Privacy Policy

1. Who We Are

DigMe Solutions (Pty) Ltd (Registration No. 2019/223426/07) is a South African accounting and tax practice registered with SAIPA and based at Cape Town, Western Cape. We provide bookkeeping, tax compliance, payroll, cloud accounting, and related financial services to individuals and businesses.

This Privacy Policy explains how we collect, use, store, and protect your personal information in accordance with the Protection of Personal Information Act 4 of 2013 (POPIA) and other applicable South African legislation.

2. Information We Collect

To provide our services, we collect and process the following categories of personal information:

• Identity information: full name, ID number, passport number, date of birth
• Contact information: email address, telephone number, physical and postal address
• Financial information: bank account details, income and expense records, tax reference numbers, VAT registration numbers, payroll details
• Business information: company registration number, CIPC filings, shareholding structure, director details
• SARS information: tax returns, assessments, payment histories, SARS correspondence
• Employment information: employee records for payroll clients (IRP5/IT3a data, UIF details)

3. Why We Collect Your Information

We process your personal information for the following lawful purposes:

• Providing accounting, bookkeeping, tax, and payroll services as agreed in your engagement letter
• Submitting tax returns and making declarations to SARS on your behalf
• Filing annual returns and documents with the CIPC
• Preparing payroll and submitting EMP201/EMP501 returns to SARS
• Communicating with you about your financial affairs
• Complying with our legal, regulatory, and professional obligations as SAIPA members
• Issuing invoices and collecting payment for our services

4. Legal Basis for Processing

We process your personal information on the following grounds under POPIA:

• Contractual necessity: processing is necessary to fulfil our service agreement with you
• Legal obligation: we are required to process certain information to comply with tax law, the Companies Act, and other legislation
• Legitimate interest: to operate our practice and communicate with you about your account
• Consent: for any processing not covered by the above, we will seek your explicit consent

5. Third Parties We Share Information With

We only share your information with third parties where necessary to deliver our services or comply with legal obligations:

• SARS: tax returns, declarations, and correspondence submitted on your behalf
• CIPC: annual return filings and company amendments
• Xero (Pty) Ltd: our cloud accounting platform. Your financial data is processed on Xero servers in accordance with Xero's Privacy Policy
• UIF (Department of Labour): monthly UIF declarations for payroll clients
• Our professional indemnity insurer: only in the event of a claim
• SAIPA: professional oversight obligations

We do not sell, rent, or trade your personal information to any third party for marketing purposes.

6. How Long We Keep Your Information

We retain your records in accordance with statutory requirements:

• Tax records: five years from the date of submission, as required by the Tax Administration Act
• Company records: seven years from the financial year end, as required by the Companies Act
• Payroll records: five years from the date of the payroll run
• General client files: five years after the termination of the engagement

After the applicable retention period, we securely destroy or de-identify your records.

7. Security of Your Information

We take reasonable and appropriate technical and organisational measures to protect your personal information against loss, theft, unauthorised access, use, or disclosure. These measures include:

• Password-protected systems and encrypted file storage
• Secure client portal access via Xero
• Limited staff access on a need-to-know basis
• Professional indemnity insurance

Despite these measures, no method of electronic transmission or storage is completely secure. We cannot guarantee absolute security.

8. Your Rights Under POPIA

You have the following rights regarding your personal information:

• Right to access: request a copy of the personal information we hold about you
• Right to correction: request that we correct inaccurate or incomplete information
• Right to deletion: request deletion of your information, subject to our legal retention obligations
• Right to object: object to the processing of your personal information in certain circumstances
• Right to withdraw consent: where processing is based on consent, withdraw it at any time

To exercise any of these rights, contact our Information Officer at info@digme.co.za.

9. Complaints

If you believe we have not handled your personal information in accordance with POPIA, please contact us first so we can attempt to resolve the matter. If you remain unsatisfied, you may lodge a complaint with the Information Regulator of South Africa:

10. Cookies and Tracking

Our website uses cookies — small text files stored in your browser — to help us understand how visitors use our site and to improve your experience.

Types of cookies we use

Essential cookies are necessary for the website to function correctly. They do not collect personal information and cannot be switched off. Examples include cookies that remember your preferences during a session.

Analytics cookies (where you have given consent) help us understand how visitors interact with our site — for example, which pages are visited most and how people navigate between them. We use this information to improve content and usability. We use Google Analytics for this purpose. Analytics cookies are only activated after you choose “Accept all cookies.”

Your choices

When you first visit our site, you will see a cookie banner. You can choose to:

• Accept all cookies — allows essential and analytics cookies.
• Essential only — allows only the cookies required for the site to work. Analytics cookies will not be loaded.

Your preference is stored locally in your browser. You can withdraw consent at any time by clearing your browser’s local storage or cookies for digme.co.za. If you do so, the banner will reappear on your next visit.

Third-party cookies

If analytics cookies are accepted, Google Analytics will set cookies under the domain google-analytics.com. These are governed by Google’s Privacy Policy. We do not sell or share analytics data with any other third party.

11. Changes to This Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. The “Last updated” date at the top of this page indicates when it was last revised. Continued use of our services after any changes constitutes your acceptance of the updated policy.

12. Contact Us