Privacy Policy

1. Who we are, and our two roles

The KMBFS Business Portal is operated by KMBFS Accountants and Tax Practitioners (Pty) Ltd (“KMBFS”, “we”), West Tower, 2nd Floor, Maude St, Sandown, Johannesburg, 2146. Our Information Officer handles privacy questions and requests; the contact details are in section 11.

We have two roles, and which one applies depends on whose information it is:

• Your own account. For your account details, your own business’s records and anything you enter for yourself, KMBFS is the responsible party.
• Records kept on behalf of a practice. Where an accounting practice uses the portal to manage its clients’ records, that practice decides what is collected and why, and KMBFS processes the information on the practice’s instructions. The practice is the responsible party for those records, and requests about them should be made to the practice. We help the practice to answer them.

2. What we hold

We hold what is needed to run the portal and the work done in it:

• Account details: name, email address, phone number, role, and the accounts (practice, client portal, employee) you belong to.
• Business records: client details, invoices, credit notes, payments, customers, suppliers, cashbook and bank transactions, allocations, assets, finance leases and reports.
• Compliance records: registration documents, CIPC and SARS correspondence and statements of account, COIDA and UIF documents, BEE documents, submissions and audit notes.
• Payroll and employee records: names, identity numbers, tax numbers, bank details, payslips, leave, attendance, contracts, qualifications, declarations and the supporting documents uploaded for onboarding.
• Personal tax work: IRP5s, medical and retirement certificates, bank statements, rental and asset details, and the figures read from those documents.
• Documents you upload, and the figures read from them.
• Payment information: the payment reference, amount, date and status. Card details are entered on the payment provider’s own page; we never see or store your card number.
• Correspondence and audit records: emails, messages and notifications sent through the portal, and who last worked on a record.

3. Documents, and how a stored file is opened

Files uploaded through the portal are held in the app’s cloud storage. There are two ways a stored file is opened, and the tool you used decides which:

• Private storage with a short-lived link. The file has no openable address of its own. It is opened through a link that (a) expires within minutes, and (b) is only issued after the server has checked who is asking and whether the file belongs to a record that person is allowed to read. The personal income tax workspace, the DIY Personal Income Tax service, the PDF bank statement converter and signature requests work this way. Signatures, IDs and bank confirmations uploaded for signing are stored this way too.
• Unlisted address. Some of the portal’s internal upload tools still keep a file at its own web address. That address is not listed, published or searchable, but anyone who is given it can open the file, and it does not expire. While those tools are being moved onto private storage, please treat such a link as confidential and do not forward it beyond the people meant to see the document.

Signature requests work through a per-signatory link: each signatory gets their own link, it stops working after 14 days, and the sender can cancel the request at any time, which also stops the links. Everyone who was invited can still open and sign while the request is live, and the completed document is emailed to every party.

Deleting a file in the portal removes it from your workspace, but does not by itself delete the stored copy. Ask us and we will remove the stored file as well (see section 9).

4. Automated reading of documents

When you upload a document to a tool that reads it (for example a bank statement, an IRP5, a SARS statement of account or a registration document), the document is read by automated tools to pull out the figures that prefill the screen. This reading runs inside the portal’s own backend, not in your browser, and the file is handed to the reader through a short-lived link.

The figures produced this way are a starting point only. They can be wrong, and a person must check them before they are used, submitted or relied on. Automated reading uses the platform’s AI service providers; see sections 6 and 7 for who processes information and where.

5. How it is used

• To run the portal and the tools you use in it.
• To produce the documents, reports, statements, payslips and tax workings you ask for.
• To keep a record of the work done, who did it and when.
• To confirm and activate paid access, and to keep payment records.
• To send service messages, deadline reminders, document requests and confirmations.
• To meet our accounting, tax and legal record-keeping obligations.
• To send tax tips or offers only where you gave separate consent for that.

6. Who else sees it

We do not sell your information. Inside the portal it is shared only with the people linked to that workspace, according to their access level: the practice’s team for its own clients, the client for their own records, and an employee for their own information.

