Privacy Policy

Accounting Excellence, a trading division of Sift Limited (“we”) are committed to protecting and respecting your privacy.

This policy (together with our terms of use and any other documents referred to in it) sets out the basis on which any personal data we collect from you, or that you provide to us, will be processed by us.

Please read the following carefully to understand our views and practices regarding your personal data and how we will treat it. By visiting our site and/or participating in any of our surveys, competitions or awards (as set out in our terms of use) you are accepting and consenting to the practices described in this policy.

For the purpose of the Data Protection Act 1998, the General Data Protection Regulation (EU) 2016/679 and any subsequent UK data protection legislation (the Legislation), the data controller is Sift Limited (company no. 03230061) of Charlotte Place, Queen Charlotte Street, Bristol, BS1 4EX United Kingdom.

Information we may collect

We may collect and process the following data about you:

Information you give us

You may give us information about you by filling in forms on our site, using social media logins and/or other plugins, nominating for our awards, participating in our surveys which may be sent to you from time to time or by corresponding with us by phone, email or otherwise. This includes information you provide when you order products or services, upload or download content, and/or or other social media functions on our site. The information you give us may include (but is not necessarily limited to):

your personal name and address;

your business name and address;

your business role

your email address;

your phone number;

your financial and credit card information; and/or

your photograph

Information we collect about you

Each time you visit our site or interact with the emails we send to you, we may automatically collect the following information:

technical information, including the Internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet, your login information, browser type and version, operating system and platform;

information about your visit, including the URL clickstream to, through and from our site (including date and time); pages, resources and/or products you viewed or searched for; page response times, errors, length of visits to certain pages, page interaction, and methods used to browse away from the page;

information about your interaction with our emails, including whether you have opened the email, the number of times the email is accessed, and your interaction with email content including the links you have clicked.

We may also build a picture of your digital data profile, by taking information on you from public sources, such as your publicly available social media information and other third party sources such as Companies House. We do this to help us direct more targeted information and content to you.

Information we receive from other sources

We may receive information about you if you use any of the other websites we or any of our group companies operate or the other services we provide. We are also working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.

Legal basis for processing your data

We may process your data because:

we are legally obliged to e.g. to confirm your identity;

the processing is necessary for the performance of the contract with you to provide our services; or

it is in ours or a third party’s legitimate interests to do so.

In some instances, we will rely on your consent to process Personal Data and where we do this it will be flagged to you at the time.

Uses made of the information

We use information held about you in the following ways:

Information you give to us. We will use this information:

to enable you to access the content and functions available via the site, provide you with any products and services you request, and carry out our obligations arising from any contracts entered into between you and us;

to provide you with information about other resources, materials, goods and services we offer that are similar to those that you have already accessed, purchased or enquired about;

to provide you, or permit selected third parties to provide you, with information about goods or services we feel may interest you. If you are a new user, and where we permit selected third parties to use your data, we (or they) will contact you only if you have consented to this by ticking the relevant box situated on the form on which we collect your data, or you have given your consent to third party telemarketing companies;

to notify you about changes to our service;

to ensure that content from our site is presented in the most effective manner for you and for your computer.

Information we collect about you. We will use this information:

to administer our site and for internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research, statistical and survey purposes;

to improve our site;

to allow you to participate in interactive features, when you choose to do so;

to measure or understand the effectiveness of advertising we serve to you and others, and to deliver relevant advertising to you;

to make suggestions and recommendations to you and other users of our site about content, goods or services that may interest you or them.

Disclosure of your information

We may share your personal information with any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries, as defined in section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006.

We may also share your information (including personal data) with selected third parties including:

Business partners, suppliers, and sub-contractors who help us deliver the site and our services to you. This includes (but is not limited to) the following suppliers:

Campaign monitor, a supplier which provides us with a cloud-based email system to enable us to provide you with customised newsletters and updates; and

Opt-in Monster, a supplier which provides us with a cloud-based email capture tool. Which feeds the email address into our email tool listed above.

Awards Force, a cloud based supplier who helps us manage award submissions.

Paperform, an online platform which helps us manage surveys.

Third parties on whose behalf we have conducted surveys, competitions, promotions and other activities which you have chosen to take part in.

Advertising networks that require the data to select and serve relevant adverts to you and others. We do not disclose information about identifiable individuals to our Advertising networks, but we may provide them with aggregate information about our users (for example, we may inform them that 500 men aged under 30 have clicked on their advertisement on any given day). We may also use such aggregate information to help Advertising networks reach the kind of audience they want to target.

Analytics and search engine providers that assist us in the improvement and optimisation of our site.

In the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets.

Parties to whom we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal data in order to comply with any legal obligation, or in order to enforce or apply our terms of use or terms and conditions of supply and other agreements; or to whom we disclose or share data in order to protect the rights, property, or safety of the Sift Limited group of companies, our customers, or others. This includes exchanging information with other companies and organisations for the purposes of fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

Marketing

We would like to send you information by post, email, telephone, text message (SMS) or automated call about our products and services, competitions and special offers which may be of interest to you.

Other businesses within our group or third parties we work with may also send you similar marketing messages, depending on what you agree with us.

We will only ask whether you would like us and other businesses to send you marketing messages when you tick the relevant boxes when you create an account or complete online forms (for example when registering for a talk).

We may send B2B marketing emails to you as a business contact where we believe we have legitimate interests for doing so. Such emails will always give the option to opt-out from future communications.

If you have consented to receive such marketing from us, our group or other businesses, you can opt out at any time.

Keeping your data secure

We will use technical and organisational measures to safeguard your personal data, for example:

access to your account is controlled by a password and username that are unique to you;

we store your personal data on secure servers; and

payment details are encrypted using SSL technology (typically you will see a lock icon or green address bar (or both) in your browser when we use this technology).

