Synergy Cloud Accountants (Bookeeping Payroll Tax)

IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards)
are globally recognized accounting standards developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB).

They provide a common framework for financial reporting, focusing on transparency, consistency, and comparability of financial statements across different countries and industries.

IFRS covers a range of topics such as revenue recognition, financial instruments, and leases, and is widely adopted by companies to communicate financial information to investors, regulators, and stakeholders, promoting global economic stability and transparency in financial markets.

A healthy, growing company means an increasing number of team members and along with this, an expanding payroll. Managing this process and its administrative tasks becomes increasingly important. You don’t want to get to payday and not be sure what salary to pay your employees, or what should be paid to third parties.

The cloud professionsl takes care of payday, amongst other payroll functions, with some of the best outsourced payroll services around. From processing to reporting, our professional payroll services team are focused on leveraging best-in-class software to provide quality payroll services you can trust and rely on.

Focus on growing your business without the administrative burden and compliance pressures that go hand in hand with payroll administration. Read more about our payroll services below.

Payroll Services we offer to South African businesses
Outsourced the Cloud professionals offers comprehensive payroll solutions designed to simplify payroll management while ensuring full compliance with South African regulations.

Our services include:

Payroll Setup: Smooth implementation of payroll systems customized for your business.
Monthly Processing and Reports: Accurate and timely payslip generation, deductions, and salary disbursements.
Tax and Levy Registrations and Submissions: Full compliance with PAYE, UIF, SDL, and COIDA requirements.
Employee Records Management: Efficient handling of all employee data.
Statutory Submissions: Monthly EMP 201 submissions, Bi -Annual, Annual EMP501 Submissions and annual COIDA returns
Contact our team with any of your payroll queries, and a consultant will be in touch within 24 hours

Accurate, compliant, and timely financial reporting for growing businesses.
Annual financial statements provide users with quantitative data regarding the entity’s financial performance. Financial statements also include figures from the prior fiscal year enabling users to compare performance and financial records over two years

Why do you need Annual Financial Statements (AFS)?
Companies all need a set of Annual Financial Statements which tells a story of your company’s financial performance at a point in time (Statement of Financial Position) and also over time (Statement of Comprehensive Income) with historic information for comparison purposes.

Your country’s jurisdiction may require that AFS be drafted a few months after the end of your financial year. In South Africa, this deadline is set by the Companies Act to be 6 months after year-end. Six months may sound like a lot, but often year-end adjustments are only processed 2 to 3 months after year-end when final supplier statements are received, reconciled and provisions determined. That does not leave a lot of time for the drafting of the AFS to portray the numbers in a user-friendly format.

Clear financial reporting. Best in class accounting technology. Peace of mind.
An annual independent review of your financial statements can assist in ensuring that your company is compliant with various regulatory requirements. Reviewed financial statements also give your stakeholders and third parties, like your bank, a peace of mind that your financial statements are free from material misstatements.
What is an independent review?
An Independent Review is a limited assurance engagement, where the practitioner performing the engagement only gives limited assurance as to the accuracy of the financial statements.

When looking to review financial statements, the objective is to enable a practitioner to state whether anything has come to the practitioner’s attention that causes the practitioner to believe that the financial statements are not prepared, in all material respects, in accordance with the applicable financial reporting framework (negative assurance). This statement is made on the basis of procedures which do not provide all the evidence that would be required in audit reviews.



A review engagement is preferred when the company’s financial statements have already been prepared and the company engages an external accountant or practitioner to review the financial statements. Since the financial statements are also signed off by directors, the external practitioner is required to provide negative assurance that the reviewed financials are free of material misstatements.



During the review, the practitioner performs analytical procedures to gain a better understanding of the figures. A review engagement is less intensive than an audit in terms of the procedures performed by the practitioner. Therefore, the practitioner cannot express an opinion on the fairness of the financial statements, they can only state that the financial statements are free from material misstatement.

Value-Added Tax is commonly known as VAT. VAT is an indirect tax on the consumption of goods and services in the economy.
Revenue is raised for the government by requiring a business, that carries on an enterprise, to register for VAT. In doing so, the business will charge VAT on supplies of goods and services made by it, on the importation of goods and on imported services (subject to certain conditions).

