Kwela Solutions Privacy Policy

Last updated: 7 March 2023

At Kwela Solutions Pty Ltd (“Kwela”, “we”, “our”, “us”), we respect the privacy needs of our valued customers and we acknowledge that your privacy and the protection of your personal information is important to you. This Privacy Policy outlines how we collect, use, hold, and share your personal information and how to contact us with any queries or concerns. Although we are not bound by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (“Act”), we adhere to the Australian Privacy Principles (“APPs”) as far as practicable.

If you reside in New Zealand, we also handle your data in accordance with the Privacy Act 2020 (NZ) and the Information Privacy Principles.

We collect personal information through our website and through your interactions with us. Our customers may also collect and store personal information using our product, Folio. This Policy applies to information collected by us and sets out how we store information collected by our customers on Folio. This policy does not apply to our customer’s collection or use of any data stored on Folio.

By voluntarily supplying us with your personal information, you are agreeing to be bound by this Policy.

Any amendments to this Policy will be notified to you by posting an updated version on our website.

Please note that our website and our product Folio contain links to other websites. When a user has clicked on a link to another site, they leave our site and are no longer protected by this Policy.

Maintaining the privacy of your information is of paramount importance to us as it helps foster confidence, goodwill and stronger relationships with you. If, at any time, you have questions, concerns or complaints about our privacy practices, please feel free to contact our Privacy Officer in the first instance:

Privacy Officer Contact: Kim Wilson

Phone: 02 82834375

Email:privacy@kwelasolutions.com.

Postal address: Suite 203, 15 Belvoir St, Surry Hills NSW 2010

1 Information Collection

Kwela Solutions collects information that personally identifies you (“personal information”) in some circumstances, for example when you apply for our services.. The types of personal information we collect include your name, contact details, industry, organisation, title, information submitted in forms, payment details and enquiry/complaint details.
We also collect information about your interactions and transactions with us, including through monitoring and recording any contact we have with you by telephone, email or online for security, dispute resolution and training purposes.
Where you interact with our website and our product Folio, we use cookies and other services that allow us to understand how you use our online media. Further information about our use of these services is set out in Clause 5 of this Policy. This information is not linked to you personally.
In some circumstances, where it is unreasonable or impracticable to collect information from you, we may collect information about you from third parties including public sources, our related companies, information service providers and the parties with whom we exchange information as described within this Policy. For example, we may collect information from a publicly maintained record.
If you have previously applied for a position with us, we may have received your personal information from third parties such as recruiters or external websites. We use the information we receive to contact you about any potential opportunities or to evaluate your candidacy. Further information about the information we collect for recruitment is set out in Clause 7 of this Policy.
We also store and manage information on behalf of our customers through Folio. This includes any information that our customers store on Folio and may include email addresses, credentials and other details entered into our systems. This information is subject to our Terms of Use and stored in accordance with this Policy but is not otherwise limited, collected, used or controlled by us.
If you provide us with personal information about someone else, you must ensure that you are authorised to disclose that information and that, without us taking any further steps required by applicable privacy laws, we are permitted to collect, store, use and disclose such information for the purposes described in this Policy. This means that you must take reasonable steps to ensure the individual concerned is aware of and/or consents to the various matters detailed in this Policy, including the fact that their personal information is being collected, the purposes for which that information is being collected, the intended recipients of that information, the individual’s right to obtain access to that information, Kwela’s identity, and how to contact us. Where we request you to do so, you must also assist us with any requests by the individual to access or update the personal information you have collected from them and provided to us. If you are someone who does not have a relationship with us but believe that one of our customers has provided us with your personal information, you will need to contact that customer for any questions you have about your personal information (including where you want to access, correct, amend, or request that we delete, your personal information).
You do not need to provide all the information requested by us, but this may prevent us from providing some or all of our products and/or services to you.

