your planning information. You see your own plan for each vehicle and your own upcoming time off on your work screen.

In a shop with technician planning on, the shop’s Owner and Admin can also see a report of the estimate hours credited to each person for finished work, compared with that person’s job timer hours and their planned and available hours, and ranked. The report never calculates pay. It is the shop’s own report, run on the shop’s instructions: we do not use it for our own purposes, and nothing in AutoHound uses it to decide anything about you automatically.

We use this only to operate the service, secure it, and support you. We do not sell it, and we do not use it for advertising. If you created a demo shop yourself rather than being given a login by a shop, see If you try the demo instead.

Your shop administers your account, including that activity log, which is the shop’s business record. If you want to see or correct information we hold about you directly, contact us using the details below. Support access can also include signing in as you; see Keeping information secure. The start of any such session is recorded in your shop’s activity log.

If you try the demo

We offer a self-guided demo at demo.autohound.io. It creates a temporary sample shop, filled with fictional vehicles and repairs, that is deleted after 7 days. The demo is for sample data only: please do not enter real customer or employee information into it. Your use of it is also governed by our Demo Environment Acceptable Use Policy.

To create a demo we ask for your name, email address, shop name, and, if you choose to give it, a phone number. We also record the network address and browser the request came from, which we use to prevent abuse of the demo.

You can also ask for a demo through one of our forms on Facebook or Instagram. Meta, which runs both, then passes your request to us with the answers you gave in that form: your name, email address and shop name, your phone number if you gave it, and, where the form asks and you answer, your job title and your answer to a question about your shop. We also receive which of our ads, ad sets and campaigns you reached the form through, if any. A request made this way does not give us your network address or browser. We keep these answers with your contact details in our sales records, so we know how you found us and what to talk about if we speak. What you enter in a Facebook or Instagram form is also handled under Meta’s own privacy policy.

We use these details to send you the private link to your demo, to support you while you try it, and to contact you about AutoHound afterwards. That contact is our own sales follow-up about our own product. Your details are not sold, and they are not shared with anyone else for their own marketing. You can tell us to stop contacting you, and ask us to delete what we hold about you, at any time by emailing [email protected].

While a demo is active we also record how it is used: whether the private link was opened, how many times and on how many days it was visited, how far through the guided tour you went and whether you dismissed it, and counts of the actions taken inside the sample shop. We keep that record with your contact details in our own sales records, so we can tell whether the demo was useful and what would be worth discussing if we speak. It describes activity in a sample shop, not any real repair.

The demo shop and its contents are deleted 7 days after it is created, and the record of the signup request itself is deleted after about 30 days. Your contact details, the form answers and ad details described above, and the summary of how the demo was used are kept in our sales records until you ask us to delete them. For a request made through Facebook or Instagram, we keep a record of it after those 30 days, without your contact details: Meta’s reference numbers (for the request and for our page, form, ad and ad set), when it arrived, how it was handled and which demo it created. We keep it so that the same request does not create a second demo and so we can check what happened to it.

Keeping information secure

Each shop’s data is isolated at the database layer, connections are encrypted in transit, passwords are hashed, and two-factor authentication is available. Email sent to a shop’s reply address travels to us encrypted when the sender’s mail server encrypts it. When it does not, we still accept the email rather than turn it away, so that part of its journey is not encrypted. Technicians are not shown financial fields. Our Security page describes this in more detail.

A limited number of authorized AutoHound staff can access shop accounts to provide support and investigate problems. That can include signing in as one of the shop’s users in order to see what that person sees and reproduce an issue they have reported. We record the start of every such session in the shop’s activity log. We use this access only to operate, secure, and support the service.

Backups are taken daily, stored offsite in encrypted form, and kept for 30 days. A record removed from the live system may remain in a backup for up to 30 days after its removal.

Retention, correction, and deletion

Repair records are retained by the shop as its business records, for as long as the shop needs them for warranty, tax, insurance, and liability purposes.

AutoHound also applies its own outside limit. Once a record is more than 7 years old, we may delete it at any time and without notice. We reserve that right rather than promise it. Nothing obliges us to keep a record for the full 7 years or to delete it when the record reaches that age.

Some information is cleared automatically much sooner:

While your shop’s account is open, we keep some records for longer than 7 years, and some indefinitely, because they can be evidence in a later dispute. These records include:

On a shop’s instruction, we can permanently remove personal details, including name, phone, email, and address, from a customer record while retaining the repair and payment history the shop is required to keep. Once removed, that personal information cannot be restored.

To review, correct, or request deletion of information about your repair, contact the repair shop performing your work. The shop decides what it must retain. You can also reach us at the details below and we will route your request.

If a shop stops using AutoHound, the shop is responsible for exporting its records before its access ends. After access ends, we are not obliged to keep, restore, or provide those records. We remove the shop’s records from our active systems within 90 days after access ends. Copies in our encrypted backups expire within 30 days after that. Beyond that point, we keep only what the law requires us to retain.

Your privacy rights

Depending on where you live, you may have the right to access, correct, delete, or receive a copy of your personal information, and to opt out of its sale or use for targeted advertising. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use it for targeted advertising. We do not profile repair customers. We do not profile shop staff for our own purposes: the technician planning report described under If you use AutoHound at work is the shop’s own, run on its instructions, and nothing in AutoHound uses it to decide anything automatically. If you try the demo, we do record how you used it and use that in our own sales follow-up, as described under If you try the demo.

We apply the same process to everyone who asks, wherever they live:

We will acknowledge a request within 45 days. If we decline it, you may appeal by emailing [email protected] with "Privacy appeal" in the subject line; we will respond to an appeal within 60 days. Residents who disagree with the outcome of an appeal may submit a complaint to their state’s attorney general or privacy regulator, such as the Texas Attorney General.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when our practices change and revise the "last updated" date above. If a change materially affects how information about you is handled, we will notify shops through the application.

Contact

AutoHound, LLC · 5900 Balcones Drive, Suite 100, Austin, TX 78731 · [email protected] · (888) 477-0652