An invoice missing one field under section 20(4) of the VAT Act is not a small problem — the input VAT deduction gets disallowed, with penalties and interest on top. This portal checks every supplier invoice against the requirements at the moment it is submitted, and tells the supplier what to fix.
You are submitting as a supplier. Change the amount and watch the requirements change with it — SARS applies a different standard above and below R5 000 including VAT.
You are now the accounts payable clerk. Every invoice arrives already checked, already matched against a purchase order, and already screened for duplicates — so the only judgement left is a commercial one.
The part international accounts payable software does not have: B-BBEE certificate validity, tax clearance status and CSD registration, tracked with expiry dates. Your own scorecard depends on your suppliers' certificates being current on the date of the transaction.
Spend with a supplier whose certificate has lapsed can be treated as spend with a non-contributor when your scorecard is verified. The system flags a lapse 60 days out and blocks new orders after it expires — which is far cheaper than discovering it at verification.
What the system enforces, and where each rule comes from. All of it is configurable — thresholds, payment terms and approval limits are settings, not code.
| Rule | What the system does | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Full tax invoice | Above R5 000 including VAT, the customer's name, address and VAT number become mandatory. The invoice cannot be submitted without them. | VAT Act s20(4) |
| Abridged tax invoice | Between R50 and R5 000 including VAT, the customer's details are not required. Five other particulars still are. | VAT Act s20(5) |
| Below R50 | No tax invoice required, but a till slip or docket showing VAT charged is still needed to support an input deduction. | VAT Act s20 |
| VAT rate | 15%, applied automatically. Zero-rated and exempt supplies handled separately. Rate is a setting, not a constant. | VAT Act |
| Issue window | Warns when an invoice is dated more than 21 days after the supply. | VAT Act s20(1) |
| Currency | Foreign-currency invoices accepted, but the VAT amount must be stated in rand. | VAT Act |
| Record retention | Invoices and supporting documents retained for five years, immutably, with the audit trail attached. | Tax Administration Act |
| Duplicate detection | Blocks a second submission of the same invoice number from the same supplier, and flags near-matches on amount and date. | Internal control |
| Payment clock | Counts days from receipt of a valid invoice. Organs of state must settle valid invoices within 30 days. | PFMA · Treasury Regulations |
| Supplier credentials | Tracks B-BBEE certificate and tax clearance expiry, warns at 60 days and blocks new orders on lapse. | B-BBEE Act · procurement policy |
| Personal information | Banking details and director identity documents are access-controlled by role, and every view is logged. | POPIA |
The cost is rarely the processing time. It is the disallowed input VAT, the supplier phoning about a payment that was never captured, and the invoice paid twice because it came in on two different email threads.
International AP software validates that an invoice has a number and a total. It does not know what the VAT Act requires, and it certainly does not know what a B-BBEE certificate is.
Above R5 000 including VAT the customer's name, address and VAT number are mandatory. Below it they are not. Software that applies one rule to everything either blocks valid invoices or lets invalid ones through.
If a particular is missing, the deduction is disallowed on audit — and a penalty and interest follow on the resulting shortfall. Catching it at submission costs nothing.
Preferential procurement recognition rests on supplier certificates being valid at the time of the spend. Tracking expiry dates is procurement infrastructure, not admin.
Organs of state must settle valid invoices within 30 days. If you supply government, knowing exactly when each clock started is the difference between chasing and being paid.
Records must be kept for five years and produced on request. A shared drive is not a records system; an indexed store with an audit trail is.
Bank accounts and director identity documents need role-based access and logged views — which also happens to be the single best control against invoice redirection fraud.
This demonstration is a prototype, not a product you can buy off the shelf today. What we sell is the build — shaped around your approval limits, your suppliers and your accounting package.
An hour with whoever captures invoices today. We map the flow and hand back a written plan — including whether you need a system at all.
Your approval limits, your supplier list, your thresholds. Delivered working, staff trained, source code handed to you.
Hosting, backups, updates when rates or thresholds change, and a set number of change requests each month.
Thirty to sixty minutes, on site or on Teams. If the honest answer is that your current process is fine, we'll tell you that.