March 1. The new financial year, for most South African businesses. The books reset. The vibes are alive. Everything's at zero and it feels gooood.
We know what most entrepreneurs do with this energy. Absolutely nothing. And then February rolls around again and it's 11pm on the 27th and we're digging through our cubbyhole like it owes us money.
Not us. Not this year.
Here's our "new year, new me" but for our business - and this one actually sticks.
Week One: Sort Our Lives Out
1. Finish Last Year First
Before we go full send on the new year, let's make sure the old one is actually done.
Bank reconciled? Every transaction matched? Tax return timeline locked in?
That invoice from January that still says "pending"? Chase it. Now. Not Monday. Now.
(If we're reading this and last year's books are still a mess - that's okay. But let's sort it before we do anything else. New year energy doesn't fix old year problems.)
2. Separate Our Money
Business account. Personal account. Done.
Still running our hustle through a personal cheque account? March 1 is the day. Open a business account. Get a separate card. Never look back.
Mixing business and personal money is like making a potjie and throwing our laundry in there too. Everything's technically in one pot. Nothing is usable.
3. Start Saving for Tax Immediately
Every time money hits our account, move 20-30% aside, to a separate savings account, for tax. (Disclosure, this can differ business to business and is a ballpark %).
Label it something that keeps us honest. "SARS MONEY 🚨" works. "DO NOT TOUCH UNLESS WE WANT TO CRY IN FEBRUARY" also works.
Our actual rate might be different. Doesn't matter. Having something saved beats owing SARS R40,000 we already spent on stock. (Ask us how we know. We've heard this one more times than we can count.)
Month One: Build the Machine
4. Pick One System. Use It. Every Time.
Shoebox full of receipts? No. Spreadsheet from 2019 with seventeen tabs? No. Our memory? Reeeally no.
One tool. Every transaction, every receipt, every invoice - one place. From day one. We know where this is going. 😏
5. Become a Receipt Hoarder
Buy something for the business → phone camera → upload → move on with our lives.
That's the whole system. Five seconds.
No receipt = no claim. SARS doesn't do "trust me bro." They didn't do it last year. They won't do it this year. They're very consistent like that.
Start in March? We'll have twelve months of clean records by year-end. Start in January next year? We'll have one month of receipts and eleven months of "I think it was about R300?"
6. Book a Monthly (or Weekly) Money Date
Two hours. Once a month. Put it in the calendar. Treat it like a meeting we cannot cancel - because the client is our future selves, and that person has opinions.
Here's the agenda:
- Reconcile our bank (match what our bank says to what our records say - find the gaps)
- Check what we're owed and chase overdue payments (be that person, it's our money)
- Review expenses - "was this actually for the business or was this that one time at the Hussar Grill date night special?"
- Move our tax savings across
That's it.
Two hours a month = sorted entrepreneur.
Zero hours a month = twenty-hour February panic.
Our choice.
Three Numbers. That's It.
We don't need a finance degree. We don't need to know what EBITDA stands for. (Nobody actually does. They're all pretending.)
We need three numbers, every month:
Money in. What we earned. Revenue. The good stuff.
Money out. What we spent. Expenses. The necessary stuff. (And the unnecessary stuff. Let's be honest.)
What's left. Money in minus money out = profit. Or loss. Either way - know the number. Knowing is half the battle.
If we track these three numbers monthly, we're ahead of most entrepreneurs. Not motivational-poster ahead. Actually ahead.
Stuff We'll Forget (That'll Cost Us)
Provisional tax. Freelancer? Side hustler? Running our own thing? We probably need to pay SARS twice a year - August and February (there is an optional top up in September too) - based on what we estimate we'll earn. Miss it and they add penalties. Not the fun kind of penalties. Not that there's a fun kind.
Expenses we're not claiming. We might be paying more tax than we need to. Think about:
- Car costs (if 40% of our driving is business-related and we keep a logbook, we may be able to claim 40% of the related costs) (Please note the may).
- Internet and phone (if we work from home)
- Software, subscriptions, marketing
- That GetSmarter course we did
Legitimate business expense + proof = less tax. That's the formula.
The five-year rule. SARS wants us to keep records for five years. That receipt from March 2026? We might need it in 2031. Digital copies count - but they need to be legible. That photo we took at a weird angle in bad lighting? Take another one.
The Bottom Line
Nobody's throwing confetti because it's a new financial year. There's no countdown. No fireworks. Just us and our books, and a fresh start.
But this is the moment. Right here. Where next-year us either says "sorted, let's go" or "why do we do this to ourselves every single year."
Two hours a month. Receipts from day one. Money separated. Tax saved.
That's the whole game. It's not complicated. It's just consistent.
Let's get after it. 💜