What Data Does Alpha Insights Collect?

Alpha Insights collects various data types to calculate profit and provide insights. This guide explains exactly what data is stored and how it's used.

Order and Sales Data

What's collected:

• Order totals and line items (from WooCommerce)
• Product costs (manually entered by you)
• Shipping and payment costs
• Customer names and emails (from WooCommerce orders)
• Order dates, statuses, and payment methods

Why it's needed: Essential for profit calculations

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database (same server as WooCommerce)

Retention: Permanent (business records)

Website Analytics Data

What's collected (if enabled):

• Page views and session duration
• Traffic sources (referrer URLs)
• Device types and browsers
• Anonymized IP addresses (last segment removed)
• Geographic location (city/country level)

Why it's needed: Connect traffic sources to profitable orders

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database

Retention: Configurable (30-365 days, or custom)

Advertising Data

What's collected (if integrations enabled):

• Campaign names and IDs
• Daily ad spend by campaign
• Campaign status (active/paused/ended)
• Date ranges

Why it's needed: Calculate ROAS and attribute ad spend to orders

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database

Retention: Configurable (90 days - forever)

Expense Data

What's collected:

• Expense amounts, dates, and categories
• Expense descriptions
• Recurring schedules

Why it's needed: Calculate net profit after all business costs

Where it's stored: Your WordPress database

Retention: Permanent

What Alpha Insights Does NOT Collect

• Credit card numbers or payment details
• Customer passwords
• Full IP addresses (anonymized)
• Ad creative content
• Personal browsing history beyond your site
• Form inputs or checkout data (beyond orders)

Data Sharing

With Third Parties

Alpha Insights does NOT share your data with third parties except:

• License verification: License key checked with WP Davies servers (no customer data shared)
• Ad integrations: When YOU connect Facebook/Google Ads, Alpha Insights fetches data via their APIs (you control this)

On Your Server Only

• All profit data stays in your WordPress database
• Not sent to external servers
• Not shared with WP Davies or anyone else
• You have complete control

GDPR Compliance

Alpha Insights is GDPR compliant:

• IP anonymization available
• Cookie consent integration
• Data retention controls
• Data export tools (subject access requests)
• Data deletion tools (right to erasure)
• No unnecessary personal data collected

Customer Data Requests

Handle GDPR requests:

• Access: Export customer's order and session data via Settings → Data & Privacy
• Deletion: Erase customer data (keeps anonymized order records for accounting)

Data Security

How Data is Protected

• Stored in WordPress database (same security as WooCommerce)
• Database credentials protected by WordPress
• API keys encrypted at rest
• HTTPS encryption for all transmissions
• WordPress user capabilities control access
• No data exposed in frontend code

Controlling Data Collection

Disable Analytics Tracking

Don't want visitor tracking?

1. Settings → General → Website Analytics
2. Toggle OFF
3. Only order/profit data collected

Reduce Data Retention

Keep less historical data:

1. Settings → Data & Privacy
2. Set Session Retention to 30 days (minimum)
3. Old data automatically deleted

Anonymize IPs

1. Settings → Data & Privacy
2. Enable IP Anonymization
3. Last segment of IP addresses removed (192.168.1.0 instead of 192.168.1.100)

Data Portability

Exporting Your Data

You can export all Alpha Insights data:

1. Go to Tools → Data Export
2. Select data types (orders, products, sessions, etc.)
3. Download as CSV or JSON

Use cases:

• Backup before major changes
• Import to other systems
• Archive old data
• Compliance requirements

Deleting Data

You can delete Alpha Insights data:

1. Settings → Data & Privacy → Manual Deletion
2. Select data types and date ranges
3. Export first (deletion is permanent!)
4. Confirm deletion