Sage alternative · South AfricaThe Sage alternative
The Sage alternative
built for South Africa.
If you're weighing up whether Sage is still the right fit, OxyAccounting is a full South African cloud accounting platform at R149/month: one plan, every feature, no tiers. Here's how it stacks up.
Sage is a well-established name, but for many South African small businesses it's more product, and more cost, than they need. Its plans are tiered, so inventory, purchasing and extra users push you up the price ladder. OxyAccounting takes the opposite approach: a single R149/month plan with everything switched on.
You get a real double-entry general ledger with automatic posting, VAT201 built field-by-field against the SARS form with a GL reconciliation, bank reconciliation for FNB, ABSA, Capitec, Standard Bank and Nedbank across multiple accounts, inventory with COGS, purchasing with 3-way match, a fixed asset register with automatic depreciation and Roxy, an AI assistant powered by Claude.
Being honest about the gaps: OxyAccounting uses CSV bank import rather than live feeds. If that is a dealbreaker, the comparison table below lays it out plainly. Competitor details are to the best of our knowledge. Verify on the vendor sites.
Full feature comparison
To the best of our knowledge and current at the time of writing. Competitor plans and pricing change, so always verify on their websites before deciding.
| Feature | OxyAccountingR149/month | Sage Business CloudFrom R240/mo | QuickBooks OnlineVerify on their site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pricing | |||
Monthly price (base)Sage Accounting Start is R240/mo (incl. VAT) per the Sage SA shop. QuickBooks ZA retail pricing could not be independently confirmed, so please check their website. | R149/mo | From R240/mo | Verify on site |
All features at one priceSage and QuickBooks use tiered plans, so higher tiers cost more. | |||
Free trialOxyAccounting asks for no card details to start a trial. Sage and QuickBooks both run trial offers in South Africa, but the length and the card requirement change from time to time, so check their current terms. | 14 days, no card | Verify on site | Verify on site |
Annual contract requiredAll three are available month-to-month. | |||
Users on base plan | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| Sales | |||
Invoicing | |||
Quotations / estimates | |||
Pro forma invoicesA priced commitment sent before you supply, on its own PRO number sequence so it never uses up a tax invoice number. Check the current behaviour on the Sage and QuickBooks sites. | Verify on site | Verify on site | |
Delivery notesA note that travels with the goods showing quantities and no prices, signed for on arrival. Several deliveries can then be billed on a single invoice, so a customer you deliver to twenty times a month gets one tax invoice rather than twenty. Check the current behaviour on the Sage and QuickBooks sites. | Verify on site | Verify on site | |
Credit notes | |||
Recurring invoices | |||
PDF & branded email delivery | |||
Overdue reminders | |||
Customer statements | |||
Payment allocation | |||
Payment reversal (with GL reversal)Undo an incorrectly recorded payment. OxyAccounting reverses the ledger and the invoice balance together. | |||
Invoice in a foreign currencyBill an overseas customer in their own currency while your books stay in rand, converted at the official SARB rate fixed on the day you issue. Sage and QuickBooks both offer this on plans above their entry tier; check their current tier list. OxyAccounting includes it in the one R149 plan. | Higher tiers | Higher tiers | |
| Purchasing & payables | |||
Purchase orders | Higher tiers | ||
Goods received notes (GRN) | Some tiers | ||
Supplier invoices | |||
Supplier payments (partial / full)Record payments against supplier invoices with a separate accounts-payable audit trail. | |||
3-way match (PO → GRN → Inv.) | Partial | ||
Recurring supplier billsSchedule a bill that arrives on the same day every month. OxyAccounting raises it as a draft for you to check against the real invoice, never as an approved liability. | Higher tiers | Higher tiers | |
| Bank reconciliation | |||
CSV bank import | |||
Multiple bank accountsConnect and reconcile more than one bank account per company. | |||
