AJM Financial Services

If your company is VAT-registered in SA, claiming input VAT incorrectly—or missing valid claims—directly impacts your bottom line. SARS is increasingly auditing VAT returns with automated compliance checks. Common mistakes include claiming VAT without a valid Tax Invoice or claiming for non-deductible items like entertainment.

Let’s ensure you claim every cent you're legally owed while keeping your SARS profile 100% audit-proof.

Want our senior tax team to review your VAT workflow? Send us a DM today to book a digital health check!

Spring is here, and Mother City tourism, hospitality, and retail businesses are preparing for the summer influx.
But seasonal revenue surges bring massive cash flow volatility. If your working capital is tied up in stock or unpaid winter invoices, scaling up staff and inventory for Q4 will feel like uphill climbing.

💡 3 Spring Checks:
1) Audit supplier terms,
2) Set up short-term credit reserves, and
3) Forecast seasonal payroll.

How is your business preparing for the summer peak?

Managing a team in South Africa comes with a heavy regulatory burden. Between PAYE, UIF, and SDL, your monthly EMP201 submission to SARS must be absolute perfection.

Simple errors—like misclassifying independent contractors, failing to update tax tables for new hires, or missing the monthly 7th-day payment deadline—trigger automatic 10% late payment penalties from SARS.

With stricter payroll audits coming into effect this year, running payroll on basic spreadsheets is incredibly high-risk.

We implement automated, cloud-based payroll systems (like SimplePay or Sage) that handle calculations automatically, keeping your staff happy and SARS compliant. Let us clean up your payroll infrastructure this coming month.

This is your final reminder: The 31 August SARS deadline for the First Provisional Tax period is next Monday.

SARS takes underestimation very seriously. If your estimated taxable income falls below the required threshold of your actual final assessment, you can face an automatic 20% underestimation penalty plus compounding interest.

If your business experienced shifting revenue patterns over the last 6 months, using last year’s figures as a safe harbour might not protect you if your actual income has skyrocketed.

Our tax team is working extended hours this week to process calculations safely for Cape Town business owners. Don't risk penalties—send us a message now to secure your filing spot.

As we head into the final stretch of Q3, ask yourself: Are you spending your time growing your business, or are you drowning in payroll, VAT, and monthly management accounts?

Many growing Cape Town businesses don't need the massive overhead of a full-time, in-house financial manager or CFO. What they need is an outsourced, agile accounting team.

When you partner with us, you instantly gain access to:

✔️ Dedicated monthly bookkeeping and VAT submissions
✔️ Payroll processing and UIF/PAYE management
✔️ Strategic management reporting and tax planning

Get all the expertise of an elite accounting department at a fraction of the cost. Let's set up a discovery call to build a monthly package tailored to your exact business scale.

Sometimes you don't know your financial accounting is broken until you get a penalty letter from SARS. Let’s avoid that.

If your current accounting framework looks like this, it’s time to make a change:

1️⃣ Radio Silence: You only hear from your accountant once a year at tax time, rather than receiving proactive monthly insights.

2️⃣ Outdated Numbers: Your books are consistently 2 to 3 months behind, meaning you’re making decisions based on old data.

3️⃣ Surprise Tax Bills: You are never warned about upcoming VAT or provisional tax liabilities until days before they are due.

Your accountant should be a growth partner, not just a historian. Experience the difference of a proactive financial team. DM us for a free initial consultation.

Continuing our focus on Women's Month, let's talk about structural scaling.

Many female entrepreneurs start out as sole proprietors, but as revenue grows, keeping this structure can expose you to personal liability and limit your access to business funding or corporate enterprise development grants.

Transitioning to a Private Company (Pty) Ltd opens doors to:

🔸 Formal B-BBEE compliance advantages
🔸 Structured corporate tax rates (and potential Small Business Corporation tax relief)
🔸 Clean financial ring-fencing for future investors

If you want to take your business from a successful operation to a legacy asset, let's review your legal and tax structure this month.

Happy National Women’s Day! Today, we celebrate the female trailblazers, founders, and executives who drive innovation across the Western Cape and beyond.

Financial literacy is the ultimate tool for business empowerment. True sustainable growth happens when female leaders have absolute clarity over their numbers—from margins to tax optimisation strategies.

We are proud to partner with and advise exceptional female-led businesses, providing the financial backbone they need to scale confidently.

To the women building legacies today: We see your grit, your vision, and your impact. How can your business break financial ceilings this quarter? Let’s map it out together.

If your company has a February year-end, or if you earn untaxed non-salary income, the clock is ticking.

Your First Provisional Tax submission and payment for the 2027 tax year is due on Monday, 31 August 2026.

Provisional tax is often misunderstood—it’s not an extra tax, but a way to pay your income tax liability in advance so you aren't hit with an impossible cash drain later. Because this first payment requires an accurate estimate of your taxable income for the current year, guesswork can result in stiff SARS penalties.

Don't leave your calculations to the final week. Let us help you project your earnings accurately and defensively. Contact us today to get started early.

We are officially past the halfway mark of the calendar year. For businesses operating on a February year-end, we are also approaching the end of the first half of the financial year.

Now is the ideal window to run a comprehensive management account review. Waiting until year-end to see if you made a profit is reactive. Reviewing your numbers now allows you to pivot.

📊 What we look at during a mid-year check:

• Budget vs. Actual spend (Where did the overspending happen?)

• Gross profit margin stability against inflation.

• Tax liability projections to avoid a February shock.

Let’s look under the hood of your financial data before Q3 takes off. Book a mid-year strategy session with our senior accountants today.