HelloBooks is the AI accountant for businesses in South Africa. It categorises transactions, captures bills by OCR, reconciles your bank statements and drafts the month-end close, with your books in ZAR. Free Plan, no credit card.
95%+ auto-match is an internal benchmark, not an audited figure · SOC 2 Type II is an independent attestation, not a certification
Accounting software for businesses in South Africa. Books in ZAR, closed by AI. HelloBooks is the AI accountant for businesses in South Africa. It categorises transactions, captures bills by OCR, reconciles your bank statements and drafts the month-end close, with your books in ZAR. Free Plan, no credit card.
HelloBooks is AI accounting software for businesses in South Africa. The AI agent categorises transactions, captures bills and receipts by OCR, reconciles imported bank statements and drafts the month-end close, with your books kept in ZAR.
AI-powered accounting software for South Africa businesses. VAT compute at 15%, SARS VAT201 return preparation, AI categorisation and bank reconciliation — live today. Bi-monthly filing ready.
The Free Plan unlocks the core accounting features for up to 2 users, no credit card required. Subscriptions are priced and billed in US dollars — see /za/pricing for the plans.
Each one is a feature you'd otherwise stitch together from two or three tools. Skim them here, then watch the agent work in the live demo below.
AI-Powered
AI-based accounting software that listens. Tell your AI what to do — create invoices, record bills, or snap a receipt. Our AI bookkeeping software handles the workflow from capture to categorization.
Reconciliation
95%+¹
AI matches transactions in real time. Bulk-reconcile in one click — no rules to write.
Local compliance
Transactions are categorised with local tax treatment suggested for review, so your accountant gets books that are ready to check and file from.
AI Payables
Let AI match invoices to payments and recommend approvals with confidence. Watch AI parse extracted line items, auto-match to existing inventory, and suggest mappings.
Migration
Switch without the stress. Migrate from QuickBooks, Xero, Tally, Zoho or Wave and bring your ledger across — every transaction, contact, item and opening balance — with a dry-run preview before you commit.
¹ 95%+ auto-match is an internal benchmark, not an audited figure
You stay in control
HelloBooks does the heavy lifting, but it never files or posts behind your back. The AI proposes; you and your accountant dispose — with a full audit trail and an undo on everything.
HelloBooks reads bills, categorises transactions and matches your bank feed — then hands you the result. Nothing posts to your ledger until you (or your accountant) confirm it.
A full audit trail logs what the AI suggested, what actually changed, who approved it and when — so month-end and any review start from a clean, defensible history.
Edit or unwind any AI-assisted entry, match or categorisation. Nothing is a one-way door, so an automation can never quietly corrupt your books.
Invite your CA or bookkeeper with reviewer or read-only access. Bills route through approval before payment, and returns wait for a human sign-off before they are filed.
One platform
Receivables, payables, banking, inventory, tax and reports share one ledger — so nothing is re-typed between apps and the AI agent sees the whole picture.
Create and send invoices, put retainers on recurring billing and let customers pay online. The AI agent matches every incoming payment to its invoice and chases the ones that are overdue.
Bills and receipts arrive by email or upload, OCR reads them, and the AI codes each line to the right account. Expense claims route for approval before anything is paid.
Bring in bank and card transactions and let AI reconciliation do the matching: a deposit to its invoice, a card swipe to its expense account. You review the exceptions, not every line.
Items, variants, units of measure and bills of materials live in the same ledger as your invoices and bills, so stock valuation is always current and reorder alerts fire before you run out.
Explore Inventory
Transactions are categorised with local tax treatment suggested for review, so your accountant gets books that are ready to check and file from.
Explore Local tax & compliance
Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash-flow statements update as transactions post. AP and AR aging and custom report layouts are a click away, with multi-entity views on the Business plan.
Why HelloBooks
Six reasons businesses pick HelloBooks over QuickBooks, Xero, Zoho Books and Tally — drawn from what the platform does today, not from a roadmap.
The AI Accounting Agent categorises transactions at 95%+ accuracy, reconciles feeds, drafts journal entries and closes the month — then hands you the result to approve. HelloBooks was built AI-first; QuickBooks and Tally bolted AI onto a twenty-year-old ledger.
US 1099 and multi-state sales tax, India GST with IRN e-invoicing and e-way bills, UK MTD-ready VAT, UAE VAT, Australia BAS GST preparation, Canada GST/HST and T4 preparation, and Singapore GST F5 preparation — all native, no per-country connector to license. Direct e-filing is live in India, Australia, the UK, the US and the UAE.
Live exchange rates, per-entity base currencies and consolidated reporting across entities are in every paid plan. Competitors gate multi-currency to an upper tier and meter the seats underneath it, so a cross-border team pays twice for the thing it needs most.
