ascendia policy & Conditions of service

We have outlined below a summary of ascendia policies and conditions of service. We ask you to familiarise yourself with these and hope this summary is of assistance to you in considering our services.

At "about us" we have outlined the companies that are ascendia. We are pleased to advise that we own the trade mark ascendia and our companies hold ascendia in their registered company names.

client communication & privacy

Your personal or business information is private and confidential and we take very seriously our obligation to maintain it's confidentiality. This is not just an issue of privacy any more but one of substantial financial security due to the increasing incidence and substantial consequences of identity fraud.

We have summarised below some of the measures we take to ensure and maintain the confidentiality of your information:

We maintain mail-in and mail-out registers to allow us to track correspondence and enable us to ensure correspondence is sent in a timely fashion and that where correspondence is lost by Australia Post or Couriers we can prove and identify it's last ascendia location to these providers.
We undertake regular coaching and training of our professional and administrative staff to ensure that they understand and implement behaviours that are necessary to protect the privacy and confidentiality of clients. This extends to not providing contact details of clients, or confirming the fact of a person or entity being a client - unless already authorised by an authorised person such as the client or a person they have authorised.
We require written privacy / information releases to be signed by clients before divulging information to third parties (persons other than our professional and administative staff).
Correspondence from ascendia may contain confidential and/or privileged information. We use registered and express mail where appropriate to assist in maintaining security. In addition we provide clients the option of picking up and delivering their information personally, we notify them and ensure their information is provided only to them or their authorised representative.
We issue disclaimers on our correspondence, physical and electronic, that makes clear the legal obligation of a mistaken recipient to notify ascendia immediately and destroy or return the information as appropriate. We also include clear explanation that any unauthorised copying, disclosure or distribution of the material that may be received by a mistaken recipient is strictly forbidden and constitutes a breach of the Privacy Act and may result in the unauthorised distributor or copier being fined and / or imprisoned.
Staff have stringent confidentiality provisions in their employment agreements that they must agree to before becoming employees of ascendia. We have in the past enforced these provisions strictly and will continue to do so. Staff are for instance not authorised to divulge information about clients to any other person, including other staff who may not be working on your affairs and may not need to know.
Staff who remove client information of any type or transmit such information from ascendia without proper authority, including even contact details, are in breach of their employment terms and are disciplined accordingly and can be terminated immediately and sued for damages.
Email and information storage and copying of files is strictly monitored by our IT infrastructure. We track and monitor all email communication and information transfer into and out of the ascendia information technology infrastructure. This facilitates enforcement of our policies designed to protect you. Evidence is thus able to be supplied to enable damages to be obtained and law enforcement acheived. The privacy act contains strict criminal provisions.
Staff failure to maintain confidentiality can result in instant dismissal at ascendia and notification of the relevant authorities as well as civil action for damages being taken. It is very important that your information stays on our IT infrastructure and in your posession only - where we have the management process to protect it.

financial & investment advice

All financial and investment information and advice is provided specifically and only for the private use of the person or entity to whom it is provided. This is because individual personal and business requirements and circumstances vary. Accordingly we ask that you maintain the confidentiality of your advice documentation and investment management records so that friends and colleagues do not act on such advice to their potential detriment.

In addition, all our advice is written as well as explained verbally in detail, with all your questions answered and opportunity for further analysis and queries to be raised by you prior to any action being taken pursuant to advice. This is because the implications of advice can take some time to fully appreciate and can involve matters you may not be initially familiar with. It is also a legal requirement.

Different dominant communication preferences of different clients is addressed through the provision of written documentation, verbal advice and comprehensive diagramatic meeting presentation(s) of all advice - as required by individual clients. No action is taken in relation to advice until a client fully understands and authorises action in writing. Variations from advice (client directions) are required in writing to ensure your requirements are fully understood and met and that you maintain total control of the process.

Ascendia does not hold funds on trust, nor do we hold authority to make funds transfers on clients behalf. Clients must provide authorisation for all transactions in writing.

Our service is provided in accordance with the requirements of the ASIC and FPA professional, legal and ethical requirements. We are members of the FPA: membership number 035064 and Financial Ombudsman Service: membership number 4970. The firm that provides advice is ascendia pty. ltd: corporate authorised representative number 251037. Our licensee, which is independantly owned by the partners, is ascendia pty. ltd., the AFSL number is 307308. All financial and investment advice is provided by ascendia wealth pty. ltd.

records & information management

client records and records management service

Most of the records we retain are records we have created which are our property. However we also always have some original client records that we have - that are due for return to clients.

