Privacy Policy

Collection of personal information

LBS Accountants collects and holds personal information from clients, customers, employees, contractors and other individuals. We collect and hold this information when it is necessary for business purposes.

The main types of personal information LBS Accountants collects and holds relate to the contact details and organisational roles of our clients, suppliers and other business contacts. Typically, this information includes names, addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses and financial details. In the course of providing professional services to our clients, we may collect and hold more detailed personal information if we are engaged to perform services for another purpose.

We collect most information directly from individuals when we deal with them. The personal information we collect may be provided in forms filled out by individuals, face to face meetings, email messages, telephone conversations or by third parties. If you contact us, we may keep a record of that contact.

Because of the nature of our business, it is generally impracticable for us to deal with individuals on an anonymous basis or through the use of a pseudonym, although sometimes this is possible (for example, when seeking staff or client feedback generally).

Use of personal information

The main purposes for which we collect, hold and use personal information are:

  • to provide our services;
  • to respond to an individual’s request;
  • to maintain contact with clients;
  • to keep clients and other contacts informed of the services we offer and industry developments that may be of interest to them, and to notify them of service offerings, seminars and other events we are holding;
  • for general management and reporting purposes, such as invoicing and account management;
  • for recruitment purposes;
  • for purposes related to the employment of our personnel and providing internal services to our staff; and
  • other purposes related to our business.

If you choose not to provide us with personal information, we may be unable to do such things.

We may collect, hold and use personal information about individuals to market our services, including by email. However, individuals always have the opportunity to elect not to receive further marketing information from us by emailing us at pracadmin@lbsgladstone.com.au. Please allow 28 days for your request to be processed.

Alternatively, if we have contacted you by email, you may use the unsubscribe function in that email to notify us that you do not want to receive further marketing information from us by email.

If we collect, hold or use personal information in ways other than as stated in this policy, we will ensure we do so pursuant to the requirements of the Privacy Act.

Employee records are not generally subject to the Privacy Act and therefore this policy may not apply to the handling of information about employees by LBS Accountants. For information about our practices relating to employee information, please contact us directly.

Disclosure of personal information

LBS Accountants does not routinely disclose personal information to other organisations unless:

  • use or disclosure is permitted by this policy;
  • we believe it is necessary to provide you with a product or service which you have requested (or, in the case of a partner, employee or contractor of LBS Accountants, it is necessary for maintaining or related to your role at LBS Accountants);
  • to protect the rights, property or personal safety of any member of the public or a customer of LBS Accountants or the interests of LBS Accountants;
  • some or all of the assets or operations of LBS Accountants are or may be transferred to another party as part of the sale of some or all of LBS Accountants’ business;
  • you give your consent; or
  • such disclosure is otherwise required or permitted by law, regulation, rule or professional standard.

We may also share non-personal, de-identified and aggregated information for research or promotional purposes. Except as set out in this policy, we do not sell to or trade personal information with third parties.

LBS Accountants uses a range of service providers to help us maximise the quality and efficiency of our services and our business operations (including internal business requirements, such as recruitment and human capital requirements). This means that individuals and organisations outside of LBS Accountants will sometimes have access to personal information held by LBS Accountants and may collect or use it from or on behalf of LBS Accountants. This may include, but is not limited to, independent contractors and consultants, travel service providers, mail houses, off-site security storage providers, information technology providers, event managers, credit managers and debt collecting agencies. We require our service providers to adhere to our privacy guidelines and not to keep, use or disclose personal information we provide to them for any unauthorised purposes.

If LBS Accountants’ staff obtain products or services offered by a third party pursuant to an agreement or arrangement between that third party and LBS Accountants, such as a credit card provider, we may provide your personal information to that third party, including information that relates to your use of such services.

Ownership of Documents

All original documents received from you arising from the engagement shall remain your property. However, we reserve the right to make a reasonable number of copies of the original documents for our records.

Our engagement may result in the production of an Income Tax Return. Ownership of the documents relating to this return will vest in you upon payment of our invoice. All other documents produced by us in respect of this engagement will remain the property of the practice.

In all cases, any “electronic data” (e.g. HandiSoft data files, BankLink data files, XERO data files etc) belong to our practice.

The practice has a policy of exploring a legal right of lien over any client documents in our possession in the event of a dispute. The practice has also established a dispute resolution process.

Sharing Your Personal Information

LBS Accountants will not share your personal information, except when:

  • you tell us we can do this;
  • we reasonably believe we are required to do so by law;
  • we want to carry out a credit check on you;
  • we want to list any payment defaults with a credit agency;
  • this is necessary to assist an adjudicator to resolve a complaint you make about us.

Your User Name and Password

If you are a LBS Accountants customer, you are responsible for your email address and password. You should not tell anyone else your user name, and if you do, you are responsible for paying for any products or services that they buy from us.

Credit Card Security

When you use your credit card to pay for any of our products or services, you will be using our online payment provider (currently PayPal). Make sure you always logout when you have finished using the PayPal website, especially if you access PayPal from a shared computer.

