Privacy Notice

When we talk about “personal information” we mean information that, either on its own or in combination with other information we hold, enables you to be identified as an individual, directly or indirectly. For us, that means your name, email address, phone number and company (if you give them to us), your payment references, your course activity and completion records, your computer’s IP address, and technical information from the devices you use to reach our site. We do not ask for your date of birth or home address, and your payment card number never reaches us.

• Your account: your name, email address and password. The password is stored only in scrambled (hashed) form that no one can read back. We use these to sign you in, and your name prints on your certificate of completion.
• Sign-in sessions and server logs: the IP address and browser type of each signed-in session, to keep your account secure. Like most websites, our servers also log the IP address, browser type and page requested for each visit, for security and troubleshooting.
• Course activity: your enrollments, the chapters you complete, the study time and Audio Recap listening time our server measures, your acknowledgment of each course notice, your final exam attempts, answers and scores, and your certificates of completion. We use these to deliver the course, to enforce the CPE study-time and listening requirements, and to issue and verify your credit. Your answers to the review questions inside chapters are not stored.
• Course evaluations: your answers to the optional course evaluation, used to improve our courses.
• Purchases: payments are processed by Stripe. Your card details go directly to Stripe and never reach us. We keep the course purchased, the amount paid, any coupon used, the Stripe payment reference and any refund.
• Inquiries: when you contact us or request training or consulting, your name, email address, company, phone number and message. For training requests, also whether CPE credit is needed, the hours per person and the number of attendees. We use these to respond to you.
• Emails: when we email you (for example, a purchase confirmation or a certificate), we keep a record of the address, subject and whether it was delivered. When you email us, we keep the correspondence so we can reply.
• In-person training: the names and contact details on the attendance sheet you sign, and the name, course, date and location printed on your in-person training certificate.
• Website analytics: our public pages use Google Analytics, which sets cookies to collect usage information such as the pages you visit, your approximate location, and your device and browser. We load it only on our public pages, not in the course player, your dashboard or your account settings, but if a visit starts on a public page, Google Analytics may also count the pages opened next in that visit. You can block it in your browser settings or with Google’s opt-out add-on.
• Cookies and browser storage: a sign-in cookie that keeps you signed in, and browser settings that remember your display preferences (light or dark theme, sidebar).

If you register for, attend or take one of our courses or training sessions, we may be required to share your personal information from time to time with other organizations in order to meet certain legal and regulatory obligations, requirements and certifications that enable us to provide our courses to you. For example, we may need to include your registration, attendance or completion information in records we are required to supply to the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA), state boards of accountancy, or other certification or standard-setting bodies in order to obtain and keep our approval to offer and deliver continuing professional education.

This applies only to our courses and training. We never share information from consulting clients.

We use a small number of service providers, who handle personal information only to provide their service to us:

• Stripe, for payments.
• Resend, to deliver the emails we send.
• Google Analytics, for website usage statistics on public pages.
• Our web hosting and data storage provider, which runs our servers and database and stores certificates.
• Cloudflare, for our domain name and network services.
• Our email provider, for the mailboxes that receive your messages.

We do not sell or rent your personal information.

Your CPE records (your name and email address, enrollments, completion records, exam results, certificates and course evaluations) are kept for at least 5 years, as our Record Retention Policy requires. Other information (inquiries, email records and sign-in records) is kept only as long as we need it for the purposes above and for our ordinary business records. Google Analytics data is kept according to Google’s retention settings.

Your dashboard shows your courses, transcript and certificates, and you can change your password in Settings. To correct your information, ask what we hold about you, or close your account, contact us (below). If you close your account, we stop using your information for anything except keeping your CPE records, which must be kept for at least 5 years.

Our site is served only over encrypted connections (HTTPS). Passwords are stored only in hashed form, payment card details stay with Stripe, and access to learner records is limited to the people at Buchanan Education Service LLC who need it.

For any question about this notice or your personal information, contact Jeri Buchanan at jbuchanan@bescpe.com or Sandra Kurek at skurek@bescpe.com. By mail: Buchanan Education Service LLC, P.O. Box 70187, Henrico, VA 23255.

If we change this notice, we will post the new version here with a new “Last updated” date.