The business will also be entitled to deduct any VAT charged to it, or under limited circumstances from a business that is not registered for VAT, in respect of a supply made to it. The business is required to pay the difference between the VAT charged by it and the VAT charged to it, or claim a VAT refund where the VAT charged to it exceeds the VAT charged by it.

What is Value Added Tax?
VAT is one of those indirect taxes that consumers know they pay, but do not think of as paying taxes per se. This is a very effective way for SARS to collect taxes from millions of taxpayers through a much smaller number of VAT vendors.



The VAT rate changed from 14% to 15% on standard rated taxable supplies on 1 April 2018 which caused a lot of bookkeepers, accountants and finance teams of entities many sleepless nights, but we have all adjusted to the higher rate of levying this indirect tax.



It does not mean that the reconciliation is easy or that responding to a VAT auditor’s queries is a walk in the path.

Who needs to register with SARS to be VAT vendors?
It is mandatory for any business to register for VAT if their total taxable income in any consecutive 12-month period exceeds, or is likely to exceed, R1 million​.
Any business may choose to register voluntarily if the taxable income earned, in the past 12-month period, exceeded R50 000.
Any business may also choose to register voluntarily if they can prove that they will make taxable supplies exceeding R50 000 in the 12 months following the date of registration.

VAT Submission Dates
Category A: Every 2 calendar months. Under this category, a vendor is required to submit one return for every two calendar months, ending on the last day of January, March, May, July, September and November. Paying VAT every two calendar months is also known as paying VAT “bi-monthly.”

Category B: Every 2 calendar months. Under this category, a vendor is required to submit one return for every two calendar months, ending on the last day of February, April, June, August, October and December.

Category C: Every calendar month. Under this category, a vendor is required to submit one return for each calendar month. A vendor will fall within this category if:

The total value of taxable supplies made by the vendor has exceeded, or is likely to exceed, R30 million in any consecutive 12-month period.
The vendor has applied in writing to be placed in this category, or
The Commissioner has determined that the vendor falls within this category due to the vendor repeatedly failing to perform any obligations as required by the VAT act.
Category D: Every 6 calendar months. Under this category, a vendor submits one return for every 6 calendar months, ending on the last day of February and August (or any other month where a written application is made to the Commissioner and approved). This category applies mainly to a vendor who:

Carries on farming activities where the total value of taxable supplies is less than R1.5 million for a period of 12 months.
Is a micro business.
Category E: Every 12 calendar months. Under this category, a vendor is required to submit one return every 12 months, ending on the last day of the vendor’s year of assessment (or any other month where a written application is made to the Commissioner and approved). This category applies to a vendor:

That is a company or a trust fund
That carries on activities of letting fixed property or renting of movable goods or the administration or management of companies which are connected persons to the vendor

The process for business VAT submissions
The full VAT process that we can assist you with entails the following:

Online VAT registrations and assistance with the set up of the correct invoicing and VAT coding.
Bookkeeping
and accounting to ensure that all income and expenditure are treated correctly in terms of the VAT act.
Completion and submission of VAT201 returns.
Handling VAT verification/audit requests from SARS on your behalf.
Performing VAT reconciliations between what has been submitted to SARS and what is reflected in your accounting records

The South African Revenue Service (SARS) has various ways of collecting taxes.
It is often difficult to keep up with all the different types of taxes, the particular formats, as well as deadlines for tax returns to be submitted. These regulatory changes have the potential to negatively impact your business and it is important to “keep your house in good order.”

Growing a business is hard enough without having to worry about when is my tax due, am I paying the right amount or even, am I paying too much? Spend your energy where it really counts and spare yourself the time and effort it takes to juggle all the different types of taxes a company can be subjected to with the help of the Cloud Accountants seasoned business tax professionals.

