Help & FAQ

Go to Invoices → New Invoice. Select a client (or create one first under the Clients menu), add your line items with quantities and unit prices, set the issue date and due date, then click Save as Draft.

Once you're happy with it, click Issue Invoice. If you're the owner or an admin with full approval rights, the invoice will be marked as Sent immediately and a PDF will be emailed to your client. If your role requires approval, it will move to Pending Approval first.

Go to Clients → Add Client. Fill in the business name (required), contact email, phone number, and billing address. If your client is VAT-registered, enter their VAT number — it will appear on invoices you issue to them.

You can also create a client on the fly from inside the New Invoice form — there's a quick-add option in the client dropdown.

BaniFin applies 15% VAT automatically. When you add a line item and select Standard Rate for the tax type, VAT is calculated on top of the unit price and shown separately on the invoice. The invoice total shows the subtotal, VAT amount, and final total.

If a line item is zero-rated or exempt, you can select the appropriate tax type and no VAT will be added for that line.

Your own VAT registration details (number and whether you're registered) are set under Settings.

Open the invoice and click Record Payment. Enter the amount received and the payment date. You can record partial payments — the invoice will show as Partially Paid until the full balance is settled, then move to Paid.

Go to Settings and look for the VAT section. Toggle VAT Registered to yes, enter your VAT number, and select your filing cycle (monthly, bimonthly, or quarterly). These details appear on your invoices and drive the VAT201 calculations.

The VAT201 report (found under Tax) calculates your output VAT (from invoices issued) and input VAT (from expenses) for a selected period. It shows the net VAT payable or refundable, formatted to match the SARS VAT201 return fields.

BaniFin provides this as a calculation aid. You remain responsible for submitting your return correctly to SARS via eFiling.

Go to Team in the sidebar and fill in the invite form: enter their email address and select their role. They'll receive an invitation email with a link to join. If they already have a BaniFin account (for example, they work with another company that uses BaniFin), accepting simply adds your company to their existing login — no second account needed.

Owners and admins can send invitations. Your plan's seat limit applies to team members; external advisors don't use a seat (see "Working with your accountant" below).

BaniFin has six roles. Each role is a starting point — as the owner you can fine-tune exactly what any member can see and do (see the next question).

• Owner — Full access including billing, settings, and team management.
• Admin — Full access to day-to-day data, including inviting team members. Cannot manage billing.
• Accountant — Works across your financials (expenses, income, invoices, budgets, tax) with view-only payroll and HR by default.
• Manager — Creates invoices, quotes and expenses; manages HR day-to-day; view-only on budgets and income.
• Employee — Their own expenses, their own payslips, and leave requests. Nothing else.
• Read Only — View access across the business. Cannot create or modify records.

Yes. When inviting someone, expand Customise permissions to set a per-module access level — None, View, Edit, or Full — for each area (Expenses, Invoices, Payroll, HR, and so on). The grid starts from the role's sensible defaults, so you only change what you need to.

You can adjust any member's access later from Team → Edit permissions. Changes take effect immediately — if you remove someone's payroll access, their very next click is already blocked, and the module disappears from their menu. Only owners can customise permissions, and every change is logged.

Under Invoices → Configuration, you can set a maximum auto-approve amount per role. For example, if a Manager's limit is R10,000, any invoice they submit below that amount is approved automatically. Above R10,000, it goes to an Admin or Owner for approval before being sent to the client.

Owners always auto-approve regardless of amount.

Go to Team, tick External advisor on the invite form, and enter their email address. Advisor invites come pre-set with access to your financials and tax — and no access to payroll, HR, or employee records unless you explicitly grant it. You stay in control of exactly what they see.

Advisors don't use one of your plan's team seats, and they cost you nothing extra. If your accountant already uses BaniFin with other clients, your company simply appears alongside them in their account.

Yes, instantly. Go to Team and click Remove next to their name. Their access ends immediately — your company disappears from their account on their very next click. You can also narrow their access at any time via Edit permissions instead of removing them entirely.

