Accrual, Inc.
PRIVACY NOTICE
Last Modified: May 13, 2025
Welcome to Accrual Inc. Accrual is a modern operating system for accountants, providing secure online tools and AI-powered workflows to streamline client collaboration, document management, and tax preparation for accounting firms and their clients. This Privacy Notice explains how Accrual collects, uses, discloses, and otherwise processes personal data in connection with Accrual’s product, service, and application that references or links to this Privacy Notice. We may also choose or be required by law to provide different or additional disclosures relating to the processing of personal data about residents of certain countries, regions, or states.
This Privacy Notice does not address our privacy practices relating to Accrual job applicants, employees and other employment-related individuals, nor data that is not subject to applicable data protection laws (such as deidentified or publicly available information). This Privacy Notice is also not a contract and does not create any legal rights or obligations not otherwise provided by law.
Our Role in Processing Personal Data
This Privacy Notice describes our privacy practices where we are acting as the controller of personal data. However, this Privacy Notice does not cover or address how our customers may process personal data when they use our services, or how we may process personal data on their behalf in accordance with their instructions where we are acting as their processor. As a result, we recommend referring to the privacy notice of the customer with which you have a relationship for information on how they engage processors, like us, to process personal data on their behalf. In addition, we are generally not permitted to respond to individual requests relating to personal data we process on behalf of our customers, so we recommend directing any requests to the relevant customer.
Our Collection and Use of Personal Data
The categories of personal data we collect depend on how you interact with us and our services.
We also collect personal data automatically when you interact with our websites and other services and may also collect personal data from other sources and third parties.
Personal Data Provided by Individuals
We collect the following categories of personal data individuals provide us:
Contact Information, including first and last name, phone number, email address, mailing address, and communication preferences. We use this information primarily to fulfill your request or transaction, to communicate with you directly, and to send you marketing communications in accordance with your preferences.
Tax Preparation Information, including first and last name, address, identifying number (including a social security number, employer identification number or individual taxpayer identification number) or any other information furnished in any form or manner for, or in connection with, the preparation of a tax return, We use this information to prepare, or assist in preparing, a tax return. Except as necessary to provide you with tax preparation services or as authorized by law, we will not use or disclose, or store or process or disclose to any person located outside the United States (including any subsidiary or affiliate or any individual), your tax preparation information, without your consent.
Account Information, including first and last name, email address, phone number, date of birth, account credentials or one-time passcodes, and the products or services you are interested in, purchased, or have otherwise used. We use this information primarily to administer your account, provide you with our products and services, communicate with you regarding your account and your use of our products and services, and for customer support purposes.
Customer Content, including any files, documents, audio, videos, images, data, or communications you choose to input, upload, or transmit to our products and services through our web application or API. We use this content primarily to provide you with our products and services, to facilitate your requests, and to improve our products and services.
Payment Information, including payment card information, billing address, and other financial information (such as, routing and account number). Please note that we use third-party payment providers ,including Stripe, to process payments made to us. We do not retain any personally identifiable financial information, such as payment card number, you provide these third-party payment providers in connection with payments. Rather, all such information is provided directly by you to our third-party payment providers. The payment provider’s use of your personal data is governed by their privacy notice.
Event, Contest, Promotion, and Survey Information, including information provided when you sign up for an event, enter a contest or promotion, complete a survey or submit a testimonial. We use this information primarily to administer and facilitate our products and services, respond to your submission, communicate with you, conduct market research, inform our marketing and advertising activities, improve and grow our business, and facilitate the related event, content, promotion, or survey.
Feedback and Support Information, including the contents of custom messages sent through the forms, chat platforms, including our online live chat or automated chat functions, email addresses, or other contact information we make available to customers, as well as recordings of calls with us, where permitted by law (including through the use of automated tools provided by us or our third-party providers). We use this information primarily to investigate and respond to your inquiries, to communicate with you via online chat, email, phone, text message or social media, and to improve our products and services.
We may provide additional privacy disclosures where the scope of the request we receive or personal data we require fall outside the scope of this Privacy Notice. In that case, the additional privacy disclosures will govern how we may process the information you provide at that time.
Personal Data Automatically Collected
We, and our third-party partners, automatically collect information you provide to us and information about how you access and use our products and services when you engage with us. We typically collect this information through the use of a variety of our own and our third-party partners’ automatic data collection technologies, including (i) cookies or small data files that are stored on an individual’s computer and (ii) other, related technologies, such as web beacons, pixels, embedded scripts, mobile SDKs, location-identifying technologies and logging technologies. Information we collect automatically about you may be combined with other personal information we collect directly from you or receive from other sources.
