Cookie Policy
Understanding how clever-flowhub uses tracking technologies to improve your experience while respecting your privacy choices
Last Updated: March 2025
What This Policy Covers
Look, tracking technology gets a bad reputation. But here's the thing — when used properly, it actually helps you get a better experience on our site. This policy explains exactly what we're doing, why we're doing it, and how you can control it.
We're not in the business of selling your data or tracking you across the internet. Our use of cookies is pretty straightforward: make the site work properly, remember your preferences, and understand what content actually helps people preparing for budget audits.
How Tracking Technologies Work
Cookies are small text files that get stored on your device when you visit websites. They're not programs, can't carry viruses, and honestly aren't as scary as they sound. Think of them more like digital sticky notes that help websites remember things about your visit.
Beyond traditional cookies, we also use similar technologies like local storage and session storage. These work differently from cookies but serve similar purposes — helping the site function and remembering your preferences.
Essential Cookies We Use
Functional Cookies
These remember your preferences and settings. Language selection, interface customizations, accessibility features — all the things that make the site work the way you want it to. You can disable these, but you'll have to reset your preferences every time you visit.
Analytics Cookies
We track which pages get visited, how long people stay, where they click, and what content actually proves useful. This helps us understand what's working and what needs improvement. For instance, if everyone's abandoning a particular guide halfway through, that tells us something's wrong with that content.
All this data gets aggregated. We're not watching individual users navigate the site — we're looking at patterns across thousands of visits to make better decisions about content and functionality.
Marketing Cookies
Full transparency: we do use some marketing cookies to understand which channels bring people to our site and which content resonates with different audiences. This helps us create more relevant educational content and reach people who might actually benefit from budget audit preparation resources.
These are the cookies you probably want to reject if you're privacy-conscious. And that's completely fine — the site works perfectly well without them.
Your Cookie Preferences
Essential cookies can't be disabled because they're required for basic site functionality. Things like security, session management, and form processing simply won't work without them. These cookies don't track you across sites or collect personal information — they just keep the site operational.
Managing Cookies Through Your Browser
You can also control cookies directly through your browser settings. Here's how to do it in the most common browsers:
Settings → Privacy and security → Cookies and other site data. From there you can block all cookies, block third-party cookies, or clear existing cookies.
Options → Privacy & Security → Cookies and Site Data. Firefox offers enhanced tracking protection by default, which blocks many tracking cookies automatically.
Preferences → Privacy. Safari has intelligent tracking prevention built in, which limits cross-site tracking by default.
Settings → Privacy, search, and services → Cookies and site permissions. Edge offers three levels of tracking prevention: Basic, Balanced, and Strict.
Data Retention and Storage
Different cookies stick around for different lengths of time. Session cookies disappear when you close your browser. Persistent cookies can last anywhere from a few days to a couple years, depending on their purpose.
Usually session-based or stored for up to 24 hours. They're cleared automatically when you log out or your session expires.
Typically stored for 30-90 days. Long enough to remember your preferences across visits, but not so long they become outdated.
Usually stored for 13 months, which is the industry standard. This timeframe gives us meaningful data while respecting privacy.
You can delete cookies anytime through your browser settings. Clearing your cookies will log you out of the site and reset your preferences, but otherwise has no negative effects.
Third-Party Services
We work with a few third-party services that may set their own cookies. These include analytics providers and content delivery networks that help us serve educational materials faster and more reliably.
When you reject non-essential cookies on this page, we also send signals to these third-party services to limit their tracking. However, they may have their own cookies that we don't directly control.
For complete control, you might want to use browser extensions specifically designed for cookie management or enable Do Not Track in your browser settings.
Changes to This Policy
If we make significant changes to how we use cookies, we'll update this page and change the "Last Updated" date at the top. For major changes that affect your privacy, we'll notify you directly through email or a site notification.
We review this policy at least annually to make sure it reflects our actual practices and complies with current regulations.