We are looking for our first in-house payroll person. AskMandla handles employment for South African households that employ domestic workers. A household signs up on WhatsApp and we produce the employment contract, register the worker for UIF, run her payroll, pay her by EFT, and send her a payslip every month. For most of the workers on our platform, the payslip we produce is the first proof of income they have ever had, the thing that lets them open a bank account, get credit, or claim UIF. We have grown from 60 households to over 240 in a few months, and payroll has outgrown the external firm that has been running it. We want the person who does it to be in the room.
What you’d own
- The monthly pay run for every household we serve, in SimplePay. We run a separate payroll per household, so this is closer to bureau work than to one company’s payroll.
- Getting every reported change into SimplePay correctly and on time: leave, overtime, pay changes, new hires, terminations, banking details.
- Setting up new households and workers, around 100 new workers a month at the moment.
- UIF registration and declarations, including the manual submissions to the Department of Employment and Labour when the uFiling portal will not verify a household.
- SARS payroll submissions: EMP201, annual reconciliation, IRP5.
- Preparing payment batches for authorisation, and making sure every worker’s money arrives.
- Writing down how all of it works, so the company knows and does not have to ask you.
What we need
- Three or more years running South African payroll end to end, ideally across multiple employer entities. A payroll bureau or an accounting practice is the closest fit.
- Hands-on experience with a cloud payroll platform. SimplePay is ideal; Sage, PaySpace or Pastel transfers.
- UIF in practice: employer registrations, UI-19 declarations, and dealing with the Department when something does not go through.
- SARS payroll submissions.
- Working knowledge of the Basic Conditions of Employment Act and the sectoral determination for domestic work: minimum wage, hours, overtime and Sunday and public holiday rates, leave, terminations.
- Accuracy against a fixed deadline, and the persistence to chase things until they close.
- Clear written English.
- You can work from our office in Techno Park, Stellenbosch, five days a week.
Helpful, not required: SimplePay specifically, Xero familiarity, a payroll qualification, an additional South African language.
What this job is not
You would not be managing a payroll team, you would be doing the payroll and deciding how it should run. There is no settled process waiting for you. Half the job is building it.
Why it matters
When a payslip is late or wrong, a domestic worker who did nothing wrong pays for it. That is the standard the job is held to, and it is the reason we want it in-house.