2 Use of information

We will only use your information for the purposes for which it was collected (“primary purposes”) or a purpose related to the primary purpose, if this would be reasonably expected by you, or otherwise with your consent.
We collect and use your personal information for the following purposes:.
1. as a necessary part of providing our products and services to you;
2. to promote and market our products to you and provide you with information that we believe may be of interest to you (unless as directed otherwise);
3. to personalise and customise your experiences with our website;
4. to help us research the needs of our customers and to market our products with a better understanding of your needs and the needs of customers generally;
5. to allow us to provide advertising material to you regarding us, our customers, and other business partners (unless otherwise directed);
6. maintain and update our records;
7. collect, use and disclose your personal information in connection with suspected fraud, misconduct and unlawful activity; and
8. other purposes related to the above.
We do not use any information stored on Folio by our customers for our own purposes. To provide our services to our customers, we store and manage the information they store on Folio in accordance with this Policy. In some circumstances we may access your information while assisting new customers to migrate data onto Folio. Where expressly requested by our customers, we may also obtain limited access to information stored on Folio to:
1. assist our customers to contact you via email; or
2. to provide troubleshooting support for our customers in relation to their use of Folio.
If you are our customer, your personal information is used to create your personal access to Folio, and to contact you in the course of using this product. Financial information that is collected is used to verify, identify and to bill either you or your company for products and services, as applicable. Demographic and profile data collected by Kwela Solutions may be used to tailor our website or any requested email communications, and to display information that is more relevant to you. Kwela Solutions also compiles de-identified demographic and product use information, and may make that de-identified information publicly available. Under no circumstances will Kwela Solutions make any personal information about an individual user available publicly in this manner, unless required to by law.
Your email address is used to only send you information that you have requested. As part of your use of our software, Kwela Solutions allows you to elect to receive, or not receive, certain information from Kwela Solutions. Kwela Solutions adheres strictly to permission-based email policy. Kwela Solutions will not sell, rent, or loan our contact lists or our customer’s contact lists (including customer data) to any outside firms not involved in the provision of Kwela Solutions services, nor will Kwela Solutions use customer supplier lists for our own marketing purposes. All emails that you have requested to receive will have an option to unsubscribe, as required by law.

3 Disclosure

In accordance with this Privacy Policy, we may disclose your personal information:
1. where required or authorised by law;
2. to implement the terms of any agreement we have with you;
3. to assist the lawful investigation of a law enforcement authority;
4. where the assets and operations of the business are transferred to another party as a going concern;
5. to our related bodies corporate, your representatives and our service providers that assist us with auditing, accounting, legal, business consulting, banking or technology services; or
6. as otherwise described in this Privacy Policy.
We may disclose your information to necessary third parties, who assist us to provide, manage and administer our goods and services. Information provided to third parties will be dealt with in accordance with that entity’s privacy policy. Third parties we may disclose your information to include:
1. third parties that provide goods and services to us or through us;
2. third parties that provide goods and services to us or through us;
3. our website host, cloud infrastructure and hosting provider, and software application providers.
This information may be disclosed to overseas recipients where the third party is located overseas. We take all steps reasonable in the circumstances to ensure that those we disclose personal information to overseas are required to protect it in a way that provides comparable safeguards to those in Australia and New Zealand. We will not sell or license your information to third parties or otherwise disclose your personal information unless we believe on reasonable grounds that you have provided your authorisation. In certain circumstances we may be required to disclose your personal information without your consent in order to comply with any court orders, subpoenas or other legal process or investigation including by tax authorities, if such disclosure is required by law. Where possible and appropriate, we will notify you if we are required by law to disclose your personal information
We do not disclose your credit information to any credit reporting bodies.

4 Quality, access to & correction of information

You are entitled to have access to and to seek correction of any personal information that we may hold about you. We require that requests for access to or to update or correct your personal information to be in writing outlining the details of your request. Such requests should be addressed to the Privacy Officer via the details provided in this Policy.
We will take appropriate steps to verify your identity (or verify that you act as an authorised agent of the individual concerned) before granting a request to access your personal information.
We will respond to your request for access to your personal information within a reasonable time after you make the request and if access is granted, access will be provided within 30 days of your request. We will, on request, provide you with access to your personal information or update or correct your personal information, unless we are unlawfully excluded from granting your request, including if:
1. giving access would be unlawful;
2. we are required or authorised by law or a court/tribunal order to deny access; or
3. giving access is likely to prejudice one or more enforcement related activities conducted by an enforcement body.
Where your request for access is accepted, we will provide you with access to your personal information in a manner, as requested by you, providing it is reasonable to do so.
Your request for correction will be dealt with within 30 days, or such longer period as agreed by you. If we deny your request, we will provide you with a written notice detailing reasons for the refusal and the process for making a complaint about the refusal to grant your request.
We will accept your request for correction of your personal information where we are satisfied that it is inaccurate, out of date, incomplete, irrelevant or misleading.
Upon accepting a request for correction of your personal information, we will take all steps that are reasonable in the circumstances, having regard to the purpose for which your information is held, to correct your personal information.

