The Importance Of Ensuring GDPR Compliance With Your Accountant

August 22, 2018 8:45 am Published by

With so many businesses focused on making their own steps towards GDPR compliance, it’s easy to overlook the importance of ensuring that your “Processors” (those who process data for you) are also compliant with the new data protection regulations.

In payroll and accountancy, the volume and sensitivity of the data that is collected, held and processed puts pressure on business owners of all sizes to ensure their provider is compliant.

In this blog post, we’ll look at how you can ensure that your current payroll provider, bookkeeper or accountant is compliant with GDPR. We will also highlight the steps and ongoing processes that we at FCF have put in place to ensure that we are 100% Compliant.

Ensuring Your Accountant is Compliant

At FCF, we began putting measures into place to ensure GDPR compliance long before the May 25th 2018 implementation date.

Why is GDPR Particularly Pressing for Accountants?

Whilst GDPR is an important consideration for any business, data protection is particularly important for accountants given the sensitivity of the data they hold.

A breach or leak of this information could reveal business revenue, profit forecasts and staff earnings; all of which may be detrimental to the business.

Here are a few crucial things you should know about your accountancy or payroll provider in terms of data protection:

How Their Staff Have Been Trained

A report of 250 professionals worldwide released in late 2017 found that just 10% of organisations had provided their staff with GDPR training. With staff at the heart of how every business is run, not training employees properly can result in all other compliance work becoming redundant.

Don’t be afraid to ask your current provider about the current level of GDPR knowledge their staff have, who their data protection officer is and what processes they have in place to ensure that staff knowledge remains consistent and up to date.

At FCF, all our staff completed robust GDPR training to ensure that they knew how data was processed through the business, as well as how they could ensure that all customer and staff data was handled in a secure and compliant manner.

How To Find Their Privacy Policy

One of the biggest aspects of GDPR is the Privacy Policy, with many businesses historically displaying a generic template policy on their own websites. It is important for all businesses to produce a clear and concise document that outlines how and where their business stored and processed data.

Privacy policies can usually be found online in the footer (bottom) of a business’s website, the business should also provide you with a copy if requested.

At FCF, we have a comprehensive and transparent privacy policy which outlines what data we collect, why we collect it, how we use it and how you can control or change the data we hold about you.

If Their Software and Tools are Compliant

Like many other businesses, accountants rely on various pieces of software or tools to get essential tasks done more efficiently. In these environments, the data being inputted may include salaries, business earnings, expenses and other data that is much more sensitive than most.

For this reason, it’s essential that your accountant is aware of the data processing and security measures put in place by the software providers they use.

At FCF, we audited our own providers to check what measures they currently had in place and how they planned to ensure compliance with GDPR.

A Provider You Can Trust

At FCF, we understand how important it is to keep sensitive data safe and secure – that’s why we’ve put robust measures in place to ensure compliance with GDPR. If you’re unhappy with your provider’s stance on GDPR or are simply looking for a provider with a difference; we can help.

We provide high quality accounting and payroll services to businesses of all sizes in Bristol and surrounding areas. Call us today on 0117 379 0810 or fill out a contact form and we’ll get back to you.

Tarah
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