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Last updated: November 8, 2026

Privacy Policy

The Margin Company is the shared name of two Québec companies: 9412-2082 Québec inc. (Bare Bones Books, bookkeeping for small businesses) and 9453-5713 Québec inc. (The Bottom Line Company, marketing and client acquisition for accounting firms). In this policy, “we” and “us” mean either company. This policy explains what personal information we collect, why, who we share it with, where it is kept, and the rights you have over it.

Who is responsible

The person in charge of protecting personal information at both companies is Alvie Kamal. You can reach them at privacy@barebonesbooks.ca with any question or request about your personal information.

Information we collect

From visitors to this website:

  • The details you give when you book a call through our scheduling calendar.
  • Only if you accept analytics: how you use the site, including pages viewed, clicks and scrolling, recorded by PostHog. Session recording captures what happens on the page as you use it.

From bookkeeping clients (Bare Bones Books):

  • Contact and business information you give us.
  • Financial and accounting data from your QuickBooks Online company, accessed only after you explicitly authorize the connection.
  • Documents you send us (receipts, invoices, bills, statements) by email or through your private upload link, and any message you send with them.
  • Our messages and calls with you.

From firms we do marketing for (The Bottom Line Company):

  • Contact and business information you give us.
  • Data from your advertising accounts, such as Google Ads, accessed only after you give us access.
  • The enquiries your marketing brings in: the name, email address, phone number and message each prospect sends, so we can track and report on them for you.
  • Our messages and calls with you.

From our staff and the people we work with: if you sign in to our staff app with your Google account, we receive your name, email address and profile picture from Google, and use them only to sign you in.

How we use it

We use client information only to provide our services: for bookkeeping, categorizing transactions, matching documents to transactions, reconciling accounts, preparing reports and answering your requests; for marketing, running and measuring your campaigns and reporting on the enquiries they bring in. We use website information to book calls and, if you accepted analytics, to understand how the site is used and improve it. We do not sell personal information, and we do not use a client’s data for any purpose other than delivering our service to that client.

Email tracking

Emails we send may record when they are opened and which links in them are clicked. We use this only to know a message arrived and to follow up. To stop it, turn off images in your email program, or ask us at privacy@barebonesbooks.ca to turn it off for you.

AI-assisted work

We use Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic, to help with our work. In bookkeeping, Claude reads the documents you send and the related transactions from your books, and suggests how to record them: which transaction a document belongs to, which account a transaction goes to, and which supplier it is. To identify a supplier, it may run a web search for the supplier’s name. In marketing, it helps analyze campaign results and write reports. To do this, Anthropic receives the content of the documents and records it works on, which can include names, amounts, dates and account details. Our staff review this work.

To read scanned documents and photos, we also use Google Cloud Vision, which extracts the text from the image.

Service providers we share information with

We share personal information only with the service providers below, and only what each needs to do its job for us:

  • Intuit (QuickBooks Online): a bookkeeping client’s accounting data lives there. With your authorization we read it and record transactions in it. Intuit handles it under its own terms and privacy policy.
  • Google: Google Cloud hosts our systems, their databases and the documents you send, reads scanned documents (Cloud Vision), and serves this website (Firebase Hosting), which receives your IP address when you visit. Google Workspace holds our email. Google Ads holds the advertising accounts we run for firms.
  • Anthropic: the AI model described above. It receives the documents and records it works on.
  • Postmark: sends some of our emails, and receives the emails you send to our document address and passes them, with their attachments, to our systems.
  • HubSpot: receives the details you give when you book a call, and holds them in our customer records.

Only if you accept analytics on this website:

  • PostHog: site analytics and session recording.

We do not share your information with anyone else except as required by law.

Cookies and tracking

Analytics and session recording are off until you choose. When you first visit, we ask whether you accept them; PostHog does not load unless you click Accept. We remember your choice in your browser for about six months. You can change it at any time with the “Cookie settings” link at the bottom of every page. Our scheduling calendar is provided by HubSpot and loads HubSpot’s code on the pages where it appears.

Where your information is kept

Your information may be stored and processed outside Québec: elsewhere in Canada and in the United States, where Intuit, Google, Anthropic, Postmark, HubSpot and PostHog operate. Information held outside Québec and Canada is subject to the laws of the place where it is held, and may be accessible to authorities there under those laws.

How we protect it

QuickBooks connection credentials are encrypted at rest (AES-256) and are never stored or transmitted in plain text. A bookkeeping client’s upload link is private: anyone who has it can send us documents for that business, but cannot see anything. If it reaches someone it should not, tell us and we will replace it; the old link stops working at once. Access to client data is limited to our staff working on your account and to the service providers above. If a confidentiality incident involving your personal information presents a risk of serious injury, we will notify you and the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, as the law requires.

Your rights

Under Québec’s Act respecting the protection of personal information in the private sector, and the privacy laws of other provinces and Canada’s PIPEDA where they apply, you may:

  • ask what personal information we hold about you and get a copy of it;
  • ask us to correct information that is wrong or incomplete;
  • ask us to delete it, subject to the records we must keep by law, such as financial records;
  • receive the information you gave us in a commonly used technological format;
  • withdraw your consent, including to analytics and email tracking, at any time.

To make a request, write to privacy@barebonesbooks.ca. We answer within 30 days. If you are not satisfied with our answer, you may complain to the Commission d’accès à l’information du Québec, or to the privacy commissioner of your province or of Canada.

How long we keep it

We keep client information for as long as you are an active client, and afterward only as long as needed to meet legal and tax record-keeping obligations. We keep website enquiries for as long as they are useful to answer you or to stay in touch with your agreement. You may disconnect your QuickBooks Online company or your advertising accounts from our service at any time.

Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time and will change the date at the top when we do. We will tell active clients about material changes directly.

Contact

Questions about this policy: privacy@barebonesbooks.ca.