Privacy Policy

LAST UPDATED – 21 MAY 2024

 

1. INTRODUCTION

This privacy policy (Policy) relates to your personal information in connection with your use of and access to the Pixie website (www.usepixie.com) and application (together, the Pixie Platform) and any services provided by Pixie (the Pixie Platform and services together forming the Pixie Services).

We are committed to protecting your information and your right to privacy. If you have any questions or concerns about our Policy, or our practices with regards to your personal information, please contact us via hello@usepixie.com.

When you use the Pixie Services, you trust us with your information and we take your privacy very seriously. We seek to explain to you in the clearest way possible what information we collect, how we use it and what rights you have in relation to it. We hope you take some time to read through it carefully, as it is important. If there are any terms in this Policy that you do not agree with, please discontinue your use of the Pixie Services.

 

2. CHANGES TO THIS POLICY OR YOUR PERSONAL INFORMATION

We review this Policy regularly and reserve our right to amend it at any time. It is your responsibility to check regularly and determine whether you still agree to comply with the Policy. If you do not agree to any changes to this Policy then you must immediately stop using the Pixie Services. In the event we make any significant changes to this Policy we will use our reasonable endeavours to inform you of such changes in advance in writing.

It is important that the personal information we hold about you is true, complete, accurate and current. Accordingly, you must notify us of any changes to your personal information (for example, if you change your email address).

 

3. ABOUT US

The Pixie Services are owned and operated by Pixie International Limited (trading as “Pixie”), a company registered in England and Wales with company number 15732685 and whose registered office is situated at Calder & Co, 30 Orange Street, London, WC2H 7HF, United Kingdom (Pixie/we/us/our). Pixie is the controller (also known as a data controller) of, and is responsible for, your personal information. The term “you” refers to the user wishing to access and/or use the Pixie Services.

The Pixie Platform provides a platform that helps small accounting and bookkeeping firms to manage clients, deadlines, workflow, emails and team members.

 

4. INFORMATION WE MAY COLLECT ABOUT YOU

4.1 Personal information you disclose to us

In Short: We collect personal information that you provide to us including information such as your name, address, contact information, date of birth, job title, social media handles/URLs and payment card information (see paragraph (b) below for further details).

(a) Where and how we collect personal information

We collect personal information that you voluntarily provide to us when registering to use and actually using the Pixie Services, or otherwise contacting us. 

If you apply or are put forward for a role with us, or work for us (either directly or indirectly) for any period of time, we also collect your personal information, which may include your contact details, financial and payment details, details of your education, qualifications and skills, your marital status, your nationality, your NI number, your job title and your CV.

If you give us personal information on behalf of a third party, for example an employee, contractor or client, in providing that information to us you are confirming that you have sought and obtained, from that individual, permission for you to:

  • Consent on their behalf to the processing of their personal data;
  • Receive on their behalf any data protection notices; and
  • If relevant, consent to the transfer of their personal data abroad,

and you shall indemnify us and hold us harmless against any claims, actions, proceedings, losses, damages, costs (including reasonable legal costs) and expenses (including taxation), in each case of any nature whatsoever, arising out of or in connection with your failure to obtain these permissions.

More particularly, the personal information that we collect depends on the context of your interactions with us, the choices you make and the products and features you use. For example:

  • We collect personal information via the Pixie Platform when you sign up to, participate in, use or receive a service from us, for example where you use the Pixie Platform, contact us, request information online, report an issue, provide feedback or enter a live chat. 
  • Our website also uses cookies and collects IP addresses (for more information on this, see our Cookie Policy ). 
  • We may monitor and record communications with you (such as telephone conversations and emails). We may do this for a number of reasons, such as to check the quality of our customer service, for training purposes, to prevent fraud or to make sure we are complying with legal requirements. 
  • If you visit our offices, some personal data may also be collected from monitoring devices and systems such as access cards.

Unless otherwise specified, all personal information requested by us is mandatory and failure to provide this information may make it impossible for us to provide our services. In cases where we specifically state that some personal information is not mandatory, you are free not to provide this personal information without consequences to the availability or the functioning of the Pixie Services.

