Terms & conditions.

Zelvo is an independent side project built and operated by an individual NZ-based software engineer. It is not a company, not a registered tax agent, not a financial service provider, and there is no support team behind it — just one person who built the tool for their own rental and decided to share it.

"Zelvo", "we", "us" refers to that operator. "You" means the person using the service, whether as a landlord, co-owner, or invited member. The app lives at zelvo.co.nz.

These terms form a binding agreement between you and the operator. By creating an account or using the app you accept them. If you don't agree, don't use the service — no hard feelings.

Zelvo is a software tool for New Zealand residential landlords. It helps you:

• Record rental income, expenses, assets, and mileage for your properties.
• Apportion shared expenses using the IRD floor-area method for owner-occupied flatting setups.
• Produce tax reports summarising gross income, deductible expenses, and estimated net rental income for a fiscal year.
• Guide you through the information you will need when filing an IR3 via myIR.

This is the single most important clause in these terms. If you take nothing else from this document, take this.

Zelvo produces estimates and summaries based on the data you enter and published IRD rules. It does not constitute tax advice, legal advice, financial advice, or a tax agent service within the meaning of the Tax Administration Act 1994. The operator is not a chartered accountant or a registered tax agent.

Before you file anything with Inland Revenue based on what Zelvo shows you, verify the numbers yourself. Check them against your receipts, your tenancy records, and the current IRD rules. If the stakes are meaningful, have a chartered accountant or registered tax agent review your return before you submit it. Zelvo is a drafting and organising aid — it is not your filing authority.

Specifically:

• Zelvo currently supports FY 2025-26 onwards. Earlier years, overseas property, non-resident rules, standard-cost methods, mixed-use asset rules, and ring-fencing carry-forward tracking are not implemented.
• Interest deductibility, depreciation rates, chattel thresholds, and mileage rates are applied as published by IRD at the time of implementation. They can change, and there may be a gap between when IRD publishes a change and when Zelvo is updated.
• Zelvo can contain bugs. The operator fixes them when they are found and reported, but does not guarantee the software is free of errors or that any given calculation is correct for your specific circumstances.
• You are solely responsible for the accuracy of the records you enter, for understanding your own tax position, and for what you declare to Inland Revenue. If the return is wrong, it's your return — not the operator's.
• For complex situations — trusts, look-through companies, overseas owners, mixed-use holiday homes, Airbnb / short-stay, ring-fencing across years — do not rely on Zelvo. Consult a registered tax agent or chartered accountant.

You authenticate through a supported provider (email link or OAuth). You are responsible for keeping your login credentials secure and for everything that happens under your account.

You must be at least 18 years old and legally able to enter into a contract under New Zealand law to use Zelvo. If you invite co-owners to a property, you warrant that you are authorised to share that property's records with them.

The property, tenancy, transaction, and financial records you enter into Zelvo are yours. We do not claim ownership of them.

You grant us a limited licence to store, process, and display that data strictly to operate the service for you and anyone you have invited as a co-owner. We do not sell it, and we do not use it to train machine-learning models.

Handling of personal information is covered in detail in our Privacy Policy.

When using Zelvo you agree not to:

• Upload data you don't have the right to share — in particular, if you record tenant contact details (name, email, phone) make sure your tenant is aware you are keeping those records.
• Attempt to reverse-engineer, scrape, or disrupt the service, or use it to build a competing product.
• Use the service to evade tax obligations, launder funds, or misrepresent records to Inland Revenue or any other party.
• Interfere with other users' accounts or access property records you were not invited to.

Zelvo is built and maintained by one person alongside other commitments. That shapes what you should reasonably expect:

• Features may be added, changed, paused, or removed as IRD rules evolve, as priorities shift, or as the operator learns what's actually useful.
• There is no uptime guarantee, no SLA, and no support roster. The app may go down for maintenance, because of a third-party outage, or because the operator is simply not at a keyboard.
• Bug fixes and improvements happen on a best-effort basis. Urgent issues are usually handled quickly; minor issues may sit in a backlog.
• If the project ever becomes too much to maintain, or genuinely doesn't get enough use to justify the time, it may be wound down. Where practical, active users will be given notice and a window to export their records before that happens.

None of that means Zelvo is a throwaway. The operator takes the project seriously and, in practical terms, commits to:

• Reviewing and updating IRD rates, thresholds, and rule changes each fiscal year (for example, kilometre rates, chattel thresholds, interest deductibility settings) so the app stays in step with the rules it depends on.
• Testing tax calculations against published IRD worked examples before they ship, and fixing discrepancies when they're found.
• Reading every bug report and feature suggestion personally, not filtering them through a ticket queue.
• Being transparent about what is and isn't supported — no hidden limitations, no quiet breakage of features without notice.
• Treating your records as something to be kept safe, not a dataset to be monetised. See the Privacy Policy for detail.

These are commitments about how the project is run, not warranties about outcomes. If you need a contractually guaranteed service with 24/7 support, Zelvo is the wrong fit — an established commercial product is what you want. If you want a tool built and maintained with care by someone who uses it themselves, that is what this is.

