Privacy policy

This policy explains how Ani Advisory collects, uses, shares and protects personal information, and what your rights are. It is written to meet the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA).

Who is responsible for your information

Ani Advisory is the responsible party for the personal information described in this policy. Our Information Officer is Wisani Mhinga.

What information we collect

We collect different information depending on how you deal with us.

If you contact us through this website, we collect the details you enter: your name, business name, email address, phone number, the service you are asking about and the message you send.

If you become a client, we collect the information needed to do the work. Depending on the service, that can include company registration and tax reference numbers, financial records and supporting documents, bank statements, invoices, payroll information, and identification documents where a regulator or a bank requires them.

When you visit the website, our hosting provider records standard technical information such as your IP address, browser type and the pages you view. This is generated automatically by the web server and is used to keep the site running and secure.

Why we process it, and on what basis

• To answer your enquiry. We process the details you submit because you asked us to respond, and you consent when you send the form.
• To provide our services. Accounting, tax and advisory work cannot be done without your financial information. This processing is necessary to perform our engagement with you.
• To meet legal obligations. Tax, company and financial legislation require us to prepare, submit and retain certain records.
• To run the practice. Invoicing, record-keeping and communicating with you about your work.

We do not sell your personal information, and we do not use it for marketing unrelated to the service you asked about.

Who we share it with

We share personal information only where it is necessary:

• Regulators and authorities, such as the South African Revenue Service and the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission, where a submission or a legal obligation requires it.
• Service providers that run our systems, including our cloud accounting platform, our email and document storage providers and our website host. They process information on our instruction, for the purpose of providing that service.
• Other parties you ask us to deal with, such as your bank, your auditor or your attorney, where you have asked or authorised us to do so.

Information sent outside South Africa

Some of the software we use stores information on servers outside South Africa. Where that happens, we take reasonable steps to satisfy ourselves that the provider is subject to laws or binding agreements that protect the information to a standard comparable to POPIA.

How long we keep it

We keep client records for the periods required by tax and company legislation, and for as long as they may be needed to deal with a query, an audit or a dispute. Enquiries that do not become engagements are kept only as long as is useful to follow them up, and are then deleted.

How we protect it

We take reasonable technical and organisational steps to protect personal information against loss, unauthorised access and misuse. That includes controlling who has access to records, using reputable service providers, and keeping our systems current. No system is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee that a transmission over the internet is free of risk.

If a security compromise affects your personal information, we will notify you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.

Your rights

Under POPIA you have the right to:

• ask what personal information we hold about you, and request a copy;
• ask us to correct or delete information that is inaccurate, irrelevant, excessive, out of date or obtained unlawfully;
• object to processing on reasonable grounds;
• withdraw consent where our processing is based on consent, though this may prevent us from continuing to act for you; and
• complain to the Information Regulator.

To exercise any of these, contact our Information Officer using the details above. We may ask you to verify your identity first, and some requests carry a prescribed fee or a prescribed form.

Where we are legally required to keep a record, we may not be able to delete it on request. We will tell you if that is the case.

Complaints to the Information Regulator

If you are not satisfied with how we have handled your information or your request, you may lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator (South Africa). Their current contact details and complaint forms are published at inforegulator.org.za.

Cookies

This website uses only the cookies needed to make it work, for example to keep a session active when someone signs in to manage the site. We do not use advertising cookies. If we add website analytics in future, this policy will be updated to say what is collected and why.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy as our services, our systems or the law change. The date at the top shows when it was last updated. Material changes affecting clients will be communicated directly.

Questions

If anything here is unclear, or you want to know exactly what we hold about you, email info@aniadvisory.co.za and we will answer.