(b) The types of personal information we may collect

When you use the Pixie Services and/or when you otherwise deal with us, we may collect the following information about you (the Information):

  • Identity Data, which includes your first name, last name, gender and profession.
  • Contact Data, which means the data we use to contact you including your billing address, delivery address, email address and contact number.
  • Financial Data, which means the payment method and card association used to process subscription payments. We do not store or process your card details ourselves, they are processed and stored via one of our contracted third-party service providers. We encrypt your payment card details in your browser and securely transfer this data to our relevant third-party payment provider to process a payment.
  • Transaction Data, which means details about transactions you have made in connection with the Pixie Services, including the payments to and from you along with other details of products you have purchased from us.
  • Profile Data, which includes your username, email address and log-in data, details of any purchases or orders made by you, and your interests, preferences, feedback and survey or questionnaire responses and, in relation to job applicants, details of your next of kin, emergency/alternate contact(s) or referee(s) (note: you can delete or replace your next of kin, emergency/alternate contact(s) or referee(s) at any time by contacting us).
  • Usage Data, which includes Information collected automatically through us, or via third-party service providers, about how you use the Pixie Services. This includes your browsing patterns and Information such as how long you might spend on one of our webpages on the Pixie Platform and what you look at and for, the page that referred you to the Pixie Platform and the click stream during your visit to our website, page response times, and page interaction Information (for example, clicks you make on a page).
  • Marketing and Communications Data, which includes your preferences with regards to receiving marketing from us and your other communication preferences.
  • Other Information relevant to services, customer surveys, questionnaires and/or offers.

 

4.2 Sensitive personal information

In Short: Occasionally we may need to ask you to provide sensitive personal data. If we do, we will explain why we are requesting it and how we will use it.

We will not usually ask you to provide sensitive personal information. We will only ask you to provide sensitive personal information if we need to for a specific reason, for example, if we believe you are having difficulty dealing with your account due to illness. If we request such information, we will explain why we are requesting it and how we will use it.

4.3 Personal information from third parties

In Short: We may receive information about you from third parties, and we may use this information to provide, improve and personalise the Pixie Services.

Occasionally we may receive information about you from other sources, which we will add to the information we already hold about you in order to help us provide, improve and personalise the Pixie Services. If you apply for a job with us, we may also receive information from those who provide references relating to your prospective or actual engagement or employment.

 

4.4 Information automatically collected

In Short: Some Information – such as IP addresses and/or browser and device characteristics – is collected automatically when you use the Pixie Platform.

We automatically collect certain Information when you visit, use or navigate the Pixie Platform. This Information does not reveal your specific identity (unless your device name is the same as your name) but may include device and usage Information, such as your IP address, browser and device characteristics, operating system, language preferences, referring URLs, device name, country, location, Information about how and when you use the Pixie Platform and other technical Information. This Information is primarily needed to maintain the security and operation of the Pixie Platform, and for our internal analytics and reporting purposes.

Like many businesses, we also collect Information through cookies and similar technologies. You can find out more about this in our Cookie Policy .

 

5. HOW DO WE USE YOUR INFORMATION?

In Short: We process your Information for purposes based on legitimate business interests, the fulfilment of our contract with you, compliance with our legal obligations, and/or your consent.

We use your Information collected via the Pixie Services for a variety of business purposes, as described below. We process your Information for these purposes in reliance on our legitimate business interests (Business Purposes), in order to enter into or perform a contract with you (Contractual Reasons), with your consent (Consent), and/or for compliance with our legal obligations (Legal Reasons). We indicate the specific processing grounds we rely on next to each purpose listed below.

We may process your Information for the following purposes:

