Last Updated: 11 December 2016
This is a contract between you (the customer) and Knowledge Shop Pty Ltd. It describes how we will work together and the services we will provide. By using Knowledge Shop’s membership service you agree to these terms and conditions.
If we update these terms then we will email the nominated contact for our member firms and let them know.
These terms and conditions do not apply if your firm does not pay the full membership subscription per month. For the limited reduced rate membership subscription, please see Membership Terms and conditions – reduced rate members.
1. Definitions
- Decision Maker – the person within the member firm that we determine is the decision maker.
- “Knowledge Shop”, “we”, “us” and “our” means Knowledge Shop Pty Ltd (ABN 90 107 532 945).
- Membership Champion – the person a member firm nominates as our primary contact for any issues relevant to the membership subscription.
- Membership - membership is the membership subscription service offered by Knowledge Shop.
- Membership fee – the monthly fee a member firm pays for the membership subscription.
- Member Firm – is “you” or “your” and means a single entity and single location office customer with not more than 50 employees that has a membership subscription.
- Membership subscription – all the membership services maintained and delivered by us that we provide to you.
- Users – an individual employee of the member firm where the member firm has provided us with the individual email address of the employee to create a unique login.
2. Membership
Knowledge Shop is a service for professional accounting firms. We reserve the right to refuse membership to any individual or company.
3. Membership Subscription Term and Renewal
The membership subscription term is one month and is automatically renewed unless you advise us to terminate your membership subscription (see Terminating your membership subscription).
4. Membership fee
Membership fees are debited each month using your nominated payment method:
- For credit card - on the first day of the month.
- For direct debit - on the first working day of the month.
The membership fee covers the month of the subscription term. For example, a credit card payment on 1 July is for 1 July to 31 July.
Your membership subscription and user’s access may be suspended by us if your membership fee is not transacted. Your membership is not terminated at this point and the membership fee remains owing and payable. We will contact you prior to taking any action.
5. Membership subscription
5.1 Access
During the membership subscription term, we will provide your nominated users with non-exclusive and non-transferrable access to the membership subscription including (but not limited to):
5.2 Knowledge Shop PD
Two (2) team members from member firms are able to attend Knowledge Shop’s member-only quarterly Professional Development as part of the membership subscription.
Knowledge Shop PD is recorded and the recording is accessible by users from the member-only website after the quarterly sessions have concluded. These recordings cannot be republished in any form.
Knowledge Shop PD training materials – generally the notes and slides - are provided for the use of member firms only for internal training purposes. The training materials cannot be used to create derivative works, to deliver paid training programs, for distribution to other professionals, or utilised by member firms to deliver training to other accounting, finance and advisory audiences (such as discussion groups).
5.3 Help desk
Users are able to utilise the help desk service:
5.3.1 How many questions can I ask
Member firms are entitled to up to 15 help desk answers per month asked by users based on a rolling 3 month average. For example, if your firm received 12 answers in July, 24 in August, and 9 in September, that would be an average of 15 answers across the 3 month period. If however, in October, your firm asked and had 20 questions answered, your average for the 3 month period would be 20, 5 above the cap. In this event we would contact you in October. A fee applies to answers in excess of the 15 provided as part of the membership subscription. But don’t panic, we will advise you prior to reaching your cap so there will never by any surprises. And, if we don’t advise you, there is no fee charged for additional answers.
The right to any unused answers within the 15 limit is relinquished if not used within the rolling three month period.
5.3.2 How can I ask questions
We will accept help desk questions by phone using the 1800 number provided, email, or using the ‘Ask Us’ feature on the member-only website. If you need the help desk answer in writing, please email or use the website to ask your question. Phone conversations will not be followed up with detailed notes. The only record we keep of help desk phone answers is the date and time of the conversation, consultant answering the question, user asking the question and member firm.
5.3.3 What can I ask
The help desk does not provide formal opinions. We only answer the question as asked by you. As you can understand, help desk questions received only contain the facts that the user has chosen to share with us and may not contain a full disclosure of the issues at hand. While we will seek to clarify unclear questions, users need to use their professional judgement when acting on answers provided by us.
In some circumstances the help desk question you ask will be out of the scope of the service we provide. For example, it is outside of our areas of expertise or the question is so extensive it will constitute a formal opinion. We do not provide industrial relations advice or legal advice including State Tax issues such as Payroll tax, Land Tax and Stamp Duty. We reserve the right to deem a question outside of the scope of the service and will advise you if this is the case.
We do not provide calculations as part of the help desk service. Once again, only you have all the information required to complete calculations.
5.3.4 Using the Q&A database
The Q&A database is a repository of help desk questions asked by users and the answers provided by us that we think may benefit the broader community. The answers provided relate exclusively to the question as asked and should not be applied to any other situation. They are not intended to be advice and users should not act specifically on the basis of the information in the help desk question and answer alone.
5.3.5 Privacy
We republish help desk questions and answers on the help desk Q&A archive on the member-only website. These Q&As are edited prior to publication and will remove any relevant client data that may identify your client (for example, names, dates of birth or locations) or the information of users. Not all help desk questions and answers are published on the Q&A archive, just those we believe are relevant to the broader professional community.
