Set up your business

What this is for

The first time you open Worklog, it asks you to set up your business. What you type in here becomes the "From" details on every quote, invoice and purchase order you make, so it is worth getting right. It only takes a minute, and you can change anything later.

Set up your business (first sign-up)

Setting up is a short wizard — four quick steps with a progress bar along the top that shows "Step 1 of 4", "Step 2 of 4" and so on. Only your business name is required to carry on. On the steps in between you can tap "Skip for now" and add those bits another time.

1. Step 1, Your business: in "Business / trading name", type your business name, for example Thabo's Plumbing. This is the one field you really need.
2. Still on Step 1, under "What kind of business is it?", tap the option that fits best: Service business, Retail business, Food business, Trade & construction, Professional & personal services, or Other. Then tap "Continue".
3. Step 2, Contact details: fill in your Address, Phone and Email (your sign-up email is already filled in for you). These show on your quotes and invoices. Tap "Continue", or "Skip for now".
4. Step 3, How customers pay you: type your Bank and Account number, plus a Branch code and Payment reference if you have them. These print your bank details on invoices so a customer knows where to pay. Tap "Continue", or "Skip for now".
5. Step 4, Tax & SARS: choose how the business is registered with SARS, and add your VAT number, PAYE reference and SDL if they apply. Leave blank whatever you are not registered for.
6. Tap "Finish setup". Worklog then shows a "You're all set up! 🎉" screen with a couple of optional next steps — "Add your bank accounts" and "Invite your team" — and a "Go to my dashboard →" button to start.

Your 14-day free trial

When you set up your business, a 14-day free trial starts automatically. Everything is unlocked and you do not need a bank card. You pick a plan whenever you are ready, and your records always stay yours.

Change your business details later

Everything from setup lives under Business details, plus more: your logo, bank details for getting paid, and your SARS tax details. There are two ways to open it.

• From the home screen, tap the "Business Hub" button at the top right, then tap the "Business details" card.
• Or open Compliance → Compliance Dashboard, tap "Check it →" on the Your set-up card, then "Open it".

Both open the same "Business details" screen. Change what you need, then tap "Save details" at the bottom.

Add your logo

Your logo appears on your quotes and invoices. Without one, Worklog uses the first letter of your business name.

1. Open Business details.
2. Under "Your logo", tap "⬆ Upload logo".
3. Choose a PNG or JPG image, up to 2MB.
4. To swap it later, tap "Change". To take it off, tap "Remove".
5. Tap "Save details".

Add your bank details so customers can pay you

Under "How customers pay you", the bank details you enter print on your invoices and quotes, so a customer knows where to send the money. Fill in at least the bank and account number, otherwise the whole block is left off the document.

1. In "Bank", type your bank, for example FNB, Capitec or Standard Bank.
2. In "Account number", type your business account number.
3. In "Branch code - optional", type your branch code if you have it.
4. In "Payment reference - optional", type something like your trading name. Customers are then asked to use that plus the document number so you can match the payment. Leave it blank and just the document number is used.
5. Tap "Save details".

Set your SARS and VAT tax details

Under "Tax & SARS" in Business details, you tell Worklog which SARS returns apply to you. These settings decide what shows on your tax reports. Leave blank whatever you are not registered for.