Our services include:

Corporate Income Tax:Annual tax return submissions, ensuring compliance with SARS regulations.
Provisional Tax Returns: Bi-annual tax payments to manage corporate tax liability.
Dividends Tax:Management of the 20% withholding tax on dividends paid to shareholders.
Value Added Tax (VAT):Full VAT registration and monthly/bi-monthly VAT submissions.
Payroll Taxes:PAYE, UIF, SDL submissions, and reconciliation with SARS.

Focus on what you do best. Get bookkeeping off your to-do list!
Take the mental break of knowing that your numbers are in the safe hands of a cloud accounting team who can take care of them. At the very base of every company’s finance function sits monthly bookkeeping and accurate financial statements. Go from source documents to beautiful management accounts with our professional team of qualified accountants.
Bookkeeping Service
At the foundation of any company’s finance function lies the bookkeeping and reporting process. A streamlined flow of financial information enables higher-value financial activities that support the company’s future growth, while the lack thereof hinders the ability to make quality financial business decisions. Look no further for:

Income and expense allocations that are accurate and make sense
A clean balance sheet that reflects the company’s financial health and position well
Cash flow reports that help you clearly see what comes in and what goes out
Debtors and creditors information that support your cash flow cycle
Professional bookkeeping services and an accounting team that cares about you and your business’s finances
Lay a strong foundation. Get the basics right, without having to do it yourself in the evenings.

Automation has become an important part of streamlining business processes and can go a long way toward building a successful company
Cloud accounting is one of the pieces of automation that is enabling business owners to reach their full potential without having to cut through vast amounts of red tape and make costly additions to existing software packages.

Cloud Accounting Technology
Cloud accounting is, in a nutshell, cloud-based software to run the accounting function of a business. This trend is slowly replacing the old ways of accounting, and for good reason. One such program is Xero cloud accounting software, which is made for small businesses and allows users to automate their admin and work from anywhere in the world. Aside from invoicing, tax returns and bank reconciliation, Xero’s open application programming interface now allows users to integrate this software into their own or third-party business software for easy financial management.



Cloud accounting allows for flexibility and adaptability which only serves to benefit both businesses and people as the rate of change across the world only increases in line with technology and the availability of information.

Linking bank accounts with ease
With cloud accounting software like Xero, users are able to link directly to their company’s bank feeds, pulling bank transactions straight into the program itself. Goodbye manually uploading bank statements and hello live access to financial information!

This also keeps financial information relevant and up to date as all transactions are uploaded to the cloud and refreshed automatically. It’s now easier for businesses to monitor sales, cash flow, and debtors – among many other usabilities – to meet and surpass their financial targets.

Payroll and Cloud Accounting
Cloud accounting is also able to populate your payroll data with ease. Let’s take the local payment software currently utilised at the cloud professionals, SimplePay. The service is fully online and keeps users compliant with all the relevant legislation.


Remote working made easy
While it may seem like any other software at first, we need to examine how the working environment has changed and moved online, especially in the face of a pandemic that brought the world economy to a grinding halt and forced businesses to adopt remote working as a result of the lockdowns.



Cloud accounting software such as Xero enables remote work in new ways. Fully digitized companies are now able to work from anywhere in the world. With users and their employees no longer bound to a specific computer at the specific office, logging in from any device with an internet connection anywhere in the world allows for more personal and work flexibility. When your accounting software is fully integrated into your payment software, you can forget having to be in the office when there’s an adventure to be had post-pandemic.


One of the benefits of Xero’s online accounting integration with SimplePay is it enables users to import their chart of accounts into the software to then specify mappings from SimplePay’s accounts to their accounts in Xero – all by just using the Xero plug-in that increases efficiency and optimizes payroll procedures.

Tailored Tax Solutions for Startups to Large Corporations
We understand that every business, whether a startup or a large corporation, requires a unique tax strategy that aligns with its overall financial objectives. Our comprehensive tax consulting services are designed to improve your tax position across the entire organization – including directors’ remuneration – to ensure maximum tax savings are achieved whilst staying compliant.

Strategic Tax Planning
Our team of expert tax consultants works closely with your business to develop and implement tax strategies that minimize liabilities and creates opportunities. We provide tailored advice taking into consideration your business structure, industry, and growth trajectory, ensuring that your tax strategy evolves as your business grows.