We, and our third-party partners, use automatic data collection technologies to automatically collect the following data when you use our services or otherwise engage with us:
Information About Your Device and Network, including the device type, manufacturer, and model, operating system, IP address, browser type, Internet service provider, and unique identifiers associated with you, your device, or your network.
Information About the Way Individuals Use Our Services and Interact With Us, including where you came from, where you go after, how often you visit, whether you open our emails or click links, use multiple devices, and how you browse and act on our services. . We employ third-party technologies designed to allow us to collect information about actions that you take on our services. These third-party technologies may also record information you enter when you interact with our products or services, or engage in chat features or other communication platforms we provide.
Information About Your Location, including general geographic location that we or our third-party providers may derive from your IP address.
All of the information collected automatically through these tools allows us to improve your customer experience.
For information about the choices you may have in relation to our use of automatic data collection technologies, please refer to the Your Privacy Choices section below.
Personal Data from Other Sources and Third Parties
We may receive the same categories of personal data as described above from the following sources and other parties:
Single Sign-On: We may provide you the ability to log in to our services through certain third-party accounts you maintain.
Employers: If you interact with our services in connection with your employment, we may obtain personal data about you from your employer or another company for which you work.
Other Customers: We may receive your personal data from our other customers. For example, a customer may provide us with your contact information as a part of a referral or we may receive your tax preparation information from your accountant, tax return preparer or other tax advisor who uses our services in connection with preparation of your tax return.
Service Providers: Our service providers that perform services on our behalf, such as analytics and certain marketing providers, collect personal data and often share some or all of this information with us. For example, we receive personal data you may submit in response to requests for feedback to our survey providers.
Other Sources: We may also collect personal data about you from other sources, including publicly available sources, third-party data providers, brand partnerships, or through transactions such as mergers and acquisitions.
Business Partners: We may receive your information from our business partners, such as companies that offer their products and/or services as a part of or in connection with our services. For example, certain of our products and services allow our customers to integrate third-party services. If you choose to leverage these third-party service integrations, we may receive confirmation from our business partner regarding whether you are an existing customer of their services.
Sensitive Personal Data
The following personal data elements we collect may be classified as “sensitive” under certain privacy laws:
Additional Uses of Personal Data
In addition to the primary purposes for using personal data described above, we may also use personal data we collect to:
Fulfill or meet the reason the information was provided, such as to fulfill our contractual obligations, to facilitate payment for our products and services, or to deliver the services requested;
Manage our organization and its day-to-day operations;
Communicate with you, including via email, text message, chat, social media and/or telephone calls;
Facilitate the relationship we have with you and, where applicable, the company you represent;
Request you provide us feedback about our product and service offerings;
Address inquiries or complaints made by or about an individual in connection with our products or services;
Create and maintain accounts for our users;
Verify your identity and entitlement to our products and services;
Register you for and provide you access to events, contests, sweepstakes, and surveys;
Market our products and services to you, including through email, phone, text message, push notification, and social media;
Administer, improve, and personalize our products and services, including by recognizing you and remembering your information when you return to our products and services;
Develop, operate, improve, maintain, protect, and provide the features and functionality of our products and services;
Identify and analyze how you use our products and services;
Infer additional information about you from your use of our products and services, such as your interests.
Create aggregated or de-identified information that cannot reasonably be used to identify you, which information we may use for purposes outside the scope of this Privacy Notice;
Conduct research and analytics on our user base and our products and services, including to better understand the demographics of our users;
Improve and customize our products and services to address the needs and interests of our user base and other individuals we interact with;
Test, enhance, update, and monitor the products and services, or diagnose or fix technology problems;
Help maintain and enhance the safety, security, and integrity of our property, products, services, technology, assets, and business;
Defend, protect, or enforce our rights or applicable contracts and agreements (including our Terms of Use), as well as to resolve disputes, to carry out our obligations and enforce our rights, and to protect our business interests and the interests and rights of third parties;
Detect, prevent, investigate, or provide notice of security incidents or other malicious, deceptive, fraudulent, or illegal activity and protect the rights and property of Accrual and others;
Facilitate business transactions and reorganizations impacting the structure of our business;
Comply with contractual and legal obligations and requirements;
Fulfill any other purpose for which you provide your personal data, or for which you have otherwise consented.
Our Disclosure of Personal Data
We disclose or otherwise make available personal data in the following ways:
To Your Employer: If you interact with our services in connection with your employment, we may disclose personal data to your employer or another company for which you work. For example, we may provide information to your employer about your usage of our services in connection with your work for them.
To Service Providers and our Business Partners: We engage other third parties to perform certain services on our behalf in connection with the uses of personal data described in the sections above. Depending on the applicable services, these third-parties providers may process personal data on our behalf or have access to personal data while performing services on our behalf. These third-parties have limited access to your information, may use your information only to perform agreed tasks, and are prohibited from disclosing or using your information for other purposes.