  • To take steps towards entering into a contract with you, to provide the Pixie Services and to claim any right to be paid under our Terms (Contractual Reasons). This includes collecting and using your personal information to:
  1. Prepare an agreement with you;
  2. Manage any accounts you hold with us;
  3. Contact you for reasons related to the Pixie Services;
  4. Enable us to follow up on enquiries made by you in relation to the Pixie Services and/or to provide information you have requested;
  5. Contact your next of kin or your emergency/alternate contact(s) in order to get in touch with you when we have failed to do so using your own contact details;
  6. Contact your referee(s) or to obtain a reference for a job that you are applying for; 
  7. Deal with payment for the Pixie Services;
  8. Notify you of any changes to our Site or to the Pixie Services that may affect you; and
  9. Resolve disputes or collect overdue payments.
  • To deliver the Pixie Services, including fulfilling and managing any orders, payments, and refunds (Contractual Reasons). 
  • To contact you regarding enquiries you have made in relation to the Pixie Services.
  • To facilitate a recruitment process in which you are involved. 
  • To provide quotes for software/details of offers (Business Purposes).
  • To send administrative Information to you for Business Purposes, Legal Reasons and/or possibly Contractual Reasons. We may use your Information to send you product, service and new feature information and/or information about changes to our Terms and policies, as may be in place from time to time.
  • To send you marketing and promotional communications for Business Purposes and/or with your Consent. We and/or our brand partners may use your Information for our marketing purposes, if this is in accordance with your marketing preferences. You can opt-out of our marketing emails (see below for further details).
  • To facilitate account creation and the log-in process with your Consent. If you choose to link your account with us to a third party account (such as your Google or Facebook account), we use the Information we are consequently allowed to collect from those third parties to facilitate account creation and the log-in process. See the section below headed "How Do We Handle Your Social Media Log-ins" for further information.
  • To administer promotions for our Business Purposes and/or with your Consent.
  • To request feedback for our Business Purposes and/or with your Consent. For example, we may use your Information to request feedback and to contact you about your use of the Pixie Platform.
  • To protect the Pixie Services for Business Purposes and/or Legal Reasons. We may use your Information as part of our efforts to keep the Pixie Services safe and secure (for example, for the purposes of monitoring and/or preventing fraud).
  • To enforce our Terms and policies for Business Purposes, Legal Reasons and/or possibly Contractual Reasons.
  • To respond to legal requests and prevent harm for Legal Reasons. For example, if we receive a subpoena or other legal request, we may need to inspect the data we hold to determine how to respond.
  • We may use your Information for other Business Purposes, such as data analysis, identifying usage trends, determining the effectiveness of our promotional campaigns and to evaluate and improve the Pixie Services, our products and services, our marketing and your experience.

 

6. WILL YOUR INFORMATION BE SHARED WITH ANYONE?

In Short: In general, we only share Information for Contractual Reasons, to fulfil our Business Purposes, or with your Consent.

We only share and disclose your Information in the following situations:

  • Compliance with Legal Obligations. We may disclose your Information where we are legally required to do so in order to comply with applicable laws, governmental requests, judicial proceedings, court orders, or legal processes, such as in response to a court order or a subpoena (including in response to requests from public authorities in order to meet national security or law enforcement requirements).
  • Vital Interests. We may disclose your Information where we believe it is necessary to investigate, prevent, or take action regarding potential violations of our policies, suspected fraud, illegal activities or situations involving potential threats to the safety of any person, or where we believe it is necessary for the purpose of providing evidence in connection with litigation proceedings in which we are involved.
  • Third Party Service Providers. We may share your Information with third party vendors, service providers, credit card associations, contractors or agents who perform services and require access to such Information to carry out work relating to the Pixie Services. Examples include third parties involved in the administration, sales, marketing, legal and technical aspects of the Pixie Platform, as well as third-party technical service providers (including Amazon Web Services, Zapier Inc., Functional Software, Inc, HubSpot, Inc, Intercom, Inc), mail carriers, hosting providers, IT companies and communications agencies. Such third parties will only have access to your Information to the extent that they need to perform those services. They are required to keep your Information confidential and may not use it other than as we ask them to and always in accordance with this Policy.
  • Business Transfers. We may share or transfer your Information in connection with, or during negotiations of, any merger, sale of company assets, financing, or acquisition of all or a portion of our business to another company.
  • Third Party Advertisers. We may use third party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit the Pixie Platform. These companies may use Information about your visits to the Pixie Platform and other websites that are contained in web cookies and other tracking technologies in order to provide personalised advertisements about goods and services that may be of interest to you. See our Cookie Policy for further Information.
  • Business Partners. Provided you have given us Consent to do so we may share your Information with our business partners to offer you certain products, services or promotions.
  • With your Consent. We may disclose your Information for any other purpose with your Consent, including with any person who you have named as a person we can contact to discuss your account and any agent or representative of yours.

We may disclose aggregated, anonymous Information (i.e. Information from which you cannot be personally identified), or insights based on such anonymous Information, to selected third parties, including (without limitation) analytics and search engine providers to assist us in the improvement and optimisation of the Pixie Services. In such circumstances we will not disclose any Information which can identify you personally.

