Terms of service

Who we are

Sidgrove Intelligence is provided by Sidgrove Limited (“Sidgrove”, “we”, “us”), a firm of chartered accountants and a member of ICAEW. We are registered in England and Wales under company number 10649935. Our registered office is 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE. You can contact us at dave@sidgrove.com.

By signing in you agree to these terms. If you do not agree, please do not use the platform and let us know, so we can find another way to share your work with you.

Who can use the platform

Sidgrove Intelligence is private. Only these people can use it:

• the Sidgrove team, signing in with their @sidgrove.com account;
• people at our client businesses whom we have invited to see their company’s information;
• individual clients we have invited to see their own tax return; and
• people we have sent a proposal to, who can view that proposal only.

You must be 18 or over. If you use the platform for a business, you confirm you are allowed to act for it.

Your account

• You sign in with your Google account (our team can also use Microsoft). Keep that account secure; we recommend turning on two-step verification.
• Your access is personal to you. Please do not share it; if a colleague needs access, ask us and we will invite them.
• Tell us straight away if you think someone else has used your account, or if someone who has access leaves your business.
• You are responsible for what is done through your account unless it was not your fault.

What the platform does

The platform shows the work we do for you (bookkeeping, cashflow, payroll, VAT, management accounts, year-end and tax). It also lets you answer our questions, leave comments, upload documents and sign off reports and returns. We build it so that reviewing your numbers is quicker and clearer than a spreadsheet.

Its figures come from your own systems, such as your Xero ledger, your payroll provider and the documents you give us. The platform is a window on that information and on our work; it does not replace your own records, which you remain responsible for keeping.

Client user permissions

We decide, with you, which parts of the platform each person at your business can see. By default client users can view, comment and sign off. Some people can also be given the ability to post, update or void entries in your Xero organisation; this is off unless we switch it on for a named person at your request. Anything posted this way is a real change to your accounts, so please use it with care.

When you sign off a report or return in the platform, we treat that as your approval, the same as signing it on paper or by email.

Connected services

To do our work, the platform connects to services such as Xero, Paycircle, Google Drive and Sheets, Slack, Companies House and HMRC. You or we authorise each connection; you can ask us to remove one at any time. Those services are run by other companies under their own terms. We are not responsible for their availability or for errors in the information they provide.

Information from HMRC

Where you have authorised Sidgrove as your tax agent, the platform may read information HMRC holds about you (such as employment income, PAYE tax, benefits and National Insurance) through HMRC’s official APIs, solely to prepare and check your tax returns. Our access is read-only and HMRC confirms our authorisation on every request. You can withdraw that authorisation with HMRC at any time, after which we can no longer read it. How we hold this information is set out in our Privacy policy.

Figures read from HMRC are a starting point checked by our team, not a substitute for your own records. HMRC’s records can be incomplete or out of date, so please tell us about any income, benefits or changes you know of. You remain responsible for the accuracy of your tax return, which is why we always ask you to approve it before it is filed.

Sidgrove Intelligence is our own software. It is not provided, approved or endorsed by HMRC.

AI-assisted features

Some features use AI to suggest categories, draft commentary, read documents or flag things worth checking. These suggestions help our team work faster, but AI can be wrong. Our team reviews what matters before it is relied on; nothing the platform suggests is advice until we have confirmed it. Our Privacy policy explains what is sent to AI providers.

Advice and figures

Your engagement letter governs our professional advice and our responsibility for it. The platform shows figures as they stand at the time; they may change as transactions are added, reconciled or corrected. Forecasts, runway figures and similar projections are estimates, not promises. If you are about to make an important decision based on something you see in the platform, please talk to us first.

Acceptable use

Please do not:

• try to see information belonging to a business or person you have not been given access to;
• share your access, or information from the platform, with anyone who should not have it;
• copy or extract data in bulk by automated means, other than the exports the platform provides;
• try to copy, reverse engineer or work out the source code of the platform;
• interfere with the platform, overload it or test its security without our written permission;
• upload anything unlawful, harmful or infected, or anything you do not have the right to share.

Security

We take great care to keep your information safe, as described in our Privacy policy. If you find a security weakness or suspect a problem, please email dave@sidgrove.com with “Security” in the subject and do not share it with anyone else until we have fixed it. We welcome good-faith reports and will not take action against anyone who reports a problem responsibly.

Your information

The information about your business and your affairs belongs to you. We use it to deliver our services under your engagement letter, keep it confidential and handle personal information as described in our Privacy policy. If you leave us, we will export your data for you on request and keep only what the law and our professional rules require.

Availability and changes

We work hard to keep the platform available and accurate, but we cannot promise it will always be uninterrupted or free of errors. We may occasionally take it offline for maintenance or to deal with a security issue. Where we can, we will give notice of planned downtime. If the platform is unavailable, we will still deliver your work by other means.

We improve the platform all the time and may add, change or remove features. If a change takes away something you rely on, we will give you reasonable notice.

Suspending or ending access

Your access ends when your engagement with us ends, or when your business asks us to remove you. We may also suspend access if we reasonably believe your account is at risk or these terms have been broken, or if the law requires it. We will normally tell you first, unless that would compromise security or break the law.

You can ask us to remove your access at any time by emailing dave@sidgrove.com.

Intellectual property

The platform, including its design, software, branding and content we create, belongs to Sidgrove Limited or our licensors. While you are our client we give you a personal, non-transferable right to use it for your own affairs, as set out in these terms. Reports and other work we prepare for you can be used as your engagement letter allows.

Our liability

Where you use the platform as part of our services, our liability to you is as set out in your engagement letter; nothing in these terms increases it. Where your engagement letter does not cover something, our total liability arising from your use of the platform is limited to the fees you paid us in the 12 months before the event that gave rise to the claim.

We are not liable for losses that were not foreseeable, for indirect losses, or for business losses such as lost profits or opportunities, except where your engagement letter says otherwise.

Nothing in these terms limits liability that cannot legally be limited, such as for death or personal injury caused by negligence or for fraud. If you use the platform as an individual rather than a business, these terms do not affect your statutory rights as a consumer.

If something goes wrong

If you are unhappy with the platform or our service, please tell us at dave@sidgrove.com; we will always try to put things right quickly. Our engagement letter explains our complaints process, including your right to refer a complaint to ICAEW if we cannot resolve it.

Governing law

These terms are governed by the law of England and Wales. The courts of England and Wales have jurisdiction over any dispute about them. If you live elsewhere in the UK as a consumer, you may also bring proceedings in your local courts.

Changes to these terms

We may update these terms from time to time; the date at the top shows the latest version. If we make a change that matters, we will tell active users by email before it takes effect.

Contact

Questions about these terms: email dave@sidgrove.com or write to Sidgrove Limited, 86-90 Paul Street, London, EC2A 4NE.