Privacy

This policy is about this website — what the site collects, what happens to it, and who else is involved.

It is not the whole picture of how we handle information as a bookkeeping practice. If you are a client, the handling of your financial records, accounting file and payroll data is governed by your engagement letter, which is more specific than this page can be. Ask us for a copy if you do not have one to hand.

We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles.

What this website collects

No accounts, no logins, no cookies for tracking. This site does not ask you to register, does not set advertising or tracking cookies, and does not build a profile of you across visits.

Aggregate visit measurement. We measure how many people visit which pages, using a privacy-preserving analytics service that does not use cookies and does not identify individual visitors. We use it to see which pages are useful and which are not.

Standard server logs. Like any website, ours is served by a hosting provider that records technical information about requests — including IP addresses — for security and reliability purposes. We do not use those logs to identify visitors.

The enquiry form. If you use the form on our contact page, we collect your name, your email address, your phone number if you choose to give it, and whatever you write in the message. We use it to answer you and for nothing else. It is not stored on this website and it does not go into a mailing list.

The form does not set a cookie and does not work by running a script in your browser, so it works the same whether or not scripts load. The message is passed straight to our office email by a delivery service called Postmark (Postmark Technologies, United States), which handles the sending and keeps a copy for a short period as part of that service. From there it lives in our own mailbox and is treated like any other email you send us.

The secure client upload form. Our client tools page has a form for existing clients to send us documents. It is provided by the workflow system we use to run client work, and it loads inside our page from that provider. What you enter and upload goes directly into that system, not to an email inbox. We use it to do the work you’ve engaged us for. It is covered by your engagement letter, like the rest of your file.

If you contact us

If you email us or ring us, we hold what you tell us — your name, your contact details, and whatever you have written or said — so that we can respond and, if you become a client, so we have a record of the engagement.

We keep enquiry correspondence in our email system. We do not sell it, rent it, or give it to anyone for marketing. We do not add you to a mailing list because you contacted us.

Who else is involved

• Our website host delivers this site to your browser and keeps the security logs described above.
• Postmark (United States) delivers messages sent through the enquiry form to our office inbox. It handles the sending only; the message then lives in our own email.
• Our email provider holds our email, including any correspondence with you.
• Our workflow system provider (United States) receives and holds what you send through the secure client upload form.

Some of these providers, and their infrastructure, are located outside Australia. That means information you send us may be stored or processed overseas. We choose providers with recognised security practices and contractual protections, but you should know that this is the case.

Tax file numbers

Do not email us a tax file number — not yours and not an employee’s. If we need one, send it through the secure client upload form on our client tools page, or ring us.

Tax file numbers are subject to specific legal restrictions beyond ordinary privacy obligations, and we treat them accordingly: they are collected only where a service genuinely requires one, held only where they must be, and never sent by ordinary email. The upload form sends them into our access-controlled workflow system, not to an email inbox.

Asking us what we hold

You can ask us what personal information we hold about you, and ask us to correct it if it is wrong. Email or ring us using the details in the footer of this page. We will need to be reasonably satisfied of who you are before we hand over information, which for existing clients is usually straightforward.

If we cannot give you something, we will tell you why.

Complaints

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, tell us first — email us and say so, and we will look into it and respond.

If you are not satisfied with how we have dealt with it, you can take the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, the national privacy regulator, at oaic.gov.au.

Changes to this policy

We will update this page when what we do changes. The date it was last reviewed is shown at the foot of the page.