 

7. IS YOUR INFORMATION TRANSFERRED INTERNATIONALLY?

In Short: We may transfer, store, and process your Information in countries other than the UK, but will take all reasonable steps to ensure it is protected.

Whenever we transfer your Information outside of the UK, we will take all reasonably practicable measures to protect your Information in accordance with this Policy and applicable laws. To the extent that any transfer requires approved safeguards to be in place we will only transfer your Information to countries that have been deemed to provide an adequate level of protection for personal data. Where we use certain service providers, we may use specific contracts approved for use in the UK which give personal data the same protection it has in the UK, for example the EU Standard Contractual Clauses.

 

8. THIRD PARTY WEBSITES

In Short: We are not responsible for the safety of any Information that you share with third party providers who feature or advertise, but are not affiliated with, the Pixie Services.

The Pixie Platform may feature links to third party websites or social media channels, or contain advertisements from third parties that are not affiliated with us and which may link to other websites, online services or mobile applications. We cannot guarantee the safety and privacy of data you provide to any third parties. Any data collected by third parties is not covered by this Policy.

We are not responsible for the content or privacy and security practices and policies of any third parties, including other websites, services or applications that may be linked to or from the Pixie Platform. You should review the policies of such third parties and contact them directly if you have any related questions.

 

9. FOR HOW LONG DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION?

In Short: We keep your Information for as long as necessary to fulfil the purposes outlined in this Policy, unless a longer retention period is permitted or required by law.

We will only keep your Information for as long as it is necessary for the purposes set out in this Policy, unless a longer retention period is required or permitted by law (such as tax law, accounting requirements or other legal or regulatory requirements).

When we have no ongoing Business Purpose to justify the processing of your Information, we will either delete or anonymise it, or, if this is not possible (for example, because your Information has been stored in backup archives), then we will securely store your Information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

 

10. HOW DO WE KEEP YOUR INFORMATION SAFE?

In Short: We aim to protect your Information through a system of organisational and technical security measures.

We have implemented appropriate technical and organisational security measures designed to protect the security of any Information we process. For example, we store your personal data on secure servers and company data is stored on separate secure encrypted disks when not in use. 

We have procedures in place to deal with any suspected data security breach. We will notify you and any applicable supervisory body of a suspected data breach where we are legally required to do so.

However, please also remember that we cannot guarantee that the Internet itself is 100% secure. Although we will use our reasonable endeavours to protect your Information, we cannot guarantee the security or integrity of personal Information that is transferred from you or to you via the Internet. Transmission of personal Information to and from the Pixie Platform is therefore at your own risk. You should only access our services within a secure environment.

 

11. DO WE COLLECT INFORMATION FROM MINORS?

In Short: We take steps to ensure that the Pixie Services are only used by those over 16 years of age and we do not knowingly collect data from or market to children under 16 years of age.

We do not knowingly solicit data from or market to children under 16 years of age. By using the Pixie Services, you represent that you are at least 16 years of age. If we learn that Information from users less than 16 years of age has been collected, we will deactivate the relevant account and take reasonable measures to promptly delete such data from our records. If you become aware of any data we have collected from children under 16 years of age, please contact us immediately via hello@usepixie.com.

 

12. YOUR CONSENT TO PROCESSING

You will be required to give Consent to certain processing activities before we can process your Information. Where applicable, we will seek Consent from you when you first submit Information to or through the Pixie Services.

If you have previously given your Consent you may freely withdraw such Consent at any time. You can do this by emailing hello@usepixie.com or, where applicable, clicking the ‘Unsubscribe’ button that appears in mailing list communications.

If you withdraw your Consent, and if we do not have another legal basis for processing your Information, then we will stop processing your Information. If we do have another legal basis for processing your Information, then we may continue to do so subject to your legal rights.

Please note that if we need to process your Information in order for you to use the Pixie Services and you object or do not provide Consent to us processing your Information, you accept that the Pixie Services will no longer be available to you.

 

13. MARKETING AND OPTING OUT

If you have given Consent to marketing we may contact you about our products, services, promotions and special offers. If you no longer wish to receive such Information, you can withdraw your Consent at any time by sending an email to hello@usepixie.com or unsubscribing from the communications.

If you have given Consent, we may share your Information with carefully selected third party organisations and business partners and they may contact you directly. If you would prefer to no longer receive direct marketing communications from third parties and partners after previously giving your Consent, please contact those third parties and partners directly to withdraw the Consent.

