Privacy Policy

Who Is Responsible

Salty Sea Bookkeeping is accountable for how it handles your personal information. In British Columbia, the Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA) sets out the rules for how organizations collect, use, and disclose personal information, and for clients elsewhere in Canada the federal Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) applies as well. We are committed to following both. “Personal information” means information that can identify you, such as your name, your contact details, and the details you give us about your business and finances.

Information We Collect

When you contact us through our website, complete the estimate form, use our Facebook or Instagram lead forms, or reach us by email or phone, we may collect:

• Your name and business name
• Email address, and phone number if you ask us to call
• Your preferred method of contact
• Business details you enter in the estimate form: province, entity type, industry, monthly transaction volume, number of accounts, payroll size and frequency, GST/HST registration and filing frequency, complexity factors, the current state of your books, and the software you use
• Whether you are able to provide read-only access to records, and whether there are outstanding filings or deadlines (a yes/no/not sure answer only)
• Your intended start date, decision-making role, and budget range
• The estimate result we generated for you, and the answers it was based on
• Your choice about receiving optional marketing emails, and the wording of the consent you were shown
• Any additional information you choose to provide

What We Never Ask For Here

Please do not send tax slips, financial statements, banking credentials, account numbers, Social Insurance Numbers, passwords, or the contents of CRA notices through the public form or by ordinary email. We do not ask for them, and this form is not a secure channel for them. Once we are working together, we will set up a secure way to exchange documents.

How We Use Your Information

We use what you provide to assess whether we are a good fit for your work, generate an indicative starting estimate, route your inquiry to the right next step, respond to you, provide bookkeeping and tax services, and meet our legal and professional record-keeping obligations.

How the Estimate Is Generated

The estimate is produced by a fixed set of published rules applied to the answers you enter — transaction volume, account count, payroll size, and filing frequency select the package, and factors such as catch-up work or unusual complexity route your inquiry to a person instead of an automated result. There is no profiling beyond this, and no automated decision is made about you as an individual. We keep a record of the answers, the result, the assumptions behind it, and the version of the rules used, so any estimate can be explained later.

Consent and Withdrawal

We ask for your consent before we collect, use, or share your personal information, except where the law allows or requires us to act without it. You can give consent in writing, electronically (for example by submitting the estimate form), or by phone, and it may be implied where you volunteer information for an obvious purpose, such as asking us to call you back. Submitting the estimate form is your consent for us to use the information to prepare an estimate and reply to you, and we do not require consent beyond what is needed for that. Marketing consent is separate, optional, and off by default — declining it does not affect your estimate. You may withdraw either consent at any time by giving us reasonable notice, subject to information we must retain for legal, tax, or professional reasons. If you withdraw the consent we need to answer your inquiry, we will not be able to prepare an estimate or reply to you.

Limiting Collection

We ask only for what is needed to assess fit and prepare an estimate. Optional fields are labelled as optional, and questions that could invite sensitive detail are deliberately limited to yes/no answers.

Sharing Your Information

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information. We may share it only where necessary to deliver services you have requested, to work with the providers listed below, to comply with legal obligations, or to protect our business and our clients. We will not use or share your personal information for any other purpose without asking you first, unless the law allows or requires it — for example in response to a court order. Where a provider handles information for us, we share only what it needs to do that job.

Service Providers and Where Data Is Processed

We use Netlify to host this website and store form submissions and our newsletter list, Postmark to send our newsletter and to deliver the email that notifies us of a new inquiry, and cloud bookkeeping platforms including QuickBooks Online, Xero, Sage, and AutoEntry for client work. When you send an estimate request, your name and contact details can also appear briefly in Netlify’s technical logs, which Netlify keeps for a limited period. If you reach us through a Facebook or Instagram lead form, Meta processes that submission first. This website is built, hosted, and maintained for us by Acuity Web Labs, which can see form submissions in the course of keeping the site running and does not use them for any other purpose. These providers operate their own infrastructure and may store or process information outside Canada, including in the United States, under their own privacy policies and safeguards. While information is held in another country, it may be accessed by that country’s courts, law enforcement, and national security authorities under its laws.

