Privacy Policy

Bravo Accountants is a CPA accounting practice at Mudjimba on the Sunshine Coast, ABN 70 666 993 068. In this policy, "we", "us" and "our" mean Bravo Accountants.

This policy explains what personal information we collect, why we collect it, who we share it with, and how you can get at it or correct it. It covers both this website and the accounting work we do for our clients.

We handle personal information in line with the Australian Privacy Principles, whether or not the Act requires it of a practice our size.

Almost nothing, and that is deliberate. This site is a set of static pages. There is no contact form, no account to create, no login, and nothing to buy, so there is no point at which the site asks you to type anything about yourself.

Two things load from outside our own domain, both of them counting visits and both described in the next section: Google Analytics, and Cloudflare Web Analytics. Apart from those, we host our own fonts rather than calling a font service, and there are no advertising pixels, social widgets, session recorders or chat widgets anywhere on the site.

Like every website, ours sits on a server, and our hosting provider keeps technical logs of requests — including IP addresses — for a limited period, so the site can be kept online and secure. We do not use those logs to build a picture of individual visitors.

We use Google Analytics to understand how people find and use this site — which pages get read, how long people stay, and whether people arrived from a search engine, a link or directly. To do that it sets two cookies in your browser and records the visit. Google uses your IP address to work out roughly where you are, and does not store it. Our host may also set its own cookies to keep the site secure and available; those are technical and are not used to track you.

We use this only in aggregate, to make the site better. We have not enabled advertising features, we do not use it to identify you, and we do not combine it with anything you have told us. Google processes this information on servers outside Australia, under its own privacy policy. You can opt out of Google Analytics entirely with the browser add-on Google publishes at tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout, or by blocking cookies in your browser — the site works exactly the same either way.

We also use Google Search Console to see how our pages perform in Google search results. It runs no code on this site and sets no cookies; it reports which search terms bring people here in aggregate, and never identifies you.

Our website sits behind Cloudflare, which keeps it fast and secure, and we use Cloudflare Web Analytics to see how quickly pages actually load for real visitors. It sets no cookies and does not follow you between websites. It reports things like how many people viewed a page and how long it took to appear, never who you are.

If what we use ever changes, we will update this page at the same time, and the date at the top will tell you when.

Two things on this site ask for your details before sending you somewhere else, and both are clearly labelled before you go.

• Booking a 15-minute call opens Calendly, the scheduling service we use. You give Calendly your name, email address and phone number so we can confirm the appointment, and we receive those details. Calendly holds that booking information under its own privacy policy, and it stores data outside Australia.
• The free business assessment opens a questionnaire platform run by a third party, not by us. Anything you enter there is handled under that platform's privacy terms rather than this one. If any of it reaches us, this policy covers it from that point on.

You never have to use either one. A phone call or an email reaches us just as well, and neither involves a third party beyond our email provider.

When you call, email or book a call, we collect what you tell us — typically your name, contact details, business name, and whatever you have described about what you need. We use it to answer you and to work out whether we are the right fit, which is what the first 15-minute call is for.

Our email runs on Microsoft 365. If your enquiry does not turn into work, we keep the correspondence only as long as we have a reason to.

If you become a client, we collect what the work requires and no more. Depending on the engagement, that can include:

• your name, contact details, date of birth and residential address
• your tax file number, ABN and other identifiers we need to deal with the ATO and ASIC on your behalf
• financial records — income, expenses, bank and loan details, payroll, and supporting documents
• information about your business, its structure, its owners and, for a valuation, its performance and prospects
• identity documents, where we are required to verify who you are

Some of this we collect from you directly; some comes from the ATO, from your bank or software you have connected, or from another adviser or previous accountant with your authority.

Tax file numbers get particular protection. We handle them under the Privacy (Tax File Number) Rule 2015, which means we only use a TFN for the tax purpose it was given for, and we do not use it to identify you for anything else.

We use your information to do the work you have engaged us for: preparing and lodging returns, keeping your books, valuing your business, advising you, and meeting the obligations that come with being a registered practice.

We do not sell your information, we do not rent it, and we do not give it to anyone for their marketing. We disclose it only where the work needs it or the law requires it:

• to the Australian Taxation Office, ASIC and other government agencies, where we act for you or are legally required to
• to the software providers we use to run the practice and store records, which process it on our instructions
• to other advisers involved in your affairs — a lawyer, a financial adviser, a bank — but only with your authority
• where a law, court order or professional obligation compels it, including our obligations as CPA members

We keep client records for at least five years after the work they relate to, because tax law requires it, and longer where another obligation or an unresolved matter means we should. When a record no longer has a reason to exist, we destroy or de-identify it.

We protect your information with the controls you would expect of a professional practice — access limited to the people who need it, and reputable providers rather than improvised tools. No system is perfect, and we will not pretend otherwise; if a breach ever put you at serious risk, we would tell you and notify the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner.

This site links out to Calendly, the business assessment, Google Maps and our Google reviews, our Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn profiles, and the studio that built the site, credited in the footer. Those services are not ours, and once you follow a link, what happens to your information is governed by their privacy policies rather than this one. None of those links load anything into this site, and following one is what tells that service you were here.

You can ask us what personal information we hold about you and ask for a copy, and you can ask us to correct anything that is wrong or out of date. Email [email protected] or call 07 5378 1442 and we will sort it out.

We will usually respond within 30 days. There are limited situations where we cannot hand something over — for instance where doing so would reveal information about someone else — and if that happens we will explain why in writing.

If you think we have mishandled your personal information, tell us first — email [email protected] and we will look into it and come back to you in writing.

If you are not satisfied with how we have dealt with it, you can take the complaint to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner at oaic.gov.au or on 1300 363 992.

We update this page when what we do changes. The date at the top of the page is the date of the current version, and it is the quickest way to tell whether anything has moved since you last read it.