Vector Advisory & Consulting (“Vector,” “we,” “us”) is a licensed CPA firm. This policy explains how we collect, use, protect and share personal information through our website, our secure client portal, and our Vector Growth business development service. It applies to visitors, clients, and the business contacts we reach on behalf of Vector Growth clients.
Our work is also governed by professional confidentiality rules for CPAs, by federal law on the privacy of financial information, and by the Internal Revenue Code’s rules on tax return information. Where those rules are stricter than this policy, we follow them.
1. Information we collect
Information you give us
- Contact and consultation requests: your name, email address, phone number, company, the service you are interested in, and your message.
- Client portal access requests and accounts: your name, email address, phone number, entity type, and sign-in details. Passwords are stored only in scrambled (hashed) form.
- Client documents and information: tax returns, income statements, bank and financial records, identification numbers (including Social Security numbers), questionnaires, engagement letters, invoices, and other files and messages you or we place in the portal to deliver our services.
- Vector Growth questionnaires and intake: information about your business, your offering, your ideal customers, and lists of existing customers you ask us not to contact.
Information collected automatically
- Security records: when you use the portal we record sign-ins, failed sign-in attempts, document uploads and downloads, and similar events, with the date, time and IP address. We use these records only to protect accounts and investigate security issues.
- Server logs: our hosting provider keeps standard web server logs (such as IP address, browser type and pages requested).
- A sign-in cookie: see Cookies.
- Website analytics: on our public pages (not the client portal), Google Analytics tells us how visitors find and use the site: pages viewed, how you arrived (for example a search engine or a link), approximate location (such as city), device and browser type, and whether a contact or application form was sent. We do not send Google your name, email address, what you type into our forms, or anything from the client portal. See Cookies.
Information from other sources (Vector Growth)
To find and contact potential customers for our Vector Growth clients, we obtain business contact information about professionals at other companies: name, job title, employer, business email address, business phone number, location, company details and professional profile links. These come from business data providers and publicly available sources. We also receive information about how people respond to our outreach (for example, a reply, an unsubscribe request or a booked meeting).
2. How we use information
- To provide accounting, tax, advisory and other professional services you engage us for, and to communicate with you about them.
- To operate and secure the client portal, including identity verification, two-factor sign-in and fraud prevention.
- To send invoices and process payments.
- To meet legal, regulatory and professional obligations, including record-keeping and responding to lawful requests.
- For Vector Growth: to identify and contact potential business customers on behalf of our clients, to schedule meetings, and to track results for billing.
- To respond to inquiries and improve our services.
3. Tax return information
We use and disclose tax return information only to prepare and file your returns and provide related services, or as otherwise permitted by Section 7216 of the Internal Revenue Code and its regulations. We will not use your tax return information for any other purpose, or disclose it to anyone else, without your written consent where that consent is required.
4. How we share information
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for targeted advertising. We do not disclose nonpublic personal information about our clients or former clients to anyone outside the firm, except as permitted or required by law. Specifically, we share information only:
- with service providers who help us run our firm and website, under obligations to protect it and use it only for the services they provide to us;
- with tax authorities and others when you direct us to (for example, filing your return or sending documents to your attorney or lender);
- when required by law, regulation, subpoena or court order, or by professional regulators and peer reviewers as permitted by professional standards;
- to protect the rights, property or safety of our clients, our firm or others; and
- with your consent.
For Vector Growth, information about a business contact’s response (for example, interest in a meeting) is shared with the Vector Growth client on whose behalf we contacted them.
5. Service providers
| Provider | What it does for us |
|---|---|
| GoDaddy | Website and client portal hosting, and email sent by the website |
| Microsoft 365 | Firm email and office tools |
| Stripe | Online invoice payments, when you choose a payment link (card details are handled by Stripe, not stored by us) |
| Website fonts (your browser requests them from Google), website analytics on our public pages (Google Analytics), and safety checks of business websites submitted in Vector Growth questionnaires | |
| Apollo | Business contact data for Vector Growth prospecting |
| Instantly | Sending and tracking Vector Growth outreach email |
| Calendly | Meeting scheduling |
| Anthropic | AI drafting of outreach text and prospect search plans (business information only) |
| OpenAI | AI images for our own LinkedIn posts (no personal information) |
| Publishing posts to our company page |
6. If we contacted you through Vector Growth
Vector Growth is a business-to-business service. If you received an email from us or from one of our clients through Vector Growth, it was because your role and company appeared relevant to that client’s products or services. We used business contact information obtained as described in section 1.
- To stop all outreach: use the unsubscribe link in any outreach email, or email inquire@vectoradvisoryconsulting.com. We honor opt-outs promptly and place your address on a firm-wide do-not-contact list, so you will not be contacted again on behalf of any of our clients.
- To ask what we hold or to have it deleted: email us (see section 9). We keep only the minimum needed (your email address on our do-not-contact list) so that your opt-out continues to be honored.
7. How we protect information
We maintain a written information security program with administrative, technical and physical safeguards appropriate to a firm that handles tax and financial information. These include:
- encrypted connections (HTTPS) for the entire website and portal;
- encryption of client documents stored in the portal;
- two-factor sign-in required for firm staff and available to every client;
- limits on repeated sign-in attempts, automatic sign-out after inactivity, and role-based access so each person sees only what they are permitted to see;
- a security log of access to accounts and documents; and
- secure deletion of documents when they are no longer needed.
No method of transmission or storage is completely secure. If we learn of a security incident affecting your information, we will notify you and the appropriate authorities as required by law.
8. How long we keep information
- Client records: for as long as needed to provide our services and for the periods required by law, tax regulations and professional standards. After that, we securely delete them.
- Inquiries and access requests that do not become engagements: for a reasonable period to respond and follow up, then deleted on request or in our regular clean-up.
- Vector Growth business contact data: while it is relevant to an active client engagement. Opt-out and do-not-contact records are kept permanently so that we can continue to honor them.
- Security records: for as long as needed to protect accounts and to investigate and report security incidents.
9. Your choices and rights
- Access and correction: clients can review much of their information in the portal and can ask us to correct anything that is inaccurate.
- Deletion: you may ask us to delete your information. We will do so unless we must keep it to meet legal, tax or professional record-keeping requirements; in that case we will tell you what we must keep and why.
- Marketing and outreach: you can opt out at any time as described in section 6.
- Account security: clients can turn on two-factor sign-in from their portal profile.
- State privacy rights: depending on where you live, you may have additional rights under state law. Contact us and we will respond as the law requires.
To make a request, email inquire@vectoradvisoryconsulting.com. To protect you, we may need to verify your identity before acting on a request.
10. Cookies
We use one essential cookie to keep you signed in to the client portal and to protect forms from misuse. It expires when you close your browser.
On our public pages we also use Google Analytics cookies (named _ga and _ga_ followed by an ID) to count visits and learn which pages are useful. They last up to two years unless you delete them. We have turned off Google’s advertising features for this website, and we do not use advertising cookies. Analytics is never used in the client portal. Google handles this information under its own policies; see how Google uses information from sites that use its services.
To opt out, block or delete cookies in your browser settings, or install Google’s Analytics opt-out browser add-on.
11. Children
Our website is not directed to children, and we do not knowingly collect personal information online from children. Information about dependents that clients provide for tax preparation is treated as confidential client information under this policy.
12. Changes to this policy and how to contact us
We may update this policy from time to time. The effective date at the top shows when it was last changed. If we make a significant change, we will post a notice on this website or tell clients directly.
Questions or requests: Vector Advisory & Consulting, inquire@vectoradvisoryconsulting.com.