Privacy Policy

Maintaining your privacy is really, really important to us. You entrust us with sensitive financial information, and we take that responsibility seriously.

Version 4.0:

This policy was last updated on 26th November 2012 It may be updated in the future and we'll post the new version here on our website. We will never deviate from our overall philosophy of maintaining your privacy, though.

This policy explains how we collect, store and use personal data about you when you browse www.freeagent.com (the "FreeAgent website"), use the FreeAgent application ("FreeAgent") or otherwise provide your personal data to us.

By visiting, logging into, registering or using FreeAgent and the FreeAgent website, you agree that it's okay for us to collect, use and transfer your information (including your personal data) under the terms of this policy. If you're not cool with this or don't want to be bound by this policy any longer, please do not continue to use or enter your details on the FreeAgent website, or use FreeAgent (by free trial or by subscription).

Your Data

When we say your "personal data," we mean any information that identifies any person that you provide to us during your trial period, after you subscribe, or contained in any other information that you provide to us. Your "personal data" may also be contained in information that we collect about you in connection with your use of the FreeAgent website and/or FreeAgent. The financial data that you enter into FreeAgent isn't part of the "personal data" discussed here, unless it identifies a person – for more information about your financial data, jump ahead to the next section. When it comes to your personal data, we comply with our respective obligations under the Data Protection Act 1998 (the "Act")

Information you provide – Your personal data includes the information you provide when you sign up for an account or sign up to receive our emails, or when you answer questionnaires, surveys, enter competitions or provide information in your account profile, on the FreeAgent website, or during a support enquiry about you and/or your organisation.

Examples of this personal data include your name, your email address, contact and/or employee names; and any correspondence when you contact us.

Information we collect - We collect information about your website usage, to improve our service and to understand trends. Some of this data may be "personal data", where it identifies a person. Here's the information that we collect and how we use it:

We monitor patterns of usage, such as login dates and volumes of data, so we can understand how people are using FreeAgent to develop and improve our products. We also monitor patterns of usage so that we can tailor any communications that you have asked us to send you. For example, we may tailor your newsletter with information about product features that you haven't tried yet, instead of features that you use frequently.

For security reasons and to aid in monitoring patterns of usage, we log your IP address when you use the website. This is your computer's individual identification number that is assigned to your computer when connected to the Internet.

We monitor traffic information when you visit our site or read our e-mails, including things like page visits, e-mail clicks, purchases, referring sites, and video viewings. We use this information to improve our website, promotions, and to understand customer purchasing behaviour.

Financial Data - it's yours, you own and control it.

In addition to your personal data, we will also hold financial data that you enter into FreeAgent. Examples of your financial data include your organisation's invoices, expenses, and bank transactions.

You own all of the financial data you enter or upload into FreeAgent, and have ultimate control over who has access to it. For example, if you want to give your accountant access to your financial data, you can switch on their access in FreeAgent. Keep in mind, however, that with great power comes great responsibility – it is your job to safeguard your password and account access.

How we use your personal data & financial data.

This section details how we use your personal data and your financial data.

Providing FreeAgent - We use your personal data to enable us to provide you with access to FreeAgent and the Freeagent website. It will also enable us to contact you by email, fax, post, SMS, social media or telephone where necessary concerning FreeAgent. Should you choose to use parts of FreeAgent that involve providing your personal and/or financial data to third parties (for example, if you choose to give your accountant access to your data), then your personal and/or financial data will be shared in that way. We may use third parties to assist us in providing FreeAgent from time to time, and in those cases may pass on your personal and/or financial data to them. In such cases we will only share your data with third parties that we trust, and where there are assurances in place as to how they will protect the data .

Improving FreeAgent - We will also use and analyse your personal data and financial data so that we can administer, support, improve and develop our business, customer service and the features of the FreeAgent website and FreeAgent generally. We may use third parties to assist us in doing these things from time to time, and in those cases may pass on your personal and/or financial data to them. We will only share your data with third parties that we trust, and where there are assurances in place as to how they will protect the data.

Providing Insights - We monitor anonymous, aggregated information about account and financial data so that we can produce insights about small businesses finance. For example, based on an anonymous, aggregate data analysis, we may produce a white paper that reports how most small businesses are not paid on time. We may share these insights with customers, on our blog or other promotional material, use them internally to improve our product and communications, or share with other interested third parties. Just to be clear - we will never identify you or your business in such communications or white papers, and will never report data in such a way that your business could be identified.

Making Contact - We may use your personal data to contact you by email, fax, post, SMS, social media and/or telephone to notify you about important changes or developments to the FreeAgent website or FreeAgent, or to let you know about our other FreeAgent and/or third party services, content, or product ranges which may be of interest to you. We may also use your financial data to enable us to tailor these notifications (in order to make sure what we are sending you is relevant). By using FreeAgent or the FreeAgent website, you are consenting to this use of your data. If you change your mind about being contacted in the future, that's no problem – just contact us using the details below. To stop receiving emails from FreeAgent itself (for example, a reminder that your subscription is expiring), you should cancel your FreeAgent account.

Cookies - We may further use, or permit selected third parties to use, your personal data to enable us to track and analyse FreeAgent website traffic and visitor trends and improve your browsing experience. For further details, please see our Cookies Policy. By using the FreeAgent website or FreeAgent you are consenting to this use of your personal data. If you do not want us to use your personal data in this way, please see the Cookies Policy for more information.