Our policy is to copy and return your records to you as soon as possible. In many cases we will only take a copy and return the originals to you immediately.

At the latest we will return original documentation to you after we have completed a job for you or at a predetermined and agreed time. For instance where we are providing wealth management services it is our normal policy to return substantiation documents relating to your investment portfolio at the end of the financial year.

additional client records back-up and portfolio reporting services

We also offer an online account that enables you to view and retain back-up of your portfolio (up to date daily reporting by us) and / or your business records or personal tax substantiation documenation.

In addition to 24 / 7 reporting of any assets for wealth management clients opting to use this service, we offer accounting and business clients the service of scanning all your substantiation records. This is accessable via your own online account for you to use as a back-up in the event that your originals may be accidentally destroyed. We can maintain multiple years of substantiation via your online user account that you can access. There is additional charge for clients who wish to obtain these services. Please discuss this with our staff for further information.

taking your records with you if you go

We can, if you subsequently leave our firm, provide you with the following, in accordance with the ethical, professional and legal standards:

All original documents that we may have retained and not yet returned
Copies of the latest financial reports, income tax returns and financial and investment reports we have recently provided - in electronic form for your convenience.
Search and review of all our archives to ensure that all original records and reports that may have been prepared for you and not yet provided are in fact provided to you. We retain archives for 7 years as required.

We do charge a small fee for search and retrieval of records - to ensure we can resource this to a professional standard and that all your records are properly provided. We use a professional archiving firm in conjunction with our internal administrative and professional staff resources - which together generates a cost assciated with records retrieval, search, review, and forwarding.

ascendia records

For our commercial and quality assurance purposes, in accordance with the professional and ethical standards of the professional associations to which we are affiliated, and in accordance with the law, we retain copies of client records. These are copies only and are ascendia records.

They represent an audit trail and it is mandatory that we retain them. These records are confidential ascendia records. Because we provide all clients with originals they do not represent any records that you do not already have.

In addition we generate a substantial number and type of records that are integrally representative of our tools, templates and calculation methods and schedules that we have developed or purchased to be able to provide the range and level of services that we provide you. These records clearly indicate our business processes that we have developed and purchased at considerable expense. Many of these business processes are critical to enabling our business to provide a wide range and high quality of services. They are integral to our intellectual property and are like the farm land of a farmer - inseparable from our firms value.

As a consequence we are able to deny access to these types of records at our discretion (other than to regulators). These types of records are strictly confidential ascendia records. We are also not able to provide these to a client even if asked if a client leaves the firm - we are under legal duty not to release such records - with a range of firm stakeholders including creditors, owners and insurers.

referral to new advisers where required

If you have left our firm, for instance to relocate to a new geographical area where we currently do not service, you may come across some accountants who will ask their new clients to obtain confidential accountants records from an accountant that the client has left.

This is especially the case when the new accountant is not familiar with the area of work, or may not have sufficient professional ability to understand the financial accounts without the prior workpapers, or simply may be trying to save themself time after having taken on a job that is bigger than they initially expected.

Unfortunately we cannot release confidential ascendia records as outlined above in the section on "ascendia records". We can of course release your records as outlined above at "taking your records with you". We do not ask for confidential accountants records ourselves.

We can often refer you to a more professional operator if this occurs to you after leaving our firm (we have affiliations in other locations and states with reputable accountants and investment managers).

When starting a new client there are a lot of workpapers and background calculations that may be required. We often have to rebuild this type of information ourselves when taking on new clients. This is in fact a positive process where an accountant or investment manager builds their own working papers - it ensures they understand and review your affairs properly rather than relying on the previous advisers work.

ascendia records management

The ascendia IT infrastructure is fully firewalled and backed-up regularly. We employ an IT specialist who has experience working for large financial institutions in the UK and understands our industry and it's requirements.

We utilise Grace Records for our secure offsite records management and they provide a retrieval and transport service for our substanital records archives.

We maintain clear and accurate records in our paper based files in filing rooms in our offices. We have 6 filing areas 3 of which are locked rooms as required by ASIC in respect of investment records and all are maintained in full security alarmed and 24 hour monitored offices.

client engagement

engagement documentation

When you enage us to become your accountant / business consultant / wealth manager we have considerable legal responsibilities toward you.

