Terms and Conditions

Bell Path is an independent business. It is not provided, endorsed or approved by any education department, Catholic education office or school, and none of them is a party to these terms or responsible for Bell Path.

These terms are an agreement between Bell Path Timetabling (ABN 59 429 101 462) ("Bell Path", "we", "us") and the school. "The school" means the legal body that runs it, such as its school council, Catholic education company or parish, or governing board. A teacher who uses Bell Path on their own, without their school, agrees to them for themselves, as "Teachers using Bell Path on their own" below explains.

They apply whenever the school or its staff use Bell Path: creating an account, starting a trial or pilot, accepting an invitation, subscribing, or using any timetable, support, billing or export feature. The person who accepts these terms confirms they may do so for the school, and agrees personally to follow the Acceptable Use Policy.

These terms apply in place of any terms on a school's purchase order, invoice request or supplier form, unless Bell Path signs a written agreement saying otherwise.

Bell Path is school operations software. It does not give legal, industrial, employment, payroll, student wellbeing, privacy or purchasing advice.

The school is responsible for the information it enters into Bell Path. That includes making sure it has the notices, consents, permissions and authority it needs before it gives us staff, timetable, class, room, student-related or other school information.

Bell Path does not need student names to build a timetable. Some features let a school record named students: tutor timetables hold the names, classes and tutoring groups of tutored students; a relief teacher's day brief can hold support instructions for a student in that class; and Education Support can also hold support minutes, funding, health, disability or wellbeing context if the school chooses. A school should only enter that information where it has decided the information is necessary, proportionate, authorised and lawful.

A teacher can use Bell Path free, whether or not their school uses it, to write plans for their class and send them to a relief teacher, their cover planner or a colleague, or print them. Bell Path does not charge teachers for this.

The teacher owns the plans they write, and lets us store, send and print them as they ask. They decide what a plan says about their students, and include only what they would leave for a relief teacher on paper.

Bell Path pays for the texts a plan sends. Their wording is fixed, and each account can send a limited number a day. Bell Path may change, limit or end free use for teachers, with notice to the teacher's email address.

A plan reaches the teacher's school only when the teacher sends or shares it. What they share stays with the school, as anything a teacher gives their school does.

For a teacher, the sections on privacy, acceptable use, availability and support, liability and governing law apply as they do to a school, except the part about covering Bell Path's losses from someone else's claim. Notices go to the teacher's email address, and changes to these terms apply to a teacher from the date at the top.

The school owns its own data: everything it uploads or enters, its timetable settings and constraints, the timetables Bell Path builds for it, and its exports.

The school lets us use its data to host, run, support, secure and back up Bell Path for the school, and to fix problems it reports. We do not sell school information, and we do not show one school's information to another school without its permission. The one exception is a relief teacher on more than one school's list: once one school books them, another school asking who is free sees them as no longer available for those hours, never where or for which class.

The school also lets us use its data to improve Bell Path in two ways. We test new versions of the timetable builder against copies of the school's timetable setup, with every staff and class name replaced by a code. And when Bell Path cannot read a timetable file, we keep the layout of its tables, with the names and the school's own words taken out, to teach Bell Path to read files like it.

We may keep and use information that no longer identifies the school or any person, such as how often a feature is used, and anything we make from it is ours.

We own Bell Path and everything that makes it up: the software, the timetable builder, the designs and page layouts, the help guides, videos, templates and sample school, the documentation, and every improvement and new feature, whoever suggested it. Bell Path and the Bell Path logo are our trade marks. The school may use the name Bell Path to refer to the service, but not in a way that suggests a connection or endorsement that does not exist.

Using Bell Path, paying for it or giving feedback gives the school, its staff, or any body the school belongs to, such as an education department, diocese or school board, no ownership of or rights in Bell Path, other than the right to use it under these terms.

Schools and their staff often suggest changes to Bell Path, by email, in person, through support or in any other way. The school gives us a permanent, worldwide, royalty-free permission to use any idea, suggestion, feature request or other feedback, for any purpose, without payment, credit or further permission.

We decide what Bell Path builds. A suggestion does not oblige us to build anything, and anything we build, including in response to a suggestion, belongs to us. This permission covers ideas only: it gives us no rights in the school's own documents or information.

Our Privacy Policy and Data Processing Summary explain how Bell Path handles personal information.

The school authorises Bell Path to use other companies, including companies outside Australia and AI services, to provide and support Bell Path. The Privacy Policy names the companies we use now, and we may change them.

Prices depend on school size, billing frequency and what the school’s Bell Path account shows. Unless we say otherwise, prices are in Australian dollars and do not include GST.

Bell Path Timetabling is not currently registered for GST. If that changes, invoices and pricing will be updated as the law requires.