Where you opt out of receiving marketing messages, this will not apply to personal data provided to us in connection with your purchase of a subscription to the Pixie Platform or a service, or your involvement in other related transactions.

 

14. ACCOUNT INFORMATION 

You may at any time review or change the Information in your account by logging into your Pixie account.

If you wish to terminate your Pixie account, please contact us via hello@usepixie.com and we can arrange this for you. Some Information may be retained in our files to prevent fraud, troubleshoot problems, assist with any investigations, enforce our Terms and/or comply with legal requirements.

 

15. WHAT ARE YOUR PRIVACY RIGHTS?

In Short: You have certain rights in respect of your Information.

You have certain rights in relation to the Information that we hold about you. Details of these rights and how to exercise them are set out below. Please note that we will require evidence of your identity before we are able to respond to any requests. This is a security measure to ensure that your Information is not disclosed to a person who does not have the right to receive it. We may also contact you to ask you for further Information in relation to your request to speed up our response. To exercise or discuss any of your rights, please contact us via hello@usepixie.com.

  • Right of Access. You have the right at any time to ask us for a copy of the Information that we hold about you and to check that we are lawfully processing it. Where we have good reason, and where data protection law permits, we can refuse your request for a copy of your Information, or certain elements of the request. If we refuse your request or any element of it, we will provide you with our reason(s) for doing so.
  • Right of Correction or Completion. If Information we hold about you is not accurate or is out of date and requires amendment or correction, you have a right to have the data rectified or completed.
  • Right of Erasure. In certain circumstances, you have the right to request that the Information we hold about you is erased (for example, if the Information is no longer necessary for the purposes for which it was collected or processed or our processing of the Information is based only on your Consent and there are no other legal grounds on which we may process the Information).
  • Right to Object to or Restrict Processing. In certain circumstances, you have the right to object to our processing of your Information (for example, if we are processing your Information on the basis of our legitimate interests but there are no longer any compelling legitimate grounds to justify our processing overriding your rights and interests).

    You may also have the right to restrict our use of your Information, for example during a period in which we are verifying the accuracy of your Information in circumstances where you have challenged the accuracy of that Information.

  • Right of Data Portability. In certain instances, you have a right to receive the Information that we hold about you (or a portion thereof) in a structured, commonly used and machine-readable format.

    In such circumstances, you can ask us to transmit your Information to you or directly to a third-party organisation on your behalf.

    While we are happy for such requests to be made, we are not able to guarantee technical compatibility with a third-party organisation’s systems. We are also unable to comply with requests that relate to personal Information of others without their consent.

If we are relying on Consent to process your Information, you have the right to withdraw your Consent at any time. Please note however that this will not affect the lawfulness of the processing that occurred before the withdrawal of such Consent.

 

16. USE OF INFORMATION FROM GOOGLE APIS

Pixie's use of information received from Google APIs - specifically Google's Gmail email integration API - adheres to the Google API Services User Data Policy, including the “Limited Use” requirements as detailed in that policy. No information received via this API is processed for analytics, advertising, or any other marketing purposes by Pixie.

 

17. VULNERABILITY DISCLOSURE PROGRAMME

We strongly believe that keeping customer data safe is a big responsibility and protecting it is a key priority for us. Thank you for your interest in our vulnerability disclosure programme and any input you may share about our security.

If you have discovered a security flaw that impacts our product, please let us know.

Reporting security problems

Please send urgent or sensitive reports to security@usepixie.com using our public key to keep the messages safe. Please include a secure way for us to respond. We will get back to you as soon as we can.

Tracking and disclosing security issues

Once you submit your report, this is how we will take action:

  • We will respond to acknowledge your report and provide a way to track progress of the issue you raised with us
  • We will investigate the issue to determine its impact on Pixie. We will work with you to fully understand the issue and will keep this a private affair until our investigation is concluded.
  • Once the security flaw has been resolved, we will post a security update and give you public credit for the discovery.

 

18. CONTACT US

We welcome your feedback and questions on this Policy. If you wish to contact us about this Policy or have any other questions, please email us via hello@usepixie.com.

You have the right to make a complaint at any time to the Information Commissioner’s Office (the ICO), the UK supervisory authority for data protection issues (https://ico.org.uk/concerns). We would, however, appreciate the chance to deal with your concerns before you approach the ICO, so please contact us in the first instance.