Corrections and Deletions

You may ask to see your personal information and ask to have any of it updated, corrected or deleted. We may ask you to verify your identity for such requests, to protect your privacy, and that of others. You can do this by sending us an e-mail from the contact page

Changing This Policy

We can change this privacy policy at any time. We will tell you about changes by posting an updated policy on our website, so we encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on privacy practices at LBS Accountants. Changes apply from the date we post it on our website.

Transfer of information outside Australia

LBS Accountants may also use overseas facilities to back-up our information or to provide certain services to us. As a result, we may transfer your personal information to our overseas facilities or contractors for these purposes.
However, any such transfer of information does not change any of our commitments to safeguard your privacy and the information remains subject to existing confidentiality obligations.

Privacy on Our Web Sites and Applications

This policy also applies to any personal information we collect via our websites, including pwc.com.au, and applications including mobile applications. In addition to personal information you provide to us directly (such as where you make a request or complete a registration form), LBS Accountants may also collect personal information from you via its applications and websites.

Cookies may be used on some areas of our websites. A cookie is a small software application which allows a website to recognise a previous user and to observe how a user navigates within a website. Cookies are used as a standard by many websites. LBS Accountants uses cookies to improve the navigational experience of visitors to our websites and to make them easier to use.

If you are concerned about cookies, most browsers recognise when a cookie is offered and permit you to opt out of receiving it. If you are not sure whether your browser has this capability, you should check with the software manufacturer or your internet service provider. In most cases, you can refuse a cookie and still fully navigate the LBS Accountants websites.

In order to properly manage our websites and applications, we may log certain statistics about the users of the facilities, for example the users’ domains and browser types. None of this information specifically identifies an individual and it is used solely to ensure that our websites and applications present the best possible navigational experience for users.

Because LBS Accountants wants your user experience to be as informative and resourceful as possible, we provide a number of links to websites operated by third parties. LBS Accountants is not responsible for the privacy practices or policies of those sites. We encourage you to review each website’s privacy policy, especially if you intend to disclose any personal information via that site. A link to another LBS Accountants website is not an express or implied endorsement, promotion or warranty of the products or services offered by or accessible through that site or advertised on that site.

Security of Personal Information

Depending on the purpose for which we have collected personal information (for example, registration for a LBS Accountants event or a request for particular information or material), we may store some of the information electronically in LBS Accountants’ customer relationship management system. Some or all of this personal information may be available to partners and authorised staff of LBS Accountants for use in accordance with this policy.

LBS Accountants will endeavour to take all reasonable steps to keep secure any information which we hold about you, whether electronically or in hard-copy, and to keep this information accurate and up to date. We also require our employees and data processors to respect the confidentiality of any personal information held by LBS Accountants.

LBS Accountants aims to achieve industry best practice in the security of personal information which it holds. It is our policy not to retain personal information once there is no longer a legal or business need for us to do so.

Access to Information

We will provide access to personal information upon request by an individual, except in the limited circumstances in which it is permitted for us to withhold this information (for instance, where granting access would infringe another person’s privacy).

When you make a request to access personal information, we will require you to provide some form of identification (such as a driver’s licence or passport) so we can verify that you are the person to whom the information relates. In some cases we may also request an administrative fee to cover the cost of access.

If at any time you want to know what personal information we hold about you, you may contact us by emailing us at pracadmin@lbsgladstone.com.au

Corrections and Concerns

If you believe that information we hold about you is incorrect or out of date, or if you have concerns about how we are handling your personal information, please contact us and we will try to resolve those concerns.
If you wish to have your personal information deleted, please let us know and we will take reasonable steps to delete it (unless we need to keep it for legal, auditing or internal risk management reasons).

If LBS Accountants becomes aware of any ongoing concerns or problems concerning our privacy practices, we will take these issues seriously and work to address these concerns. If you have any further queries relating to our privacy policy, or you have a problem or complaint, please contact our Privacy Officer. If you are not satisfied with our handling of your problem or complaint you may make a complaint to the Australian Information Commissioner.

Effect of Policy

LBS Accountants operates in a dynamic business environment and we aim to review this policy annually to keep it current.
LBS Accountants may update this privacy policy at any time by publishing an updated version on its website.
The amended policy will apply between us whether or not we have given you specific notice of any change.

Privacy Policies of our partner software is as linked below:

Xero Privacy Policy
Practice Studio Privacy Policy
Practice Ignition Privacy Policy
Suite Files Privacy Policy
Microsoft Privacy Policy

Changing This Policy

We can change this privacy policy at any time. We will tell you about changes by posting an updated policy on our website, so we encourage you to periodically review this page for the latest information on privacy practices at LBS Accountants. Changes apply from the date we post it on our website.

Consent to Receiving Emails from us

You acknowledge that from time to time we will communicate with you via email and you herewith consent to receiving emails from us and our associated entities. You may withdraw this consent at any time by providing us with a written request.