An accountant serving several BaniFin clients gets a My Companies page: one card per client showing upcoming statutory deadlines — VAT201, EMP201, EMP501 season, COIDA Return of Earnings, Letter of Good Standing expiry — based on the access each client granted them. They only ever see deadline information for clients who gave them tax access, and only the modules each client allowed.

Yes. Your plan includes a number of company slots (shown on the Billing page). If you have a free slot, click your company name in the top bar and choose Add a company. The new company shares your subscription but keeps completely separate data — its own clients, invoices, VAT settings, payroll, and filings.

If your slots are full, you can buy an extra slot from Billing → Companies & Slots; it's billed together with your subscription renewal.

Click your company name in the top bar and pick the company to work in — the name shown there is always the company you're currently working in, so check it before capturing anything. With two or more companies you also get a My Companies page with each company's upcoming deadlines at a glance.

Deadlines shown there are reminders based on your data in BaniFin — they don't confirm anything was filed with SARS or the Department of Labour.

Current plans and pricing are shown on the Billing page inside your account. Plans are priced in ZAR and billed monthly. You can upgrade or change your plan at any time.

Payments are processed securely via Yoco. You can pay with any major South African credit or debit card. BaniFin does not store your card details.

You have a 7-day grace period after expiry. During this time you can still log in and view your data, but you cannot create new invoices, expenses, or other records. After 7 days, access is suspended until you renew.

Your data is not deleted. Renewing restores full access immediately.

Yes. Go to Billing and click Cancel Subscription. Your access continues until the end of the current billing period. We do not pro-rate refunds for partial months.

Add your staff under Employees, set up their salary structure (basic pay, allowances, deductions — driven by their contract if you use the Contracts module), then run payroll monthly under Payroll. BaniFin calculates PAYE, UIF and SDL per the SARS tables, generates payslip PDFs, and produces a bank export file for paying salaries. Finalizing a run locks it and posts the cost into your expenses and budget automatically.

From your live data, the Tax section prepares: VAT201, monthly EMP201, bi-annual EMP501 reconciliations with bulk IRP5/IT3(a) certificates and an e@syFile import file, the annual COIDA Return of Earnings, and monthly UI-19 declarations for uFiling.

Important: these are preparation aids. BaniFin does not submit anything to SARS, the Compensation Fund, or the Department of Employment & Labour — you (or your accountant) review the output and file it through the official channels. Every export carries this disclaimer.

Yes — the Tax → ITR14 Pack assembles your financial year's numbers for transposition into the ITR14 on eFiling: an income statement, expenses by category, your asset wear-and-tear schedule, and payroll cost totals. Set your financial year-end month under Settings (February for most SA companies).

It's a preparation aid: balance-sheet items aren't included, no tax amount is calculated (Small Business Corporation rates may apply to you), and BaniFin does not submit anything to SARS. If you add your CIPC incorporation date in Settings, BaniFin also reminds you ahead of your annual-return window each year.

No. Seats limit logins (team members who sign in to BaniFin). Employees on your payroll are records, not logins — you can run payroll for more employees than your plan has seats. An employee only uses a seat if you also invite them to log in (for example, to submit expenses or leave requests).

Sensitive personal information — employee identity numbers, tax references and banking details — is encrypted at rest using authenticated AES-256 encryption, so it is unreadable in a database backup or export. These fields are masked by default (showing only the last 4 digits) and full values are only ever shown to authorised users on an explicit, audit-logged request. All data is transmitted over HTTPS, and passwords are stored as one-way bcrypt hashes we cannot read.

Only users you have invited to your account can see your data. BaniFin staff can access data only for the purposes of support and platform maintenance, and this is logged. We do not share your data with third parties except as described in our Privacy Policy.

Your personal data: go to Your Data & Privacy in the sidebar to view and download a copy of the personal information we hold about you instantly — you can also request corrections or deletion there (your POPIA rights).

Business documents: invoice and payslip PDFs download individually, and the Tax section exports statutory files (VAT201, EMP201, EMP501, IRP5/e@syFile, COIDA, UI-19) as PDF/CSV. Broader bulk CSV export of invoices and expenses is on the roadmap — contact support@banifin.co.za if you need one urgently.