Direct Plaid connections are live in the US and Canada and are rolling out across the UK and the EU. Everywhere else, upload a PDF or CSV statement and the AI parses, categorises and matches every line against your invoices and bills — so no market waits on a banking integration to close its books.
HelloTime, the sibling product in the Meru Fin Tech suite, handles attendance, leave and payroll runs on the web and writes the payroll journals into HelloBooks — no CSV round trip, no month-end reconciliation between two systems. The HelloTime Attend mobile app for shift workers ships Q3 2026.
The Free Plan carries the core accounting features, 2 users, with no credit card. Pro is $39.99/month per entity with unlimited users and no per-seat fee. Plans are billed in US dollars; your books stay in your own currency.
South Africa · VAT accounting
HelloBooks computes South Africa VAT at 15% on every invoice and bill, reconciles your imported bank transactions with AI, and prepares the SARS VAT201 from your live ledger for you to submit on eFiling. The rate has stood at 15% since April 2018 — the increases proposed during 2025 were withdrawn. Most vendors file two-monthly under Category A or B, with the return and payment due by the last business day of the month following the tax period. Compulsory registration begins at R2.3 million of taxable supplies in any 12 consecutive months, raised from R1 million with effect from 1 April 2026.
Zero-rated basics — brown bread, maize meal, samp, dried beans and lentils, milk and eggs, fruit and vegetables, canned pilchards and vegetable cooking oil — carry no output VAT while input VAT on related costs stays claimable. The statutory list names specific products, so “food” is not a zero-rating in itself.
South Africa is unusual in running most VAT vendors on a two-month cycle rather than a monthly or quarterly one, and SARS splits vendors across offset categories so the returns do not all land in the same week. The month your period closes in is a fact about your registration, not about the calendar.
The practical consequence is that a transaction categorised late does not delay a report — it lands in the wrong return. HelloBooks groups transactions into the correct two-month period as they are categorised.
Alongside VAT, a South African company pays income tax in advance through provisional tax on the IRP6: two compulsory estimates, the first within six months of the start of the year of assessment and the second by the last day of that year. An optional third top-up payment can follow — for February year-ends, usually by the end of September — mainly to limit interest on an underpayment. The annual ITR14 return is filed within twelve months of the financial year-end, at the standard corporate rate of 27% for years of assessment ending on or after 31 March 2023.
An estimate is only as good as the books behind it, and an underestimate is penalised. HelloBooks does not compute the IRP6 — that is on the roadmap above — but the reconciled profit-and-loss statement and balance sheet it is built from are produced continuously rather than assembled the week before the deadline.
South African vendors who file their own VAT201 or work closely with an accountant who does: consultancies invoicing monthly retainers; wholesalers and retailers with a real split of standard-rated and zero-rated stock; exporters billing in dollars, pounds or euros against rand costs; and owner-managed companies keeping VAT and provisional tax in view at once.
Direct bank feeds via Plaid are live in 20 countries today (the US, UK, Canada and Europe). For South Africa, the fastest way to get your bank data into HelloBooks is statement import — and it works with any bank:
Export a PDF, CSV, or Excel statement from any bank in South Africa and drop it into HelloBooks.
Every line is extracted, categorised, and matched to invoices or bills — in your local currency.
Confirm the AI's suggestions and reconcile the period. Nothing posts to your books without your say-so.
Multi-currency throughout, and your data stays private — HelloBooks never asks for your online-banking login. As open-banking coverage expands, direct connections will reach more markets over time.
No. The increase to 15.5% proposed for May 2025, and the further step to 16% proposed for April 2026, were both withdrawn. The standard rate is still 15%, where it has been since April 2018.
Registration is compulsory once taxable supplies exceed R2.3 million in any 12 consecutive months — raised from R1 million with effect from 1 April 2026. Voluntary registration remains available at a lower level, worth considering if most of your customers are themselves VAT vendors.
SARS allocates you to Category A or B at registration, offset by one month so returns are spread across the year: Category A periods end in odd-numbered months, Category B in even-numbered ones. Vendors above R30 million of taxable turnover file monthly under Category C.
No. HelloBooks computes output VAT, input VAT and the net payable from your posted transactions and prepares the VAT201 figures for review. You submit and pay on SARS eFiling. Direct e-filing is on the roadmap above, not live today.
Not as a computation — provisional tax (IRP6) is on the roadmap above. What is live is the profit-and-loss statement, balance sheet and cash-flow report a provisional estimate is built from, produced from an already-reconciled ledger.
Page last reviewed: 2026-09-05. Tax rules change — confirm current rates, thresholds and deadlines with SARS or your tax adviser before filing.