Zelvo is currently free to use for managing one property. That is the full experience — there is no trial countdown, no feature gating on core tax calculations, no surprise charge.

If enough landlords end up using the tool to justify the ongoing time investment, a paid tier may be introduced later to unlock additional properties. Nothing is decided yet, and nothing about a paid tier is promised.

If paid tiers are ever introduced:

• Pricing, what the paid tier includes, billing cycle, and refund conditions will be disclosed clearly before you are charged.
• Your existing free usage will not be retroactively paywalled — what works for free today for one property will continue to work for free for that property.
• You can cancel any paid subscription at any time. Cancellation stops future billing; refunds for the current billing period are generally not provided unless required by the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 or other applicable NZ law.
• GST will be shown at checkout where applicable.

Zelvo relies on a small number of third-party providers for cloud hosting, sign-in, email delivery, and analytics. Their handling of data is governed by their own terms and privacy policies. We choose providers with reputable security practices but we are not responsible for their independent actions. See the Privacy Policy for more detail on the categories of provider involved.

The Zelvo name, logo, interface, code, and content (other than data you upload) are owned by us or our licensors and are protected by copyright and trademark law. Using the service does not grant you any right to copy, redistribute, or build on those assets outside the scope of normal use of the app.

You can close your account at any time from the settings page or by emailing hello@zelvo.co.nz. On closure we immediately and permanently delete data tied to properties only you owned — transactions, receipts, rooms, tenancies, chattels, mileage, and so on. There is no recovery after deletion; export anything you may need first. Data tied to properties you shared with co-owners remains available to those co-owners. See the Privacy Policy for the full detail.

We may suspend or terminate an account that breaches these terms, poses a security risk, or is being used unlawfully. Where practical we will give you notice and a chance to fix the issue first.

Use Zelvo at your own risk. To the fullest extent permitted by New Zealand law, Zelvo is provided "as is" and "as available", without warranties of any kind — express or implied — including warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, accuracy, reliability, or non-infringement.

In particular, the operator does not warrant that:

• Calculations will be correct for every individual taxpayer's circumstances, or that they match the position IRD will ultimately take on your return.
• The service will be error-free, free of bugs, or continuously available.
• Data will never be lost, corrupted, or inaccessible (though reasonable care is taken — see the Privacy Policy for security detail).
• The service will remain available indefinitely, or that current features will continue to exist.

You accept all risk associated with your use of the service. This includes — without limitation — the risk that a calculation is wrong, that you file an inaccurate return relying on Zelvo's output, that IRD imposes shortfall penalties or use-of-money interest, that you miss a deduction you were entitled to, that your data becomes unavailable, or that the service is discontinued. You are expected to verify numbers independently before filing, and to seek qualified advice for anything material.

Consumer Guarantees Act 1993. Where you are a consumer under the Consumer Guarantees Act, nothing in these terms limits rights you have under that Act. Where you use the service in trade — which covers most rental activity — you and the operator agree under section 43 of the Act that the Act does not apply to your use of the service. You acknowledge that it is fair and reasonable to contract out of the Act in that circumstance.

Fair Trading Act 1986. Nothing in these terms limits any right you have under the Fair Trading Act. The operator makes no claim that Zelvo is "guaranteed accurate" or "IRD-approved" — it is neither.

Limitation of liability. To the maximum extent permitted by law, and except for liability that cannot be limited under NZ law (for example under the Fair Trading Act, for personal injury, or for fraud or willful misconduct), the operator's total aggregate liability to you for any and all claims arising out of or in connection with the service — whether in contract, tort (including negligence), under statute, or otherwise — is limited to the greater of (a) the fees you have paid for the service in the twelve months preceding the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) NZ$100.

The operator is not liable for any indirect, incidental, consequential, special, or punitive loss, including (without limitation) lost profits, lost rental income, lost tax deductions, penalties or interest imposed by Inland Revenue, costs of engaging a tax agent or accountant to rework a return, loss of data, loss of goodwill, or loss of opportunity, arising from or in connection with your use of the service.

You agree to indemnify the operator against any claim, penalty, or loss suffered by the operator because of (a) your use of the service in breach of these terms, (b) data you entered into the service that you did not have the right to process, or (c) your filings with Inland Revenue or any other third party.

Because Zelvo is an indie project, "support" is narrow and honest. Here's what the operator will and won't do:

The best way to reach the operator is email — see the Contact section. Replies usually come within a few days, sometimes faster, occasionally slower. If a reply is urgent to you, say so plainly and explain why; it helps with prioritising.

These terms are governed by the laws of New Zealand. The courts of New Zealand have exclusive jurisdiction over any dispute arising out of or in connection with them.

These terms may be updated from time to time. When they are, the "last updated" date at the top will be revised and, for material changes, active users will be notified by email or in-app notice. Continuing to use the service after the change takes effect means you accept the updated terms.

Questions about these terms? Email hello@zelvo.co.nz or use the contact form. Every message goes to a real person — the one who built the app.