1. Under "How you're registered with SARS", tap your legal form: Sole proprietor / Individual, Partnership, Company (Pty) Ltd, Close corporation (CC), Co-operative or Trust. This sets how your income tax is worked out and which annual return applies.
2. Under Which tax do you pay?, two cards: Normal tax (the default — taxed on profit) and Turnover Tax (a micro business SARS has registered for it — taxed on everything that comes in). Each card lists who qualifies and the returns you will file, and the Turnover Tax card shows the current turnover ceiling. If you picked a company, CC or co-operative on normal tax, a Qualifies as an SBC card appears below for the Small Business Corporation scale. A blue So you'll file box then names your returns before you save. Tapping the other card always asks from when: Turnover Tax and normal tax change at the beginning of a tax year, so you pick the 1 March it started (Sixth Schedule paragraphs 8(2) and 9(2)), or "Since the business's books in Worklog began" while nothing is recorded yet and no provisional or annual return is marked as filed. A 1 March is recorded with the optional date on SARS's letter, listed under the cards in plain words, and any one can be taken back with "Recorded in error" (taking back the last one asks which tax the business pays). If the business is on Turnover Tax, tap "Record when it went onto Turnover Tax" to date it: before that date Worklog treats it as on normal tax. If it is on normal tax but was on Turnover Tax before, tap "Record when it left Turnover Tax"; record that only if it really was. A trust is always on normal tax and has nothing to record. A business cannot be saved as a Trust while it is on Turnover Tax or has a recorded change: record the move to normal tax, or take the recorded changes back, first. Turnover Tax began on 1 March 2009, so it cannot be recorded from an earlier date. Leaving it cannot be recorded from before 1 March 2010, the first tax year a business can have left it. A business that has left Turnover Tax cannot be registered for it again (paragraph 8(3)). If SARS took the business off Turnover Tax inside a tax year, Worklog cannot record it yet. Returns already marked as filed keep the form they were marked with. Every tax year screen, reminder and pack follows the tax of its own year. A return marked as filed keeps its form, and its screen says so if your dates now put that year on the other tax. Worklog does not yet adjust for what was invoiced under one tax and is received under the other (section 48C; Sixth Schedule paragraph 7(c)): the first year after a change says so.
3. If you picked Sole proprietor / Individual or Partnership, tap your age under "Your age" and how many people are on your medical aid, yourself included, under "People on your medical aid". A partnership also asks for "Your share of the partnership" as a percentage. Your tax estimates use these.
4. In "VAT number", type your VAT number if you are VAT registered — a SARS VAT number is 10 digits and starts with a 4. Leave it blank if you are not.
5. If you fill in a VAT number, "Which category did SARS give you?" appears with nothing picked, and Save waits until you pick one. Tap the category on your VAT registration notice, or on the VAT201 on eFiling: B or A (every two months, ending Feb, Apr, Jun… or Jan, Mar, May…), C (every month), D (every six months) or E (once a year). SARS decides your category, and Worklog only records it (VAT Act s27).
6. On D, pick the two months your six-month periods end in (the Act sets February and August unless SARS approved others). On E, pick the month your year of assessment ends in (nothing is picked for you, and Save waits for it). SARS sets your category and the date a change starts, not Worklog (VAT Act s27). A change you ask for starts from a future date and is not backdated, unless SARS captured the wrong category or your circumstances changed (VAT 404 guide section 3.2.2); use the date on SARS's notice. Worklog keeps one category and no history: once you save a change, every return you have not marked filed is worked on the new category's periods, and a return marked filed keeps its own period. Until Worklog keeps a history of categories (not built yet), the new category's periods are also drawn over the months before the change, so a period that overlaps returns already filed under the old category can show as not filed. So mark the old category's returns filed first, and change it only when SARS's change starts.
7. Under "How do you account for VAT?", tap "When I invoice (standard)", which almost every vendor uses, or "When money moves (payments basis)" if you qualify for it, which you apply for and SARS approves in writing, except after a voluntary registration below R50 000 (see below). The Act lets a natural person (or a partnership of natural persons) ask for it if their taxable sales were R2,5 million or less in the last 12 months, or are not likely to pass that in the next 12, and a few bodies such as municipalities; a company or a trust does not qualify unless it is one of those bodies (VAT Act section 15(2)). A business registered voluntarily (section 23(3)(b)(ii)), because its taxable supplies had not exceeded R50 000 but could reasonably be expected to exceed that amount within 12 months from the date of registration, is on the payments basis from the day it was registered, without applying (section 15(2B)); it moves to the invoice basis from the start of the tax period after