Every school has its own purchasing approvals, delegations, procurement rules, conflict-of-interest rules and rules about gifts, benefits and hospitality. The school is responsible for following them before it uses Bell Path or accepts a referral term, discount or any other benefit.

When a school signs up through another school's link and first pays, each school gets a term (three months) added to its paid access, up to four terms in any twelve months for the referring school. A referral term goes on the school account. It is never cash, a gift card, a personal reward, a commission or a benefit for an individual staff member. Bell Path may decline, reverse or adjust a referral term if the payment that earned it is refunded, or if we reasonably think it could breach the law, school policy, procurement rules, sector guidance, these terms or the intent of the referral program.

Credit a school earned under the earlier referral program still comes off its card renewals, up to half of each renewal.

A school paying by card can cancel in Billing. Refund requests, and cancellation for invoice billing, go to hello@bellpath.com.au or the in-app support form. Bell Path reviews the school account, Stripe records, invoice history, and timetable context before processing any refund manually.

Unless a separate written agreement says otherwise, refund requests within 30 days of payment are eligible for a full refund, requests from days 31-90 may receive a pro-rated refund less one month, and requests after 90 days are handled case by case.

If Bell Path does not work for the first term’s timetable, Bell Path will still review the refund request even if it falls outside the first 30 days. Nothing in this section limits rights that cannot be excluded under Australian Consumer Law.

Bell Path is for genuine school timetabling and planning, used lawfully and responsibly. The Acceptable Use Policy is part of these terms.

Bell Path may suspend or limit access where it is reasonably needed, for example for non-payment, suspected misuse, a security risk, unlawful use, a breach of these terms, abuse of support or infrastructure, or a risk to the service or to other schools.

A school paying by card can cancel in Billing at any time. Cancelling takes effect straight away and the subscription does not renew; any refund for the rest of the paid period follows the refund section. A school paying a yearly invoice does not renew automatically. A school paying termly invoices stops them by telling Bell Path before the next one is issued. Either way, access pauses 45 days after an unpaid invoice's due date.

Bell Path can stop providing Bell Path to a school, or stop providing it altogether, with at least 60 days' notice, or sooner where a law or legal obligation requires it, and refunds prepaid fees for any time after access ends. Either side can end access straight away by notice if the other seriously breaches these terms and has not fixed it within 14 days of being asked.

For 60 days after access ends, the school's owners can ask us for an export of its data. We may delete the data after that.

If a school asks us to delete its data, we take reasonable steps to do so, apart from records we keep for legal, accounting, security or dispute reasons. Copies in backups are removed as those backups expire.

We aim to keep Bell Path reliable, but it is provided as available unless a separate written service level agreement says otherwise.

Support is by email or another channel we offer. Response times are not guaranteed unless we have agreed them in writing.

Free trials, complimentary access and preview modules may be changed, limited, paused or withdrawn where that is reasonably needed for product, security, billing, legal or operational reasons.

Bell Path helps a school build, check and review timetable options. The school remains responsible for checking a timetable before it is published, and for every staffing, industrial, compliance, educational and operational decision made from it.

The quality of a timetable depends on the information the school enters. If that information is incomplete, wrong or contradicts itself, the result may be incomplete, unsuitable or impossible to schedule.

To the maximum extent the law allows, Bell Path excludes warranties that the law does not require, and is not liable for indirect loss, loss of profit, loss of opportunity, reputational loss, consequential loss, or loss of data where the school has not kept reasonable exports or records of its own.

To the maximum extent the law allows, Bell Path’s total liability for all claims relating to the service is limited to the fees the school actually paid for Bell Path in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim. For unpaid trials, pilots, free access and free use, that cap is AUD $100.

The school will cover Bell Path's reasonable losses and costs from a claim by someone else, such as a staff member or parent, that arises because the school entered information into Bell Path without authority to do so or used Bell Path unlawfully. This is reduced to the extent Bell Path caused the loss.

Because Bell Path is not ordinarily bought for personal or household use, where the law allows, our liability for failing to meet a consumer guarantee is limited, at our choice, to supplying the service again or paying the cost of having it supplied again.

Nothing in these terms excludes, restricts or modifies rights that cannot be excluded under the Australian Consumer Law or any other law that applies.

We may change these terms. The date at the top shows the version in force.

A change that takes away a school's rights or costs it more applies to that school once its owner or admin accepts it, which they are asked to do the next time they open Bell Path. A school that does not accept it can cancel, and we refund prepaid fees for the time after it leaves. Other changes apply from the date shown.

We may transfer these terms, and the business, to a company we control or to a buyer of Bell Path, and the school agrees to that transfer now. The school's rights under these terms stay the same.

We give the school notice under these terms in Bell Path or by email to its owners. The school gives us notice by email to hello@bellpath.com.au.

These terms are governed by the laws of Victoria, Australia. Both sides agree to the courts of Victoria, and to any courts that hear appeals from them.