Privacy notice
Last updated 1 October 2026
Business Sense Solutions (“we”) is the responsible party for personal information collected through bsense.co.za. This notice explains what we collect, why, who else handles it, how long we keep it, and what you can ask of us under the Protection of Personal Information Act, 2013 (POPIA). Most of the site works without telling us anything about yourself.
Who to contact
Business Sense Solutions, 37 Main Rd, Abbotsford, KuGompo City, East London, 5241. Phone or WhatsApp 065 327 2381. Our Information Officer can be reached at solutions@bsense.co.za — put “POPIA request” in the subject line.
What we collect, and why
| Where | What | Why, and for how long |
|---|---|---|
| Talk to us form | Your name, phone number and/or email, what you need, your message, and — if you came from a free tool or the consultant — the short summary shown on the form. | To reply to you. Stored only when you tick the consent box (it is required for a call back or an email reply). Erased automatically 12 months after the last activity on it, or sooner if you ask. |
| Whatever you send us there. | To reply to you. WhatsApp is run by Meta under its own terms; the form only opens WhatsApp with your message ready — you press send. | |
| The on-page consultant | The messages you type or dictate, and the short notes it keeps (your name, need and area, if you share them). | To answer you. Held in server memory for the visit and gone after 30 quiet minutes. If you tick “Remember on this device”, a small note is kept for up to 90 days — “What we remember” shows it, “Forget everything” erases it. |
| Health check, compliance calendar, funding scan | Your answers. | They stay in your browser. We only count that a check was completed, never what you answered. |
| CIPC company check | The company name or number you type. | Sent to the CIPC register to look it up. Public register data only; we don’t log the query. |
| Tax status (TCS) check | The certificate you upload. | Read once for the key facts and never stored by us. Your tax status itself stays between you and SARS unless you choose to send it to us. |
| Visit counts | Anonymous daily totals (for example “12 health checks today”). | To see what is useful. No cookies, no IDs, no IP addresses are stored with them. |
Giving us your details is voluntary. If you would rather not, WhatsApp or phone us — or use the free tools, which need nothing from you. We never ask for ID numbers, passwords or banking details through this website.
Who else handles it
We don’t sell or share personal information for marketing. To run the site we rely on a few service providers (operators under POPIA), each bound to use it only for the service:
- Our hosting provider, where the site and its database run.
- An AI model provider, which processes consultant messages to write a reply. These servers may be outside South Africa.
- Talonic, a document-extraction service that reads an uploaded TCS certificate. Its servers are outside South Africa.
- CIPC, which answers company register lookups.
- Our email and alerting provider, which tells our team that a new enquiry has arrived.
- Google Fonts, which serves the typefaces on this page and so sees your IP address when the page loads.
Where information leaves South Africa, we use providers subject to data-protection law or binding terms offering protection comparable to POPIA (section 72). Anything formal — a registration, a submission, advice you rely on — is handled by a human and your explicit instruction, never by the website alone.
How we protect it
Encrypted connections (HTTPS), a staff-only admin area behind individual passwords, an audit trail of who changed what, and the minimum data needed. If we ever learn that your information has been compromised, we will tell you and the Information Regulator as POPIA requires.
Cookies and browser storage
The public site sets no cookies. The consultant keeps a random conversation ID in your browser’s session storage, and — only if you tick “Remember on this device” — in local storage so it can find your note next time. Staff signing in to the admin area get one strictly necessary session cookie.
Your rights
You may ask us what personal information we hold about you, ask us to correct or delete it, object to how we use it, or withdraw consent at any time (without affecting what was done before). Write to solutions@bsense.co.za and quote your reference (it looks like BS-7K3Q9) if you have one. If you are not happy with our answer, you can complain to the Information Regulator.
Changes
If we change how we handle personal information, we will update this notice and the date at the top.