Outside the portal, the following categories of service providers process information on our instructions so that the portal can run, and only as far as that requires:

• The platform that hosts the portal, its database, its file storage and its AI and email services.
• The payment provider that processes checkout and confirmation of payment.
• Email and messaging providers used to send portal mail, and Microsoft 365 (Outlook) where a practice connects its own mailbox to send from its own address, or Microsoft Teams for notifications.
• WhatsApp Business, where the portal sends a WhatsApp message.
• An external system that requested a signature through the signature API, which receives notification that the document was signed.

We may also disclose information where the law requires it, or to a professional body or regulator acting within its powers.

7. Processing outside South Africa

The portal runs on cloud infrastructure, and its storage, automated document reading, email and messaging are performed by service providers that may process information on servers outside South Africa. Where information is processed outside the country, we require the provider to protect it to a standard comparable to South African law, through the platform’s and the provider’s contractual commitments.

8. How it is protected

The portal requires a sign-in, and access follows a person’s role and the workspace they belong to, so a user sees only the records their access allows. Private files have no openable address of their own: a link is created only after the server has confirmed that the person asking may read the record the file belongs to, and it expires shortly afterwards. Signature links are issued per signatory, expire after 14 days and can be cancelled. Connections to the portal are encrypted, and the portal keeps an audit trail of who did what and when.

No system is risk-free. If we become aware of a security compromise that affects your information, we will investigate it, take steps to contain it, and notify you and the Information Regulator where the law requires us to.

9. How long we keep it, and how to have it deleted

Records are kept while your account is active, and afterwards for as long as accounting, tax and legal record-keeping requires. Nothing is deleted automatically when a paid period ends: for the DIY Personal Income Tax service, the 12 months you pay for is how long you can work in and download from that year’s workspace, not how long the information is kept.

You can ask us to delete information at any time and we will remove what we are not required by law to keep:

• Inside the portal, the bin beside a file removes that document from the workspace. Ask us if you also want the stored copy removed.
• To have a whole workspace, return or account removed, email us at info@kmbfs.co.za, or use “Request account deletion” in the portal account menu. An account deletion request is actioned by our team; the account is held for 30 days so it can be recovered if you change your mind.
• We confirm by email once the information has been removed.
• Where a practice keeps its client’s records in the portal, the practice decides how long those records are kept, and we act on the practice’s instruction.

Copies of records may remain in the platform’s routine backups until those backups are rotated out. We do not restore deleted information from a backup except where the law requires it.

10. Your choices and rights

• Access. Ask us what we hold about you and we will give you a copy.
• Correction. Correct your details in the portal, or ask us to correct anything that is wrong.
• Deletion. Ask us to delete information we are not required to keep (see section 9).
• Objection and restriction. Ask us to stop a particular use, or to restrict how information is processed. Where you object to marketing, we stop immediately.
• Complaint. If you believe we have handled your information unlawfully, tell us first so we can put it right. You may also complain to the Information Regulator (South Africa) at inforegulator.org.za, which is the regulator’s current complaint route and contact details.

To protect you, we may ask you to confirm your identity before acting on a request. A request about a practice’s client records is handled with that practice, because the practice is the responsible party for those records.

11. Contact: Information Officer

Privacy requests, questions and complaints: our Information Officer, KMBFS Accountants and Tax Practitioners (Pty) Ltd, info@kmbfs.co.za, 010 448 0720, West Tower, 2nd Floor, Maude St, Sandown, Johannesburg, 2146. We respond as soon as we reasonably can, and in the time the law sets for a formal request.

12. Cookies, local storage and analytics

The portal does not run advertising trackers and the app itself does not use third-party analytics tools.

• Sign-in. A session token is kept in your browser’s storage so you stay signed in while you work, and is cleared when you sign out or it expires.
• Working preferences. Your browser keeps small local values so the portal remembers what you were doing: the client and financial year you last worked on, which preview you opened, which notices you dismissed, saved quotes, and saved signature images for the PDF signing pad on that device.
• Before you pay. The answers you give the DIY suitability check are kept in your browser session, so we have them when you continue after payment.
• App cache. If you install the portal as an app, it caches its own pages and assets on your device so it opens quickly.

You can clear this stored data from your browser at any time; you will simply be signed out and lose the remembered preferences.

13. Changes to this policy

If the way the portal works changes, we update this page and the date at the top of it. Material changes are brought to your attention in the portal. The DIY service has its own notice at /diy-privacy, which forms part of this policy.