Privacy Policy

As at March 2016

Introduction

The purpose of this privacy policy is to communicate clearly the personal information practices we follow when we collect and deal with your personal information, including how you can contact us if you wish to correct or access personal information we hold about you. We reserve the right to make changes to our Privacy Policy from time to time or as required by law. Our privacy policy can be obtained free of charge by downloading it from our website.

Privacy Act 1988 (Cth)

As a small business, we are exempted from the operation of the Privacy Act except for Part IIIA in relation to consumer credit reporting and guidelines concerning Tax File Numbers. However, protection of your personal information is extremely important to us, so we have decided to opt in to be bound by the Privacy Act 1988 and the thirteen Australian Privacy Principles (APP’s) scheduled within the act. The Privacy Act 1988 can be accessed athttps://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/C2015C00598. Information about the APP’s can be found athttps://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy-law/privacy-act/australian-privacy-principles.

This privacy policy should be read in conjunction with our website Terms and Conditions and any other terms and conditions displayed on our website.

Your Choices

In general, you are not required to provide personal information when you visit our website. However, if you wish to enquire about our services, or subscribe to our newsletter we may require you to provide certain personal information. You have the right to remain anonymous or use a pseudonym but this may restrict the provision of our services.

Types of Information We Collect

General Information For Service Provisioning

We use the definition of personal information contained in s 6(1) of the privacy act. It states that personal information is 'information or an opinion (including information or an opinion forming part of a database), whether true or not, and whether recorded in a material form or not, about an individual whose identity is apparent, or can reasonably be ascertained, from the information or opinion'.

We collect and hold personal information that can identify you and only what is necessary and relevant to providing you with the professional services that you require. Typically the kinds of information will include your name, addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, business name and ABN, and if required contact details of your accountant/tax agent. We may also need details about the accounting software you use. To provide bas services, we will collect taxation information such as your business tax file number, GST registration, PAYG registration and information about your superannuation fund membership. If we are engaged to provide payroll services, we will collect your employees personal contact details, tax file number and superannuation fund member number. We may also need to collect business bank account details and credit card statements. Some of our services may require us to obtain online access to your business bank account which must be arranged directly with your bank. As permitted by law, we only collect, use and disclose sensitive information about you if you consent to the collection, use and disclosure of the information and only if the information is reasonably necessary for the performance of our functions and service provision.

Any personal information about you that is not required or relevant for our bookkeeping service provision will be either returned to you or destroyed by shredding or deletion of the electronic file. We will also advise you if that occurs.

Website browsing

When you only browse the website, we do not collect your personal information.

When you look at our website, our internet service provider makes a record of your visit and logs (in server logs) the following information for statistical purposes:

Your server address
Your top level domain name (for example .com, .gov, .org, .au, etc)
The pages you accessed and documents downloaded
The date and time of your visit to our site
Whether you have visited our site before
The previous site you visited, and
The type of browser being used. We do not identify you or your browsing activities except, in the event of an investigation, where a law enforcement agency may exercise a warrant to inspect the internet service provider's server logs.

Our website may use cookies. You may choose to disable cookies in your browser but this may affect your use of the site in some areas.

How we collect personal information

Where practical, we only collect information from you personally either at a face to face meeting, over the phone, or when you send us details via mail or email. Limited information is obtained when you subscribe through our website to our newsletters. We also use forms and questionnaires. Sometimes we may need to obtain information from a third party once we have your approval. All information will be collected from you by lawful and fair means and not in an intrusive way.

Why we collect and how we use personal information

The information we obtain and hold about you depends on your interaction with us. Generally, Channel Bookkeeping collects the information to provide you with a professional bas agent / bookkeeping / business administration / business advisory service. For example we may use your information to prepare a bas statement. There are a number of other purposes, for example:

To process transactions
To provide you with software that you have purchased from us
To maintain contact with you and respond to requests
To provide you with information that you have enquired about
To facilitate our internal accounting and administration
To meet regulatory or legal requirements for our business
To email you our monthly newsletter. You can opt out by contacting us.
To protect you and us from fraud
To analyse our services and client needs with a view to improve those services

If the information is to be used for any other purpose that is not considered to be the primary purpose for collection of that information, we will obtain prior consent from you for the use of that information.

Failure to provide information

If the personal information you provide us is incomplete or not accurate, we may be unable to provide you with the service that you are seeking.

Disclosure of Personal Information

Channel Accounting & Taxation does not share personal information with third parties except as necessary to carry out our business or as required by law or other legal processes. We will obtain authorisation from you prior to disclosing personal information. General examples of these are:

Disclosing information to the ATO for the purpose of lodging a bas
Disclosing information to our technology service providers to assist in provisioning software for your business
Disclose credit card details to our safe and secure encrypted payment gateway service to process your account payment. We use Australia Post SecurePay – Their privacy policy and terms and conditions can be found here:https://www.securepay.com.au/about/securepay-profile/.
Disclose information to a debt collection agency to recover overdue amounts owed to our business.

We have a duty to keep all of your personal information confidential and secure in particular government related identifiers such as tax file numbers.

Overseas Disclosure

Your personal information and data will not be sent overseas. We also ensure that if and when we use cloud based back up software or document exchanges, that the data is stored and retained in Australia.

Security

We store information in various ways, including in paper and electronic format. We take reasonable steps to protect the personal information we hold against loss, unauthorised access, use, modification or disclosure and against other misuse. These steps include:

Securing our premises and using surveillance cameras
securing paper files in locked cabinets.
The use of firewalls, encryptions, passwords and digital certificates
Password protection for electronic files & encryption
Confidentiality clauses in contractor and employee agreements

Information that is no longer required to be held to enable Channel Bookkeeping to provide services to you is destroyed. Where such information is required for statutory purposes it is maintained until such time that is no longer required (normally after 5 years). We have in place generally accepted standards of technology and operational security in order to keep your personal information safe.

Access and Correction

Channel Accounting & Taxation takes reasonable steps to ensure that the personal information we collect is accurate, up to date and complete. These steps include maintaining and updating personal information when we are advised by you that your personal information has changed.

You can request access to your personal information we hold about you by email which can be found at the bottom of this document or via a link on our website. We request that you clearly state the type of information that you require. We will endeavour to provide you with the information requested within 30 days.

In some circumstances (rarely occurs), the law permits us to refuse your request where:

access would pose a serious threat to the life or health of any individual
access would have an unreasonable impact on the privacy of others
the request is frivolous or vexatious
the information relates to a commercially sensitive decision making process
access would be unlawful
access may prejudice enforcement activities.

If we decline a request for access based on the above legal reasons, we will notify you in writing the reasons why the request was denied and the mechanisms available for you to make a complaint.

If you find that the personal information we hold is inaccurate, incomplete or out of date, please contact us so that may amend your personal information immediately.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this Privacy Policy, or need to contact us about your personal information that we hold about you, or to make a complaint please contact:

Christine Behrens

Channel Accounting & Taxation

PO BOX 15

Middleton, TAS 7163

M: 0429 968 927

Email: info@channeltaxation.com

More Information

For more information about privacy in general, you can visit the Australian Information Commissioner’s website at www.oaic.gov.au or calling their Privacy Hotline on 1300-363-992