Our hosting provider is certified to ISO 27001. This family of standards helps us manage your information and keep it safe and secure.

While we will use all reasonable efforts to safeguard your personal data, you acknowledge that the use of the internet is not entirely secure and for this reason we cannot guarantee the security or integrity of any personal data that are transferred from you or to you via the internet. If you have any particular concerns about your information, please contact us (see ‘Contact’ below).

What can I do to keep my information safe?

If you want detailed information from Get Safe Online on how to protect your information and your computers and devices against fraud, identity theft, viruses and many other online problems, please visit www.getsafeonline.org. Get Safe Online is supported by HM Government and leading businesses.

Where we store your personal data

The data that we collect from you may be transferred to, and stored at, a destination outside the European Economic Area (“EEA”). It may also be processed by staff operating outside the EEA who work for us or for one of our suppliers. By submitting your personal data, you agree to this transfer, storing or processing. We will take all steps reasonably necessary to ensure that your data is treated securely and in accordance with this privacy policy.

Social media

If you use social media plugins or features on our site, including but not limited to the LinkedIn login function, you agree that we may receive information about you from social media sites (including personal information such as your name, gender, date of birth and location) in order to enable us to provide you with an online account and to enable you to use the site and its features. Any information received by us via the use of social media functions shall be stored and used strictly in accordance with this privacy policy.

How long do we keep your personal information?

We keep your personal information for as long as we need to for the purposes for which it was collected or (if longer) for any period for which we are required to keep personal information to comply with our legal and regulatory requirements.

Your rights

You have the right to ask us not to process your personal data or to restrict our processing of your personal data (including for marketing purposes). You can do so at any time by contacting us at help@accountingexcellence.co.uk.

You also have the right to ask us to correct any mistakes or inaccuracies in your information which we hold at any time by contacting us at help@accountingexcellence.co.uk.

Our site may, from time to time, contain links to and from the websites of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites, please note that these websites have their own privacy policies and that we do not accept any responsibility or liability for these policies. Please check these policies before you submit any personal data to these websites.

Access to information

You have the right to obtain a copy of the personal data we hold about you. You can make your request here: https://www.sift.co.uk/subject-access-request. Once we have received your request and verified your identity we will respond as soon as possible and in any event within one month.

Cookies

Our website uses cookies to distinguish you from other users of our website. This helps us to provide you with a good experience when you browse our website and also allows us to improve our site.

There is a notice on our home page which describes how we use cookies and which also provides a link to our website privacy policy. This notice will give you an opportunity to consent to our use of cookies for the purposes described in this policy and our website privacy policy.

A cookie is a small text file written to your hard drive that contains information about your account and use of this site. Cookies do not contain any personal information about users. Cookies enable us to collect useful information and to improve your experience when accessing and using our site.

The cookies we use on our site include:

WordPress
We use this service as a platform to power our content management system.

The service:
WordPress (https://wordpress.org) is our content management system and sets cookies to store user initiated interface preferences. This helps make your visits easier and the site more useful to you.

Google Analytics
We use this service to improve your experience across the sites.

The service:
This service runs in the background and drops one or more cookies to your computer, or handheld device. It helps us measure how you interact with our website’s content by tracking your user journey and site interactions. The cookies store non-identifiable information about your browsing history, we use this data to analyse patterns and trends to help improve your experience.

The data Google Analytics stores about you:
Non-identifiable data such as, visits, pages views, time on site, and the journey you take through the site.

For more details on Google Analytics please visit their website http://www.google.com/analytics/.

Google Display Network
We use this service to offer personalisation of advertising.

The service:
This service runs in the background on our sites and sends one or more cookies to your computer, or handheld device to collect non-identifiable information. We use cookies in our advertising services to help serve and manage ads across the web.

The data Google Display Network stores about you:
Your non-identifiable browsing history across any of our sites; including but not limited to, device type, pageviews, depth of visit, dwell time, advertisements interaction.

For more details on Google Display Network please visit their website https://www.google.co.uk/ads/displaynetwork/.

Snowplow
We use this this service to improve your experience across the sites.

The service:
This service runs in the background on our sites and sends one or more cookies to your computer, or handheld device to collect non-identifiable information. Where you have provided personal data, we use Snowplow to match your anonymous data to your personal data. These cookies are used to help improve the quality of our service, including for storing user preferences, improving ad selection, content recommendations, and search results, as well as tracking user trends, such as what content people consume. We also use cookies in our advertising services to help advertisers and publishers serve and manage ads across the web.

The data Snowplow stores about you:
Your non-identifiable browsing history across any of our sites; including but not limited to, device type, pageviews, depth of visit, dwell time, advertisements interaction. We match identifiable data that you provide us to these metrics.

For more details on Snowplow please visit their website https://snowplowanalytics.com/. 

Third parties

Third parties (including, for example, advertising networks and providers of external services like web traffic analysis services) may also use cookies, over which we have no control. These cookies are likely to be analytical/performance cookies or targeting cookies.

Managing cookies

If you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our site, you can do this through your browser settings. The “help” function within your browser should provide information about this. However, if you use your browser settings to block all cookies (including essential cookies) you may not be able to access all or parts of our site.

Changes to our privacy policy

Any changes we may make to our privacy policy in the future will be posted on this page and, where appropriate, notified to you by email. Please check back frequently to see any updates or changes to our privacy policy.

Complaints

If you have any complaints about the way we use your personal information please contact help@accountingexcellence.co.uk who will try to resolve the issue. If we cannot resolve any issue, you have the right to complain to the data protection authority in your country (the Information Commissioner in the UK).

Contact

Questions, comments and requests regarding this privacy policy are welcomed and should be addressed to help@accountingexcellence.co.uk.

Thank you for visiting our site.