Retail accounting software for South African shops

Your card machine gives you a settlement total, your cash drawer gives you another number, and your bookkeeper works from bank statements that arrive days later. Reconciling a month of retail trade means printing Z-reports, chasing missing slips and guessing at the difference. By the time the books are done, the trading month is over and the numbers can't change any decision you make.

You buy 60 units, you think you sold 40, but the shelf shows 14. Shrinkage, breakages, staff sales, supplier short-deliveries and returns all eat into stock, and a spreadsheet updated once a week can't tell you which one it was. Without a running stock count tied to actual sales, your cost of sales is an estimate — and so is your profit.

Once you cross the R1,000,000 turnover mark you must register for VAT with SARS, and VAT201 returns become a fixed part of your calendar. If your sales aren't recorded with VAT separated at the point of sale, and your supplier invoices aren't captured with input VAT, every return turns into a weekend of re-adding totals from a shoebox of slips.

Turnover looks healthy but the bank account doesn't. That usually means a few fast-moving lines are being sold at a thin margin while slow stock ties up cash on the shelf. Without cost price sitting next to selling price on every item, you're pricing, discounting and reordering on gut feel instead of gross profit.

Every transaction you ring up in Tallium AI's POS posts straight to your accounts and drops the item out of stock in the same second. Cash, card and account sales are separated automatically, so your day-end cash-up compares what the till says to what's in the drawer, and your bookkeeping is already done when you lock up. No re-keying, no month-end catch-up.

Tallium AI tracks quantity and cost for every item, so receiving a delivery, selling a unit, writing off a breakage and processing a return all move the same running number. Stock takes are done on the mobile app by scanning shelves, and variances are logged as adjustments you can review — so you can see whether shrinkage is a counting problem or a people problem.

Set your VAT rate and treatment per product once, and Tallium AI splits output VAT on every sale and input VAT on every supplier invoice as it happens. Snap a photo of a supplier slip and the AI reads the vendor, amount and VAT for you. When your VAT201 period closes, the figures you need for SARS eFiling are already summarised instead of reconstructed. Confirm current rules with SARS or a local tax professional.

Because selling price and cost price live on the same item record, Tallium AI shows margin by product, category, supplier and hour of day. AI insights flag the lines quietly losing you money, the stock that hasn't moved in 90 days, and the reorder points you keep hitting late. You get the numbers early enough to change a price or cancel an order.