You can export your financial data anytime.

You can export a copy of your financial data as an Excel file whenever you like - this will include your financial transactions, invoices, and expenses (without any uploaded receipts). We recommend that you use the export functionality to keep a backup of your financial data. While we regularly back up your financial data (see our security section), we can't restore backups on an individual basis. Read here for instructions about how to export your FreeAgent data.

You can also ask us for a copy of your personal data that we hold (see "Your Rights" below).

You can delete your financial data at any time.

You have the option to delete all of your financial data at any time, using the "Delete all data" option in the settings area of FreeAgent. You can use this option before cancelling a FreeAgent account, or to reset FreeAgent after loading test data during your free trial. After you delete your financial data, we may not immediately delete residual copies from our active servers and may not remove information from our backup systems. Generally, we will retain your financial data and personal data for a reasonable period, or for as long as the law requires.

We highly recommend that you export your financial data before cancelling, since many countries (including the UK) require you retain your business records going back many years, even if you have finished trading.

If your free trial expires, it is not automatically cancelled within our system. We will retain historical details about your payments to FreeAgent for accounting purposes, because we need to do so by law.

We don't store your credit card details.

Once your 30-day free trial is over, you need to provide payment details to start your subscription and continue using FreeAgent. This information is passed directly to our payment service provider (PayPal Europe - www.paypal.co.uk/uk) over an encrypted link and is never stored on our system. We handle ongoing billing by passing a token to PayPal that identifies your account. Please see here for details of PayPal's privacy policy.

You have the option within your account to share your data with people that you trust - for example, you can switch on account access for your accountant to see your financial data. We will not share your financial data with a third-party unless you authorise it (by choosing to do so within FreeAgent, or as detailed in this policy).

When you visit the FreeAgent website or sign up for FreeAgent, you authorise us to share your data (personal data and financial data) with others in certain circumstances:

We will share your data as set out in this policy, for example in the section above called "How We Use Your Data".

We may disclose your data to any member of our group, which means our subsidiaries, our ultimate holding company and its subsidiaries.

We may also pass aggregate information on the usage of the FreeAgent website and FreeAgent, where relevant, to maintain, improve and manage the FreeAgent website and FreeAgent, but this will not include your personal data.

We may also disclose your data in the event that we sell or buy any business or assets, in which case we may disclose your personal data to the prospective seller or buyer of such business or assets. We may also exchange other information with other companies and organisations for fraud protection and credit risk reduction.

We may share your data with partners who help us carry out our day-to-day provision of FreeAgent, or who help us improve FreeAgent. Examples of these functions include e-mail, providing marketing assistance and data analysis, handling credit card transactions, fulfilling orders and providing customer service. In these circumstances we will make sure that these partners have the right measures in place to protect your 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, one of our group companies or for one of our suppliers. Such staff maybe engaged in, among other things, the processing of your payment details and the provision of support services. By submitting your 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.

Finally, we reserve the right to cooperate with law enforcement officials in the investigation of alleged unlawful activities of FreeAgent website users or relating to FreeAgent users. We will have no legal liability for such disclosures of your information.

The FreeAgent website and/or FreeAgent may, from time-to-time, contain links to and from the websites or services of our partner networks, advertisers and affiliates. If you follow a link to any of these websites or services, please note that they 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 data to these websites.

Your Data's Security

When you use FreeAgent, you will enter information about your bank account(s) such as the sort code and account number. You'll also upload or automatically import electronic bank statements, or manually enter transaction data. We use this financial data to calculate your business accounts and tax liabilities. We are very aware that this information is sensitive and we are very careful about how we store it.

We partner with secure sites.

All data you provide to us is stored securely on our servers. Where we pass your data to third parties, we do so over a secure connection.

Where we have given you (or where you have chosen) a password which enables you to access certain parts of the FreeAgent website or FreeAgent itself, you are responsible for keeping this password confidential. We ask you not to share a password with anyone.

Unfortunately, the transmission of information via the internet is not completely secure. Although we will do our best to protect your data, we cannot guarantee the security of your data transmitted to the FreeAgent website, or through FreeAgent itself; any transmission is at your own risk. Once we have received your data, we will use strict procedures and security features to try to prevent unauthorised access.

Your rights

You can unsubscribe from our promotional email communications at any time by just clicking the unsubscribe link in any email, or by emailing us at hello@freeagent.com. If you have a FreeAgent account, you will still receive any essential e-mails from us about your service, including notifications from the application and notifications about your billing and subscription.

You have the right to request a copy of personal data we hold about you. To do this, simply write to us or send us an email – just use the contact details below. We may charge you £10 for providing this information to cover our administration costs.

To provide the highest level of customer service we need accurate customer information. You can help by informing us whenever your circumstances change. You can ask us to correct incorrect personal data about you by writing to or emailing us at support@freeagent.com.

You can find detailed information about your rights under UK Data Protection legislation on the UK Information Commissioner's website at www.ico.gov.uk.

Changes to this policy.

We may edit this policy from time to time. Please check this policy regularly for any changes. We will post all changes here, and if we make any substantial changes we may also notify you by email.

Contact us.

For the purposes of the Act, the data controller is FreeAgent Central Ltd. Should you wish to contact us in connection with this policy, please contact support@freeagent.com.