the one in which its taxable sales come to more than R50 000, unless it qualifies under section 15(2)(b) and SARS has approved it. Worklog warns when your business type is one the section leaves out, but it records what SARS approved. Even then, a sale of R100 000 or more, VAT included, is declared in the period you invoice it, or earlier if part of the price was paid before the invoice (section 15(2A), section 9(1)). The Act measures one supply and Worklog reads each invoice as one supply, so it does not add up several invoices for one job. The two bases give different returns. To change it later, tap the other basis: Worklog asks for the first VAT period on it, and the date on SARS’s notice if you have it. SARS decides your basis by whole VAT periods (VAT Act s15), so the day you tap has no effect, and every period before the first one on the new basis stays on the old basis, filed or not. Worklog warns you in the Act’s words when the start you pick is not one the Act can give (s15(2) for the payments basis, s15(3) for the invoice basis), and records what you choose. A return you already marked filed keeps the basis it was filed on: Worklog names any filed return your record puts on another basis, and SARS’s step is a VAT201 Request for Correction on eFiling. If you recorded one in error, tap Recorded in error. Worklog works the change-of-basis amount (VAT Act s15(4) to (9); VAT201 field 12 or 18) for you and puts it on the VAT201 that carries it, with its working one tap away; a worked example is in Worklog’s own help guide, “Work on your VAT201”. A change of basis sits on a period start of the VAT category you have now. Worklog keeps no history of your category or end months, so if they were different in the past it cannot know.
8. Under "Shared costs" (owner only, VAT-registered businesses), tick "Some of my costs are shared with exempt income or private use" if you let out a dwelling, earn interest, or run a crèche or other exempt work beside your taxable sales, or a phone or internet bill is partly private. The VAT Act (s17(1)) lets you claim only the part of the VAT on those costs that goes to taxable sales. Worklog asks you to set the share for each tax year (this one, and last year too if you still capture slips from it; a purchase uses the share of the tax year it falls in): tap "Last year's books (SARS's standard method)" and it works taxable sales ÷ (taxable + exempt + other income) from last year — zero-rated sales count as taxable; interest, dividends and grants count in the other income; asset sales, loans, money you put in and SARS refunds are left out — and you tap "Use" to confirm it. A new business with no previous year types its business-plan estimate. If SARS has given you your own VAT ruling, choose that, and type the ratio with the ruling's number. There is no box for any other figure: the ratio has to be SARS's. At 95% or more you claim all the VAT. On a supplier invoice each line that charges VAT asks the same question as a purchase in Money Out, so the share applies line by line. A repeating supplier invoice keeps each line's answer; the one Worklog makes for you overnight takes the share of the day it is made, and a line you never answered takes the usual one. With no share set for that year it claims none of the VAT.
9. A phone or internet bill that is partly private can claim the business-use percentage your SARS VAT ruling for private use allows, and only with that ruling: type its number under "Part-private costs". Beside the number, say whether the percentage your ruling gives already allows for exempt income. If it does, an item claims its percentage as it stands. If it covers private use only, the percentage is multiplied by the tax year's taxable share (a phone used 80% for business in a year that is 60% taxable claims 48% of its VAT). Until you answer, an item cannot claim its own percentage, and rows already saved keep the share they were saved with. Without a ruling, a part-private cost claims no VAT.
10. In "PAYE reference number", type the PAYE reference from SARS eFiling. This is needed for EMP201 if you have staff.
11. If you employ people, type your "UIF reference number" from uFiling and your "Compensation Fund (COIDA) registration number" — the CF registration number the Fund issued you. They print on your UIF declaration and your Return of Earnings.
12. Under "SDL (Skills Development Levy)", tap the box to switch on "Registered for SDL" if that applies to you. The screen shows the annual payroll amount above which SDL is required.
13. Tap "Save details".

Once your VAT number is saved, Worklog works out VAT automatically on your quotes, invoices and supplier invoices, and on the cash income you log.

Choose which tools you see

In Business details you can also control how much of Worklog shows on your home screen, under "Tools on your home screen".

1. Open Business details.
2. Under "Tools on your home screen", tap "Show every tool" to see everything Worklog can do, whatever your business type.
3. Leave it off to keep seeing just the tools your kind of business usually needs.
4. Tap "Save details".

Two more switches

Also under "App preferences" in Business details:

• "Use AI features": switch it off and nothing you type or upload is sent to the AI service. Quick Log, Loggy and bank-statement import stop, and you log with the ordinary forms.
• "Email me last month's figures": each owner gets last month's figures by email at the start of the month.