We have set out our obligations and what you can expect from us clearly in our engagement documents. You have not legally engaged us unless you have completed and signed the relevant engagement documents and so have we.

There are different documents that are needed depending on whether you are requiring services for:

personal accounting and tax
company accounting and tax
superannuation accounting
superannuation audit
wealth management
business consulting

If you are wanting to engage us please email or telephone us and ask for the relevant partner to organise this.

We will prepare and forward you the appropriate engagement documents - which must be tailored to your situation (and include all relevant personal and private details including ABN's, ACN's full name and date of birth etc.)

Once you have engaged us we have an obligation to provide a level of service in accordance with the various regulatory requirements as well as consistent with the professional standards of the professional associations to which we are affiliated. We are not obliged to take your business and in some circumstances we may have to decline to assist a prospective client. This is consistent with our professional ethics and regulatory duties.

termination of our engagement

You are able to terminate our engagement in writing at any time. An ethical letter from your new advisors and a written privacy release from you is also required for us to be able to release client records to your new advisers as outlined in our section on this page titled "taking your records with you if you go".

Our partners at ascendia are also able to terminate the engagement in writing at any time. This is very rare and has only occurred in unusual circumstances, such as failure to pay accounts, behaviour that one of our partners regards as extremely rude or aggressive behaviour by clients or of course requests for or undertaking of suspected unethical or illegal behaviour.

professional fees & charges

Our fees for all services are based on professional charge out rates that change from time to time. We are not obliges to restate these to you after you have engaged us. We do provide new engagement each year for your assistance that includes our latest professional rates at this time. Our rates are consistent with those outlined by the professional associations.

Rates applicable also vary depending on the level of work required. Our rates are all published in our engagement letters that you will see when you obtain them from us (by email or telephone contact). Our partners can provide information about expected costs in discussion with you about the work required.

We are able to provide estimates of fees however our charges are based on the time it takes to do a professional job to the standard required by the regulatory environment. We will communicate clearly and quickly with you if and as soon as we become aware that a job is going to take longer than expected. We will provide you with alternatives where available at that time.

In the past we have received, and from time to time we although less and less due to our no commissions services receive commissions and brokerages relating to our wealth management services. These are fully disclosed and agreed to by our clients in advance where applicable. Please request a copy of our latest Financial Services Guide for more information about this.

standard payment terms

Our standard payment terms are payment on delivery of service completion.

We accept:

Cash
Personal Cheques
Bank Cheques
Visa Card
Master Card
EFT-POS
B-PAY
EFT transfer

If you choose not to make payment on delivery of the service our standard terms and conditions of credit apply.

terms and conditions of credit - your alternative to paying straight away

If you do not wish to agree to these terms and conditions of credit simply ensure you make payment at the time the service is provided.

If you choose not to pay at the time the service is provided we will treat this as a credit application by you - on our standard terms and conditions of credit - alternatively you can pay us at the time we provide the service. Where we choose to extend our credit to you this serves as an acceptance of your application in accordance with our terms and conditions of credit.

We have summarised these terms below and also provided a full copy of these terms for your information and convenience. These conditions are the same terms and conditions that you will encounter in many situations where you require and are provided with credit. They have been prepared by our credit consultants EC Credit Pty. Ltd.

These terms and conditions provide 14 days for payment to you for normal use of ascendia credit. In addition with our standard terms of credit we will provide an additional service at our discretion - this may include an account statement at the end of the month where invoices are unpaid, reminders of payments overdue and warnings on your statement when payments are beyond acceptable credit timeframes.

We understand that when you have a busy life accounts can inadvertently be left - and so our reminder process is designed to assist you. When you make payment in accordance with the terms of credit there are no credit charges or interest charges.

Obviously if we have bad debtors we refer these to our debt collection agent EC Credit Pty Ltd. and/or to our solicitors Anderssens for recovery. We are entitled under our terms and conditions to recover credit charges and interest once we have overdue debts owed to us - to assist us to recover the cost associated with this. We are also entitled to make recovery at debtors expense - in accordance with our standard credit terms and conditions. These are posted here for your convenience. [Link to pdf documents coming soon]. They are also available on request by telephone or email.