Like all providers of personal financial services, CPAs are required by law to inform clients of their policies regarding privacy of client information. Our firm continues to adhere to professional standards of confidentiality that are even more stringent than those required by law. We have always protected the security and privacy of your personal and financial information.
Types of Nonpublic Personal Information We Collect
The only nonpublic personal information we collect is provided to us by you or obtained with your authorization.
Parties to Whom We Disclose Information
We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information obtained in the course of our practice except as required or permitted by law. Permitted disclosures may include providing information to our employees, or, in limited situations, to unrelated third parties who need that information to assist us in serving you. In all situations, we stress the confidential nature of the information being shared.
Protecting the Confidentiality and Security of Clients' Information
We retain records relating to our professional services to better serve your professional needs and, in some cases, to comply with professional guidelines. In order to protect your nonpublic personal information, we maintain physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with our professional standards. Policy last updated 01/20/09.
Client work product will be kept until after seven years have passed after the year the work relates to or the year the work was done in, whichever is later. After which time, we will commence the process of destroying the contents of our engagement files. Work done in 2011, related to the year 2010, will be discarded in approximately May of 2019, for example.
Examples of client work product include but are not limited to workpapers, tax returns, financial statements, notes, amortization or depreciation schedules other accounting or bookkeeping schedules, QuickBooks® data, etc. that are produced by the firm of Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd.
Certain of these document types may need to be kept longer than seven years because of their cumulative nature, for example: amortization tables, depreciation records, QB files. These types of documents will be kept for seven years from their last use.
Original client documents, that is, those documents created by a third party and provided by the client to the firm of Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd., for example, bank statements, will be returned to the client at the completion of the engagement for which they were produced. The balance of our engagement file, other than a copy of your income tax return, which we will provide to you at the conclusion of the engagement, is our property, and we will provide copies of such documents at our discretion and if compensated for any time and costs associated with the effort.
Documents created by the client and provided to Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd. will be considered client work product. As such, these documents will be subject to our retention policy and will become the property of Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd.
Permanent file documents will be retained for seven years after the client relationship has ended. Permanent file documents can include: organizing documents, contracts, amortization schedules and other types of documents. Some of these may be created by the firm of Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd., others may have been supplied to the firm by the client.
Documents retained by Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd. may be stored in electronic or paper format. Policy last updated 12/27/08.
Prepaid QuickBooks® time will expire, that is, it will no longer be redeemable by the client, 36 months after it is purchased. The first of the 36 months will be the calendar month immediately following the receipt of payment for the prepaid time. On the 37th month, an invoice or sales receipt will be entered in the books of account of Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd., moving the unused prepaid time into the used category. Policy last updated 8/28/08.
A retainer fee will be required for all new clients. All tax return preparation projects and many other projects will require engagement letters.
Sarah A. Linder, CPA, Ltd. is paid commissions on certain products and services it recommends or refers. Commissioned products include those sold by EiPrinting, Results Software, Fishbowl Inventory, and QuickBooks(R) Merchant Services.
The Google Analytics used by this website use a cookie that collects anonymous traffic data.