To Other Businesses as Needed to Provide Services: We may share personal data with third parties you engage with through our services or as needed to fulfill a request or transaction including.
In Connection with a Business Transaction or Reorganization: We may take part in or be involved with a business transaction or reorganization, such as a merger, acquisition, joint venture, or financing or sale of company assets. We may disclose, transfer, or assign personal data to a third-party during negotiation of, in connection with, or as an asset in such a business transaction or reorganization. Also, in the unlikely event of our bankruptcy, receivership, or insolvency, your personal data may be disclosed, transferred, or assigned to third parties in connection with the proceedings or disposition of our assets.
To Facilitate Legal Obligations and Rights: We may disclose personal data to third parties, such as legal advisors and law enforcement:
in connection with the establishment, exercise, or defense of legal claims;
to comply with laws or to respond to lawful requests and legal process;
to protect our rights and property and the rights and property of our agents, customers, and others, including to enforce our agreements, policies, and terms of use;
to detect, suppress, or prevent fraud;
to reduce credit risk and collect debts owed to us;
to protect the health and safety of us, our customers, or any person; or
as otherwise required by applicable law.
With Your Consent or Direction: We may disclose your personal data to certain other third parties or publicly with your consent or direction. For example, with your permission, we may post your testimonial on our websites.
Your Privacy Choices
The following privacy choices are made available to all individuals with whom we interact. You may also have additional choices regarding your personal data depending on your location or residency.
Communication Preferences
Withdrawing Your Consent
Where we have your consent for the processing of your personal data you may withdraw your consent by following the instructions provided when your consent was requested or by contacting us as set forth in the Contact Us section below.
Automatic Data Collection Preferences
Where an Accrual-specific preference manager or privacy setting is not available, you may be able to utilize third-party tools and features to further restrict our use of automatic data collection technologies. Depending on the third-party tool or feature you use, you may not be able to block all automatic data collection technologies or you may need to update your preferences on multiple devices or browsers. We do not have any control over these third-party tools and features and are not responsible if they do not function as intended.
Modifying or Deleting Your Personal Data
If you have any questions about reviewing, modifying, or deleting your personal data, you can contact us directly at privacy@accrual.com. We may not be able to modify or delete your personal data in all circumstances.
Children’s Personal Data
Our services are not directed to, and we do not intend to, or knowingly, collect or solicit personal data from children under the age of 13. If an individual is under the age of 13, they should not use our services or otherwise provide us with any personal data either directly or by other means. If a child under the age of 13 has provided personal data to us, we encourage the child’s parent or guardian to contact us to request that we remove the personal data from our systems. If we learn that any personal data we collect has been provided by a child under the age of 13, we will promptly delete that personal data.
How we Protect your Information
We take commercially reasonable steps to protect your personal information from loss, misuse, and unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, or destruction. Please understand, however, that no security system is impenetrable. We cannot guarantee the security of our databases, nor can we guarantee that the information you supply will not be intercepted while being transmitted to and from us over the Internet.
Retention of Personal Data
We will usually retain the personal data we collect about you for no longer than reasonably necessary to fulfil the purposes for which it was collected, and in accordance with our legitimate business interests and applicable law. However, if necessary, we may retain personal data for longer periods of time as required under applicable law or as needed to resolve disputes or protect our legal rights.
To determine the appropriate duration of the retention of personal data, we consider the amount, nature, and sensitivity of the personal data, the potential risk of harm from unauthorized use or disclosure of personal data and if we can attain our objectives by other means, as well as our legal, regulatory, tax, accounting, and other applicable obligations.
Once retention of the personal data is no longer reasonably necessary for the purposes outlined above, we will either delete or deidentify the personal data or, if that is not possible (for example, because personal data has been stored in backup archives), we will securely store the personal data and isolate it from further active processing until deletion or deidentification is possible.
Third-Party Websites and Services
Our services may include links to third-party websites, plug-ins, applications and other services. Except where we post, link to or expressly adopt or refer to this Privacy Notice, this Privacy Notice does not apply to any personal data practices of third parties. To learn about the personal data practices of third parties, please visit their respective privacy notices.
Updates to This Privacy Notice
We may update this Privacy Notice from time to time. When we make changes to this Privacy Notice, we will change the date at the beginning of this Privacy Notice. If we make material changes to this Privacy Notice, we will notify individuals through appropriate communication channels. All changes shall be effective from the date of publication unless otherwise provided.
Contact Us
If you have any questions or requests in connection with this Privacy Notice or other privacy-related matters, please contact privacy@accrual.com.