Grootboek Rekenmeesters

Your books balanced. Your returns filed on time.

A four-person practice on Voortrekker Road in Bellville, doing the monthly books and the SARS returns for about ninety small businesses.

Book the first meeting

The first meeting costs nothing

Forty-five minutes, in our boardroom or on a call, whichever suits you. Bring last year's financials and three months of bank statements and we will tell you plainly where you stand.

Book it

How SARS sees you

You have a tax calendar whether you look at it or not, and it does not move for anyone.

Provisional tax comes twice: an IRP6 at the end of August on what you think the year will do, and a second one at the end of February. Guess badly on the February return and the underestimation penalty follows it.

Once your turnover has passed a million rand in any twelve months, VAT registration stops being a choice. After that a VAT201 is due every second month, on what you invoiced, not on what has actually landed in the account.

Put one person on a payroll and an EMP201 is due by the seventh of the following month, every month, with PAYE, UIF and SDL on it.

What we do about it

On day one we set up a read-only feed from your bank, so nobody is emailing us a statement at eleven at night on the last day of the month.

Every month we reconcile the account, code what is there, and send you a short list of the things we cannot place, usually four or five card swipes and a cash withdrawal. Once you answer, the period is closed and it stays closed.

Returns are filed from our own eFiling profile with you as the registered taxpayer, so you keep the login and can see exactly what was submitted.

On the day money is due to SARS you get one line from us: the amount, what it is for, and the reference to pay it with.

A few of the ninety

Provisional tax, explained in eleven minutes

Elmarie walks through one IRP6 from start to finish: how the estimate is built, what the basic amount actually does, and why it is the February return rather than the August one that catches people out.

What we need from you each month

The bank feed does most of it. What the feed cannot tell us is why R4 200 went to a hardware shop in Kuils River, so the rest of the month is a short conversation. Slips for anything paid in cash. Photograph them on the day and send them whenever you like. A picture on WhatsApp is a valid record as long as it is legible and we can file it. Payroll changes before the twentieth: new starters, anyone who left, overtime, a bonus. After the twentieth it becomes next month's correction instead of this month's payslip. And never a shoebox in March. Eleven months of paper arriving at once costs you more in our hours than the bookkeeping would have, and it is the single reason a February deadline turns into a guess.

What to keep, and for how long

Five years from the date the return was submitted, not five years from the invoice. If SARS opens an audit inside that window the clock stops, and you keep everything until it closes. Tax invoices both ways, bank statements, and anything sitting behind a deduction. If it reduced your tax, there has to be a document under it. Logbooks are the ones people lose. No logbook, no travel claim. SARS will not accept a reconstruction written in June, and we will not sign one off either. The CIPC file is separate and it is permanent: registration documents, the MOI, share certificates and every annual return receipt. We keep a scanned set for our clients, but the originals stay with you.

Clients

We were three months behind and I had stopped opening the SARS letters. They cleared the backlog in six weeks, and now I get one email a month telling me what to pay and when.
Rushda Adams · Bakery, Parow
The VAT was the thing that kept me awake. Now it is done before I have even thought about it, and the number they send me is the number that goes off the account.
Wynand du Toit · Panelbeaters, Brackenfell
They talked me out of registering for VAT a year early. It cost them the work and saved me money, and that is when I knew I could leave them to it.
Karin Meyer · Nursery, Durbanville
Four years now. They know the business well enough to phone me when a month looks wrong, which no accountant of mine had ever done before.
Sipho Mabaso · Joinery, Goodwood

Book the first meeting

Monday to Thursday 08:00 to 17:00, Friday until 13:00. 12 Voortrekker Road, Bellville. We answer within one working day, and in February we answer faster than that.