In some circumstances we use help desk questions and answers for marketing purposes on the public website. Once again, the questions are for professional interest and remove personal details.
5.3.6 Copyright and ownership
Help desk questions asked become the property of Knowledge Shop. Answers provided by us remain the property of Knowledge Shop. As such, they cannot be republished, or represented in any other form except for the provision of the help desk service to member firms. For example, you cannot cut and paste the Q&A database and use it on your website.
5.4 Knowledge Bank
Users can download our suite of updated workpapers, standard letters, checklists, procedures etc., on the member-only website. We endeavour to keep these standards updated in real time for the latest legislative and regulatory changes. As such, users should refer back to the member-only website to ensure that they are using the latest document possible.
5.4.1 Copyright and ownership
The knowledge bank documents are for use of member firms and their users only and should not be distributed or on-sold in any form. Member firms and users are not entitled to create derivative works from the Knowledge Bank materials provided except for the internal purposes of member firms during the subscription term. So, in other words you can amend the knowledge bank materials for your own purposes while your firm remains a subscribed member firm but you cannot at any time amend the materials and then pass them off as your own creation.
5.5 Tax Round Up
Each month users that have opted into the tax round up receive a summary of the relevant technical news and issues for the month. While the tax round up does not cover every issue, we seek to provide users with the most relevant and applicable information to them.
The tax round up is also accessible from the member-only website.
5.6 Your Knowledge client newsletter
Member firms are provided with a limited license to utilise and distribute the Your Knowledge client newsletter. Eleven editions are produced each year (January is excluded). Member firms can utilise the client newsletter to distribute to their own client base or to potential clients. It can also be used on member firm’s websites and in other electronic formats.
The member subscription does not extend to the right to distribute Knowledge Shop articles or materials to the media or publishers.
Your Knowledge is distributed to users on an opt-in basis but is also accessible from the member-only website.
5.7 Discounted rates
Knowledge Shop products and services not included in the membership subscription, for example full day training workshops, are provided to member firms at a discounted rate where users register for these services through the member-only website or directly with the Knowledge Shop team.
We modify the membership subscription from time to time to add or remove elements of the service or how it is delivered. These changes will not materially affect the service we provide.
6. Your obligation to us
6.1 Member Firms will only allow employees user access to your membership subscription. Only emails with the member firm domain will be added as users. We validate member firm user details not only through member firms themselves but on occasion through publicly available sources such as websites, Linkedin etc. Where we find that member firms have provided access to users outside of their member firm, we reserve the right to remove access to users or to charge an additional membership fee. So, no sharesies with the practitioner down the road or your mate.
6.2 User access details will only be provided to one employee and will not be shared or distributed. That is, each employee will have their own user login details.
6.3 You will advise us as soon as practicable if access to your membership subscription for any user needs to be cancelled. For example, a user leaves your employment.
6.4 No user accessing your membership subscription or the member firm will distribute services provided as part of the membership subscription outside of the membership firm except where we have granted access for member firms to do so.
7. Suspending or terminating your membership subscription
7.1 Termination
You are able to terminate your membership subscription by advising the Member Services Manager using one of the following methods:
- In writing:
- By email - terminations by email are effective in the month that we receive them. We will contact you to advise that we have received your email. If you do not receive confirmation from us, your termination may not have been received and you should contact us to confirm. We do not take responsibility for the delivery of your emails to us. Email is a notoriously unreliable form of contact.
- By mail – a notification by mail is effective in the month we receive it. For example, if we receive your termination by mail on the 2nd of the month, your termination will be effective from the end of that same month.
- By Phone – by speaking to the Member Services Manager. Voicemail messages are not accepted.
Termination of your membership subscription is effective from the last working day of the month (subscription term) that you advised us. For example, if you advise us on the 16th of the month that you are terminating your membership subscription, the termination will be effective from the last working day of that same month.
On termination of your membership subscription we will remove access to all of your users and delete your payment details. On termination you no longer have the right to utilise or benefit from any services provided as part of the membership subscription.
7.2 Suspending
If you need some time out, member firms can suspend their membership subscription. Suspensions are effective from the last working day of the month (subscription term) that you advised us. As with termination, you need to contact the Member Services Manager to suspend your account.
8. Confidentiality
We will protect the confidentiality of Member Firms and their users. Please see our privacy policy for how privacy is managed by us.
The personal information of users may be used by our related entities, Hayes Knight, Merit Wealth and Superssentials, for the delivery of the membership services.
How a user utilises the membership service, for example the questions they ask, will be made available to the member firm decision makers or member champions on request. We may also contact the decision makers or member champion about a user’s requests to the membership subscription. For example if we think a user is using the membership subscription for a non-member firm or a university assignment.
9. Limitations
We do not always guarantee that the membership subscription will be delivered without interruption or error free. We rely on multiple systems to deliver the membership subscription and some services are provided by third parties that we have no control of or over.
If you do not ‘whitelabel’ the knowledge shop domain as a safe server, your systems may reject any emails we send. As such, we cannot guarantee the delivery of email-based services. You can however, access the services through the member-only website.
Similarly, you are responsible for maintaining the security of your systems from viruses or malware.
10. Governing rules
This agreement is governed by the law of the State of New South Wales and the Commonwealth of Australia.