Website Analytics

We use two analytics tools, Ahrefs Web Analytics and Google Analytics, to see which pages are viewed, how visitors arrived (for example from a search engine or a link), and general browser, device, and location information. Both use your IP address to estimate a country or city. According to Ahrefs, its analytics does not set cookies or retain raw IP addresses; Ahrefs is based in Singapore and processes this data under its own privacy policy. Google Analytics sets its own cookies in your browser so it can tell a returning visit from a new one. When you use the estimate form, Google Analytics is also told which steps were completed, the kind of result shown, and whether a request was sent, but never your answers, your name, or your contact details. We see only combined totals, never individual visitors. If you would rather not be counted, a standard ad-blocker or privacy extension will stop both tools. Ahrefs also checks this site for technical problems such as broken links, using an automated crawler that reads the public pages and collects no information about visitors.

Social Media Links

Our home page shows a few of our own recent Instagram posts as images hosted on this website, each linking to the post on Instagram. Nothing is loaded from Meta while you browse this site, so Meta does not see your visit unless you choose to follow one of those links — at which point Instagram’s own privacy policy applies.

Our Newsletter

If you sign up for our monthly newsletter, we collect your email address, your first name if you give it, the page you signed up from, the date, and the exact consent wording you agreed to. We use it only to send that newsletter. Signups are stored by Netlify, and the emails are sent through Postmark. We email you once to confirm before anything else is sent. Every newsletter includes our business name and mailing address and a one-click unsubscribe link, and you can also unsubscribe by contacting us. We delete your details from our mailing list when you unsubscribe, keeping only the record that you opted out so we do not email you again.

Maps

Our contact and Port Alberni pages can show a Google map. It is not loaded until you press Show the map; at that point Google receives your visit and may set cookies under its own privacy policy. If you do not press the button, nothing is loaded from Google Maps.

Protecting Your Information

We use reasonable safeguards against unauthorized access, loss, misuse, or disclosure. Administratively, we limit who can see inquiries to the people who need them to reply or to keep the website running. Technically, inquiries are stored in password-protected accounts with our hosting provider, and once we are working together we exchange records in cloud platforms with their own access controls rather than as email attachments. If we suspect a privacy breach, we will contain it, assess the risk of harm, and — where there is a real risk of significant harm — tell the people affected and the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada, as the law requires. We keep a record of every breach.

Your Privacy Rights

We make reasonable efforts to keep the personal information we hold accurate and complete. You may ask to see what personal information we hold about you, how it has been used, and who it has been shared with; ask us to correct anything that is wrong; or ask us to delete it. Please make requests in writing using the contact details below; we may ask you to confirm your identity first. We will respond within 30 days of receiving your request. If we need more time, or cannot give you access, we will tell you in writing, with the reasons and what you can do next. There is no charge, or only a minimal one, and we will give you an estimate before doing the work. If we agree that a correction is reasonable, we will make it and tell anyone we shared the information with in the past year; if we do not, we will note on your record that you asked. Some information must be retained for legal, tax, or professional record-keeping purposes even after a deletion request.

How Long We Keep It

We keep estimate submissions and related correspondence for 24 months, after which they are deleted, unless we are required to retain them longer for legal, tax, or professional record-keeping reasons. We check for and delete expired inquiries at least once a year, so an inquiry can be held for up to a year longer than 24 months until the next check. Information we use to make a decision about you, such as a quote, is kept for at least one year.

Questions, Complaints, and Your Right to Escalate

If you have a question or a complaint about how we handle your personal information, contact Madeline using the details below, by email or by phone. We may ask you to confirm your identity first. We will look into it and reply in writing. If you are not satisfied with our response, or with how we handle an access or correction request, you can contact the Office of the Information and Privacy Commissioner for British Columbia or the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.

Contact Us

For questions about this Privacy Policy, to ask what we hold about you, or to request correction or deletion, contact Madeline at:

Salty Sea Bookkeeping
Email: accounts@saltyseabookkeeping.ca
Phone: 1 (250) 731-7931
Website: saltyseabookkeeping.ca