As you probably know already, the new EU Data Protection Act, widely known as GDPR is enforced on 25th of May. In one way or another it concerns all businesses who have access to personal data of their clients. All companies should make sure they are GDPR compliant and we in 1Office have been working towards it for months now. In addition to general data protection regulation, every member state is also allowed to add country-specific requirements.

In this article we only cover one small part concerning our accounting clients in Finland.

According to Finnish law, the employer has to give employees a pay slip which indicates the amount of pay and the grounds of its determination. The new data protection act defines the secure and allowed types of sending out salary slips so we can not continue with our current system sending out payslips via e-mail without the prior consent from the employee. It is recommended from now on, to send out salary slips via regular mail and in Finland also through an e-salary system.

• The best way to send out salary slips would be the e-salary service. In order for us to send out salary slips this way, we need each client to inform us about their employees’ name, Finnish social security number and bank account number. Using this information we can send the salary slips in a secure way to employee´s netbank. The service can only be used for employees with Finnish social security number and bank account.
• The alternative is to send out salary slips via regular mail.
• The third option is to continue sending out pay slips via e-mail, but this can only be done with the prior written consent by the employee.

All of our current clients have received the e-mail from us with the exact questions. Should you have any additional questions, please contact your accountant or our general e-mail helsinki@1office.co.