Sage if They Already Use It

Some owners already have Sage — Business Cloud Accounting, or Pastel on a desktop — because of a shop, a practice, or an accountant who never left Pastel. That is a reason to keep the rent and the repairs in the file they already rec. It is not a reason to buy Sage to “manage students,” and it is not a reason to put a tenant’s name in a product that will appear in a URL or a support export.

If a partner or affiliate link to Sage appears here, ManjeProp may earn a commission if you subscribe. You do not pay more. Confirm which product you actually own on Sage South Africa. Cloud Accounting is not desktop Pastel. Mixing the names is how a weekend import fails.

This is not tax advice. Residential rent and VAT are a practitioner question.

Keep Sage as the money file

Use it for:

The owner entity
Rent income and repair costs, split by house if you have more than one
Supplier bills (plumbers, hardware) with PDFs attached
Bank rec
A user for the accountant

Do not use it for:

A tenant register
Incoming inspection photos
Identity documents
A deposit “module” you invented as a dummy customer called “Thabo deposit”
Access control

PropertyCare (or your ticket book) holds operations. Sage holds the rand. When a repair is done, the contractor invoice goes to Sage. The ticket stays on the desk. Two truths on purpose.

If they meant Pastel desktop

The company file lives on a machine. Back it up. The only person with the dongle should not be the only person who can rec rent in December. If the owner wants the bookkeeper in another suburb to work the same day, that is a reason to discuss Cloud Accounting — as a migration project, not as a toggle. We will not migrate it for you. Your accountant will.

If the desktop file already rec’s and nobody needs remote access, leave it. A new subscription to look modern is how January rent hits two systems.

Chart and references

Same boring shape as any landlord ledger: rent, repairs, contractors, materials, insurance, rates, bond interest, drawings. Tracking or a cost centre per property. Invoice numbers and property names. No ID numbers in the reference field. No student number as a customer code.

Deposits are not revenue until they are lawfully applied. Do not dump a deposit into rent income because Sage wanted a customer. Ask the accountant how they want deposits shown. Then do that, every time.

Users and POPIA

Invite users as themselves. When a bookkeeper leaves, remove them. Multi-factor authentication. Do not store a folder of leases inside Sage’s attachment pile if a restricted drive already holds them. Attachments get exported. Exports get mailed.

Sage support can, in principle, see what support tickets need. Do not put a medical note or a disciplinary story on a bill narrative.

How ManjeProp invoices sit in their Sage

We raise our invoice with lines, tax as configured, and a reference. They capture it as a supplier bill. They mark it paid when the bank shows it. They do not mark it paid because a screen said so. We do not need a login to their Sage to do our job. We will not accept one that also contains their other businesses’ payroll.

When to refuse a Sage project

Refuse if the request is “Sage for tenant management.” That product, if it exists in some other country’s property suite, is not what we install, and it is a tenant-data product we will not affiliate.

Refuse a mid-month migration during a turnover week. Finish the month. Lock it. Then move.

Refuse to encode a room as a serialised stock item. Rooms are not stock.

Buying

Only if Sage is already the language of the accountant, or the owner already pays for it. Confirm Start versus Standard and what VAT worksheets exist on the current ZA pages. This article quotes no price.

Owners who only have one house and a shoe box should not buy Sage because this article exists. They should rec the bank.

The line we will not cross

No tenant-data products. No Sage “student housing” add-on. No biometric time clock for who is in the kitchen. No URL that contains a surname. Money in Sage. People in the desk, behind a login, with a purpose.