Why we built SortedNexus: the small business admin toolkit South Africa needed
By SortedNexus Team · ShellRick Tech · 17 July 2026
We built SortedNexus because we needed it ourselves. We were running a small South African tech business and the tools available were either too expensive, too complex, or simply not built for South Africa at all.
Running a small South African business is already hard enough
When you run a small business in South Africa, whether you are a freelancer, a sole trader, or a micro business with a handful of employees, your time is split between doing the actual work and keeping the business itself alive. Client calls, proposals, service delivery, payments, and somewhere in between all of that: the admin.
Tax invoices. VAT returns. Expense tracking. Cash flow. Quotes that need to turn into invoices. These are not glamorous tasks, but they are the ones that keep you compliant with SARS, keep your cash position visible, and keep you looking professional to clients.
We knew this intimately because we lived it. ShellRick Tech is a small technology business based in South Africa, and for years we wrestled with the same admin headache that every small business owner in this country knows well.
The tools we tried, and why they did not work
The obvious starting point was the accounting software everyone recommends: Xero, Sage, QuickBooks. We tried them. They work, but they are built for businesses several sizes larger than ours. The onboarding alone takes half a day. You need to understand double-entry bookkeeping to navigate them properly. And the pricing reflects that complexity, starting at R350 to R500 per month for the plans that actually let you do what you need.
For a sole trader or micro business invoicing five clients a month, that monthly fee is a meaningful cost. More importantly, 80% of the features you are paying for are things you will never use.
The moment that made it clear
The moment that crystallised it for us was a VAT return quarter. We had invoices in one place, expense receipts in another, a cash flow estimate in a spreadsheet, and a calculator open on the side to work out the 15/115 input VAT on claimable expenses. Pulling it all together into something we could cross-check before submitting on eFiling took the better part of a morning, for data that should have been a five-minute summary.
That is not unique to us. Every VAT-registered sole trader in South Africa goes through some version of this every two months. The information exists (you have the invoices, you have the expense records), but there is no single place that pulls it together in the format SARS wants it.
We thought: there has to be something. There was not. Not for a South African small business at a price that makes sense.
What we actually wanted
We were not looking to replace an accounting firm. We were looking for something that handled the 80% of small business admin that is repetitive and well-understood, without charging enterprise prices or requiring a diploma to operate.
Specifically, we wanted:
- →SARS-compliant invoices: TAX INVOICE when VAT-registered, INVOICE when not. 15% VAT per line item. 10-digit VAT number. Dates in DD/MM/YYYY. These are not hard rules, but every tool we tried got at least one wrong.
- →ZAR-native: Not a USD tool with a currency switcher bolted on. Rands formatted correctly. No floating point arithmetic on money.
- →Expense tracking with input VAT: Log what you spent, tick which expenses include claimable VAT, and have the tool do the 15/115 calculation for you.
- →A VAT return view: Output tax from invoices, input tax from expenses, net payable, organised by SARS bi-monthly period. Not the official eFiling form, but close enough to check your figures before you submit.
- →Simple and fast: Create an invoice in under two minutes. No onboarding wizard. No accounting jargon.
- →Free for occasional use: If you invoice two or three clients a month, you should not need to pay R400/month for the privilege.
So we built it, for ourselves first
SortedNexus started as an internal tool. We needed it, we knew exactly what it had to do, and we had the technical ability to build it. The first version was just an invoice generator, SARS-compliant, ZAR-native, PDF out in under a minute.
It was immediately better than anything we had been using. The invoice looked professional. The VAT was calculated correctly. The PDF came out clean. We could create and send an invoice in the time it used to take just to find the right template.
We added client storage. Then invoice history and status tracking. Then quotes, and quote-to-invoice conversion. Then cash flow tracking. Then expense tracking with VAT claimability. Then the VAT return summary view we had always wanted: output tax, input tax, and net payable, by bi-monthly period.
Each feature went in because we needed it, not because a product roadmap said so.
The gap is bigger than we thought
South Africa has roughly 2.5 million SMMEs. The overwhelming majority of them are sole traders and micro businesses: plumbers, designers, consultants, photographers, tradespeople, coaches, and thousands of other one- and two-person operations doing real work and needing to invoice for it.
Most of them are using Google Docs, or a template someone emailed them five years ago, or an overseas tool that does not know what a TAX INVOICE is. They are calculating VAT manually or getting it wrong. They are losing track of which invoices have been paid. They are spending their Sunday afternoons reconstructing their cash position from bank statements before a quarterly VAT return.
That is the gap SortedNexus exists to close.
What is in it today
The toolkit today covers the core of small business admin:
What is coming next
The build discipline we follow is simple: one tool at a time, shipped properly before the next one starts. No half-finished features, no beta-quality releases.
On the near-term list: email invoice delivery to clients directly from the dashboard, invoice status tracking (sent, viewed, overdue), a basic P&L snapshot, UIF and PAYE calculators, payroll, and a SARS deadlines calendar so you never miss a submission date. Further out: contract generation, BEE scorecard, and a client portal where your clients can view their own documents.
All of it built for South Africa. All of it priced for small businesses, not enterprises.
Try it, no account needed
The invoice generator is free for up to 3 invoices per month with no signup. If you recognise any of what we described above, give it a try.
Disclaimer: This article reflects our own experience running a small South African business. Tool pricing mentioned was accurate at the time of writing. Specific SARS rules and thresholds change, so always verify compliance requirements with a registered tax practitioner.