Live bank feedsOxyAccounting uses CSV import only, with no open-banking feed. | |||
All 5 major SA banksQuickBooks SA bank coverage may vary. | Partial | ||
Auto-matching | |||
Record transfers & refunds inlineRecord a manual bank transfer or an expense refund straight from the reconciliation screen. | Partial | Partial | |
Period lock | |||
| Inventory | |||
Inventory management | Some tiers | Plus tier | |
COGS tracking | |||
Stock movement audit trail | Partial | Partial | |
Auto-update on invoice/GRN | Partial | Partial | |
| General ledger & compliance | |||
Full double-entry GLEvery invoice, credit note, payment, expense, GRN and supplier invoice posts a real double-entry journal automatically. | |||
Journal browser with drill-through | |||
Unposted items review | Partial | Partial | |
One-click SA SME chart of accounts | |||
IAS 1 balance sheet (comparative)Classified current vs non-current assets and liabilities, with a prior-year column. | |||
Trial balance export (Excel) | |||
Fixed asset register + depreciationAutomatic monthly straight-line depreciation via a scheduled job. | Higher tiers | Limited | |
Opening balances (mid-year onboarding) | |||
Import your books from a spreadsheetCustomers, suppliers, products, the chart of accounts and your outstanding invoices and bills. Every OxyAccounting import is checked row by row before anything is written, and any import can be undone in one click. | Checked and undoable | ||
Recurring journalsMonthly accruals, prepayments and depreciation adjustments post themselves. A journal due in a period you have already locked is skipped and reported, never quietly redated into an open one. | Higher tiers | Higher tiers | |
Year-end close / period lock | |||
GL control tie-out reportReconciles every subledger (debtors, creditors, bank and VAT) back to the general ledger and flags discrepancies. | Partial | Partial | |
| VAT & reporting | |||
VAT201 built against the SARS formFields 1 to 20 of the real SARS VAT201 form. It is not SARS-certified, so you review the return and submit it yourself via eFiling. | |||
GL-to-VAT201 reconciliation | Partial | Partial | |
VAT treatments (standard/zero/exempt/export) | |||
Income vs. expense report | |||
Customer age analysis | |||
Year-to-date figures | |||
Expense tracking with VAT | |||
Recurring expensesRent, insurance and subscriptions raise themselves each month and wait for approval, so nothing reaches your ledger without someone saying yes. | Higher tiers | Higher tiers | |
| Platform & extras | |||
Built-in AI assistantOxyAccounting's Roxy is powered by Anthropic Claude, is aware of the page you're on and stays open as you work. | Roxy (Claude) | ||
Invite your accountant into live booksOxyAccounting's accountant link gives your accountant direct, real-time access to your books once you invite them and they accept. A verified practice gets its own OxyAccounting account free, and a linked accountant doesn't use one of your user accounts. Sage puts the accountant in a seat you pay for. | Free & unlimited | Yes (uses a seat) | Free & unlimited |
Choose how much your accountant can doPick read-only, standard or full when you invite them, and change it later without disconnecting them. Read-only means reporting and export only: the refusal is enforced on the server, not by hiding a button. | Three levels | Partial | Partial |
Payroll (PAYE, UIF, SDL)OxyAccounting includes payroll at no extra cost, weekly, fortnightly or monthly, salaried or hourly with BCEA overtime rates: PAYE, UIF and SDL from the SARS tax tables, BCEA-compliant payslips, EMP201 figures, the ETI, and year-end IRP5/IT3(a) certificates with the EMP501 reconciliation. The e@syFile import file is unverified against a live SARS import. | Paid add-on | Paid add-on | |
POPIA-compliant hostingIntuit/QuickBooks is a US company; data is processed offshore. | |||
Setup time | ~2 minutes | 30–60 min | 30–60 min |
Mobile-ready (browser-based) | |||
Competitor pricing and features are approximate, based on publicly available information and may have changed. OxyAccounting makes no guarantee of accuracy for third-party data. Always verify on Sage and QuickBooks directly.
Frequently asked questions
Try OxyAccounting for yourself.
Free for 14 days, no card. R149/month after that, everything included.