5 Website Usage Information

We use your IP address to help diagnose problems with our server, and to administer our website. We do not link your IP address which accesses our website or Folio to any personal information. We use tracking information to determine which areas our site users visit based on traffic to those areas. Kwela Solutions does not track what individual users read, but rather how often each page is visited. This helps us maintain a superior and informative website and product for you.
Cookies are pieces of information that a website transfers to your computer’s hard disk for record keeping purposes. Most web browsers are set to accept cookies. Kwela Solutions uses cookies to make your use of our website and services as convenient as possible. Cookies are useful to estimate our number of visitors and to determine overall traffic patterns through our website.
If you do not wish to receive any cookies you may set your browser to refuse cookies. This may mean you will not be able to take full advantage of our services.
In some cases third parties may use cookies and other technologies such as web beacons and JavaScript on our website in connection with online services like website analytics and surveys. This may allow them to collect information about your use of our website (including your computer’s IP address) which they may store in other countries. The use of these technologies allows them to evaluate users use of our website and other websites and provide other services relating to website activity and internet usage. Those third parties may also transfer the information they collect to others where required to do so by law, or where those others process the information on their behalf. The services we may use from time to time include Google Analytics, Yahoo, Adobe and Microsoft. You can find more details in the privacy policies for those services, including information on how to opt-out of certain conduct.

6 Storage of personal information

The personal information collected on our website and through Folio will be stored on our electronic data base system and on computers with appropriate back up and security systems. [CC13] [KW14] Any personal information which is collected via Folio is held on our computer systems, is protected by safeguards including physical, technical (including firewalls and SSL encryption) and procedural methods.
We may also store your information in networked or electronic systems, such as the cloud. As the cloud can be accessed from various countries through an internet connection, it may not always be practicable to know in which country your information is held.
Kwela Solutions uses Amazon Web Services (“AWS”) with servers based in Sydney, Australia to provide cloud infrastructure and hosting to our Australian customers using Folio. For full details of AWS’ current security please refer to http://aws.amazon.com/security/. All data resides in a secure, tightly controlled, secure data centre. Kwela Solutions may process, store and back up its information with the assistance of this provider.
We take reasonable steps to hold information securely in electronic or physical form. We are committed to keeping secure the personal information you provide to us and we will take all reasonable precautions to protect your personally identifiable information from loss, misuse, interference, unauthorised access or alteration.
We aim to achieve this through:
1. imposing confidentiality requirements on our employees;
2. implementing policies in relation to document security;
3. implementing security measures to govern access to our systems;
4. requiring any third party providers to have acceptable security measures to keep personal information secure;
5. only providing access to personal information once proper identification has been given;
6. controlling access to our premises; and
7. implementing website protection measures.
While we take all steps reasonable in the circumstances to protect your information, in the unlikely event a data breach occurs, we will notify you in accordance with our obligations under the Act and the Privacy Act 2020 (NZ).
Where there is a risk of serious harm arising from the breach, we will notify you and any relevant authorities.
We will only keep your personal information for as long as we require it for the purpose for which it was collected. However, we may also be required to keep some of your personal information for specified periods of time, for example under certain laws relating to companies, money laundering and financial reporting legislation. If we no longer require your personal information, and are not legally required to retain it, we will take reasonable steps to destroy or de-identify the personal information.

7 Recruitment

If you apply for a position with us, we may also collect information about your experience, qualifications, skills, character and screening checks (including identity, eligibility to work, health, reference, background, directorship, financial probity, vocational suitability and criminal record checks). We collect, use and disclose your personal information to assess your application, conduct screening checks and consider and contact you about other positions. We may exchange your personal information with screening check providers, recruiters, academic institutions, health service providers, professional and trade associations, law enforcement agencies, referees and your current and previous employers. Without your personal information we may not be able to progress considering you for positions with us.

8 Dealing with us anonymously

Where lawful and practicable to do so, you can deal with us anonymously or using a pseudonym. You can deal with us anonymously or using a pseudonym when making a general enquiry about the goods and services that we can offer to you including via telephone or our website.

At the time that you purchase our goods, it is no longer practicable for you to deal with us anonymously or using a pseudonym.

9 Complaints

If you believe that we have breached a term of this Policy or the Act, please submit a written complaint to our Privacy Officer in the first instance. Please contact our Privacy Officer (contact details on page 1) with a thorough description of your concerns and a response will be provided within a reasonable period. All complaints must be in writing and. must include contact details for us to contact you regarding your complaint.

When processing a compliant, we will require you to provide us with information to confirm your identity before processing a request related to information we may hold about you.

Our Privacy Officer will consider your complaint and respond as soon as reasonably possible, but not more than 30 days from receiving the complaint.

We expect our procedures will deal fairly and promptly with your complaint. However, if you remain dissatisfied, you can also contact the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner as follows:

Director of Compliance Office of the Australian
Information Commissioner
GPO Box 5218
Sydney NSW 2001

For more information on privacy see the Australian Information Commissioner’s website

If you reside in New Zealand, you can make a formal complaint with the Office of the Privacy Commissioner online here