Tailored for you
Whether you run the business, advise it or are just getting it started, HelloBooks sets up around your workflow.
Invoicing, bank reconciliation and reports on a Free Plan — no credit card and no time limit.
Accounting software for small businessClose the month in hours, keep investor-ready financials, and grow to unlimited users on Pro.
Accounting software for startupsRun every client’s books from one dashboard, automate the routine work, and join the free partner program.
HelloBooks for accountantsSee project and client profitability, bill retainers on repeat, and know your margin on every client.
Accounting for agenciesConnect HelloBooks to your software, automation tools, and workflows. Get an API key in one click, use a safe sandbox, explore the API docs, and see every request your integration makes.
Sign in, choose your company, and get an API key.
Test with realistic Indian accounting data without touching a real ledger.
API documentation, code samples, request logs, webhooks, and OAuth support.
# No organization ID, no entity ID:
# the key already identifies your company.
curl https://<api-host>/public/v1/customers \
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Core accounting, AI-powered. Free to start. No credit card required.
Everything you need to start — no credit card
A first paid step — more users and bank feeds
AI-powered automation for growing businesses
Heavier ops + analytics for multi-entity & inventory-led businesses
For groups that outgrow standard accounting software
Accountant or bookkeeper? Partner Program is free to join
Free reseller channel for accountants — earn a wholesale discount as your client book grows
Frequently Asked Questions
AI-powered accounting software built for small businesses, freelancers, and CPAs.
HelloBooks is an AI-powered accounting software that automates bookkeeping tasks like transaction categorization, bank reconciliation, and financial reporting. Unlike QuickBooks, FreshBooks, or Xero, HelloBooks uses AI agents to eliminate manual data entry — saving businesses 20+ hours per month.
HelloBooks has a Free Plan with the core accounting features, up to 2 users, and free AI credits to get started — no credit card. Pro is $39.99/month per entity with unlimited users and 15,000 AI credits. Pro is priced per entity rather than per seat, so the whole team is included at one price for that entity, and AI bookkeeping is on every plan — the Free Plan included — rather than gated to a higher tier.
Yes — HelloBooks offers a permanent Free Plan with free AI credits to get started, 1 bank connection (a bank account or a credit card), AP/AR aging reports, and the core accounting features. Up to 2 users included. No credit card required to sign up. No time limit. Upgrade to Pro when you need more AI credits or unlimited users; multi-entity is on Business.
HelloBooks connects to 11,000+ US banks and credit unions via Plaid for real-time transaction feeds. Once connected, our AI automatically categorizes transactions with 95%+ accuracy.
Yes — HelloBooks includes a guided QuickBooks USA migration that imports your company file (chart of accounts, customers, vendors, transactions, and history) in a single pass. It is a one-time data migration, not an ongoing two-way sync — once you are on HelloBooks, that is your source of truth.
HelloBooks AI automates transaction categorization, bank reconciliation, vendor/customer matching, invoice processing via OCR, expense claim approvals, anomaly detection, and financial report generation. It learns your patterns and gets smarter over time.
Yes — HelloBooks is built for both small businesses and accounting professionals. CPAs can manage multiple clients from one dashboard, automate bookkeeping workflows, and reduce manual work. We offer a partner program for accounting firms.
HelloBooks includes AI bookkeeping on every plan, Free included — not gated behind a higher tier — and prices Pro per entity rather than per seat, so the whole team is covered at one price for that entity. A guided QuickBooks USA import brings your exported company file across when you are ready to switch. See our detailed comparison at hellobooks.ai/compare.
Yes. HelloBooks has per-source importers for QuickBooks (Online and Desktop), Xero, Tally, Zoho Books and Wave, plus a generic CSV import for any other tool. Your chart of accounts, contacts, transactions, items and opening balances come across, and a dry-run preview with one-click rollback means nothing is final until you commit. Start at hellobooks.ai/migrate.
Your books are available from any browser or the HelloBooks mobile app, updates reach every account automatically with nothing to install, and your accountant works in the same live ledger instead of trading files. Bank feeds and AI categorization keep the numbers current between reviews, so month-end becomes a check rather than a catch-up.
Yes, by market. In India, HelloBooks files GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B directly and generates IRN e-invoices and e-way bills. In the US it tracks multi-state sales tax and prepares 1099s, and in the UK it keeps MTD-ready VAT records. In Australia, Canada, Singapore and Kenya it prepares BAS, GST/HST, GST F5 and VAT3 returns, with e-filing on the roadmap in those markets.
HelloBooks is independently attested under SOC 2 Type II — an attestation, not a certification. Security controls, data handling and sub-processors are documented in the HelloBooks Trust Center at hellobooks.ai/trust-center.
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