Privacy Policy

At Smart Accounting Solutions, we take your privacy seriously. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, and what rights you have. It follows UK data protection law (UK GDPR).

At a Glance

  • We collect your contact details and information related to the services we provide.
  • We use it to deliver our services, meet our legal duties, and run our business.
  • We never sell your data. Some of our suppliers may store data outside the UK, always with appropriate safeguards in place.
  • You have rights over your personal data, including asking to see or correct it and, in some circumstances, asking us to delete it. Just email us.

About Us

Smart Accounting Solutions is a trading style of The Intelligent Assembly Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 11203679. Our registered office is Office 2, Queens Building, Green Road, Penistone, South Yorkshire, S36 6FQ.

We are the 'data controller' for your personal data. This means we decide how and why it's used, and we're responsible for keeping it safe. We have a Data Protection member of staff who looks after privacy questions. You can reach them using the details in 'Contact Us', below.

What Information Do We Collect?

We may collect information about you when you:

  • ask us for a quote or proposal
  • become a client, or work for a business we act for
  • contact us by phone, email, post or social media
  • appear in public records (for example, Companies House), or are referred to us by your employer or one of our clients

This can include:

  • your name, address and contact details
  • details of the services we provide to you
  • records of our correspondence with you
  • details of any complaints or queries you raise
  • information from marketing, surveys or research

How Do We Use Your Information?

We use your personal data to:

  • provide our services and meet our contractual obligations to you, your employer, or our clients
  • meet our legal and regulatory obligations
  • send you relevant marketing about our services
  • develop and grow our business
  • manage our general business administration
  • contact you about services or events you've asked about, or that we think may interest you (only where you've agreed to this)
  • ask for your feedback, and let you know about changes to our services

Under UK data protection law, we must have a valid lawful basis for each way we use your personal data. Our main lawful bases are set out below.

What we use your data for Lawful basis Our legitimate interest
Provide our services and meet our contractual obligations to you, your employer, or our clients Contract N/A
Meet our legal and regulatory obligations Legal obligation N/A
Send you relevant marketing about our services Legitimate interests Promoting our services to existing and prospective clients
Develop and grow our business Legitimate interests Growing and improving our practice
Manage our general business administration Legitimate interests Running our business efficiently
Contact you about services or events you've asked about, or that we think may interest you Consent N/A
Ask for your feedback, and let you know about changes to our services Legitimate interests Maintaining and improving service quality, and keeping clients informed

If you choose not to give us certain information, we may not be able to provide our services or meet our legal obligations.

How Long Do We Keep Your Information?

We only keep your personal data for as long as we need it. When deciding how long, we consider things like:

  • any legal or regulatory requirements
  • why we collected the information in the first place
  • the type and amount of information involved
  • whether we could achieve the same purpose without keeping it

If we ever want to use your data for a new reason, unrelated to why we first collected it, we'll let you know and explain the legal basis for doing so.

Do We Share Your Information?

We may share your data with trusted third parties where:

  • the law requires it
  • it's necessary to manage our relationship with you
  • we have another good reason for doing so, such as running our business efficiently

We use trusted software providers to help us run our practice and deliver our services, including Microsoft (office software and email), QuickBooks (bookkeeping and accounting, provided by Intuit), TaxCalc (tax preparation), Xama (identity verification and anti-money laundering checks, including biometric checks where required by law), and Karbon (practice management).

Where we use biometric data for identity verification as part of our anti-money laundering obligations, we do so on the basis of substantial public interest, under the condition in the Data Protection Act 2018 relating to regulatory requirements concerning unlawful acts and dishonesty, in line with our legal duty to prevent and detect financial crime.

We currently use third-party providers for professional advisory and consultancy support. They're required to protect your data and can only use it as we instruct.

We may also share your data with a regulator, or if our business is ever sold or restructured.

Some of the suppliers we use to run our business, including Microsoft, QuickBooks, TaxCalc, Xama, and Karbon, may store or process personal data outside the UK and EEA, including in the United States. Where this happens, we ensure appropriate safeguards are in place, such as the UK International Data Transfer Addendum, Standard Contractual Clauses, or the UK extension to the EU-US Data Privacy Framework.

Keeping Your Information Safe

We use appropriate security measures to protect your data from being lost, misused, accessed without permission, altered or shared inappropriately. Only people who need it for their role can access it, and they must keep it confidential.

If we ever suspect a data security breach, we have procedures in place to deal with it, and we'll tell you and the relevant regulator where we're legally required to.

Your Rights

Under data protection law, you have the right to:

  • Access. Ask for a copy of the personal data we hold about you.
  • Correct. Ask us to correct inaccurate or incomplete data.
  • Delete. Ask us to delete your data where there's no good reason for us to keep it.
  • Object. Object to us using your data for certain purposes, including direct marketing.
  • Restrict. Ask us to pause using your data, for example while we check its accuracy.
  • Transfer. Ask us to send your data to you or another organisation, where this is technically possible and the processing is based on your consent or on a contract with you.

To use any of these rights, email our Data Protection Point of Contact at gdpr@smartaccountingsolutions.co.uk.

These requests are usually free. We may charge a reasonable fee, or decline, if a request is clearly unfounded or excessive. We might also ask you to confirm your identity first, to keep your data secure.

Withdrawing Your Consent

If we're using your data based on your consent, for example for marketing, you can withdraw that consent at any time by emailing gdpr@smartaccountingsolutions.co.uk. Once we know you've withdrawn consent, we'll stop using your data for that purpose, unless we have another lawful reason to continue.

Keeping Your Details Up To Date

Please let us know if your personal details change, so we can keep our records accurate. You can contact us using the details below.

Changes To This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any changes will be posted on this page.

Contact Us

If you have any questions about this policy, or how we handle your personal data, please contact our Data Protection Point of Contact:

You also have the right to complain to the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO), the UK's data protection regulator, Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, Cheshire, SK9 5AF.