Legal checklist

Lili Pod handles a lot of the plumbing for you, but running a UK service business still comes with a few responsibilities that sit with you, the business owner — not with us.

What Lili Pod already handles

• Payments never touch us. Your customers pay through your own Stripe account; we never see or hold card details, and take no booking fee.
• Per-business data isolation. Your data is kept separate from every other business, enforced at the database layer — see Storage & data.
• A retention window and erase option for anything stored in client Documents, if you switch that feature on — seeDocuments & clients.

What’s down to you

As the business using Lili Pod, you’re the data controller for your own customers’ information — Lili Pod is the processor. A short, honest checklist:

1. Check whether you need to register with the ICO (the UK’s data protection regulator) — most businesses handling customer data do, and some categories are exempt. It’s a small annual fee.
2. Have your own terms and a privacy notice for your customers, covering what you collect from them and why.
3. If you use Documents to hold sensitive information (health details, for example), treat that with extra care — set a sensible retention window and only give the manage_clients permission to people who genuinely need it.
4. Keep your own business insurance, professional registrations, and any industry-specific certifications up to date — Lili Pod tracks certificate expiry dates for you where relevant, but the underlying qualification is yours to hold.

Consumer Contracts Regulations — when your customers book online

If your own customers are individuals booking for themselves (not another business), the Consumer Contracts (Information, Cancellation and Additional Charges) Regulations 2013 apply to that booking, because it's made at a distance (online, through your Lili Pod booking page) — you are the trader here, not Lili Pod. Two things worth knowing:

1. Most bookings on Lili Pod are likely exempt from the 14-day cancellation right.The regulations carve out "services related to leisure activities" where the contract specifies a particular date or period of performance — a training session, class, tour, or appointment on a fixed date generally falls into that exemption. It's worth confirming this applies to your specific service with a solicitor if you're relying on it, especially for anything sold as an open credit or package with no fixed date attached (which is less likely to be exempt).
2. The pre-contract information duty still applies regardless. Before someone books, they need to clearly see the total price, what they're booking, and your cancellation policy — your Lili Pod booking page already shows the price, date/time and service details as part of the booking flow, but the specific cancellation terms are yours to write and display (Lili Pod doesn't invent a policy for you).

Our own policies

Read our own Terms of Service and Privacy Policyfor how Lili Pod itself handles data.