The problem. South Africa has roughly 1.9 million informal micro-enterprises. Almost none of them keep financial records. Most trade in cash, so the business has no paper trail. Owners can’t see whether they’re making money, and they can’t prove their income to suppliers, lenders or programmes that could help them grow.
Who we serve. sorted is built for owner-run micro-businesses in the informal and early-formal economy: spaza shops, hair salons, street and take-away food vendors, informal traders and young self-employed professionals.
How it works. sorted is a bookkeeping service that runs entirely inside WhatsApp. Owners record sales and expenses by sending a photo of a receipt, a text or a voice note, in English or other South African languages. sorted reads each message, categorises it and logs it. Every week the owner gets a short “business pulse” on how the business is doing. At month-end they can pull a simple income statement. There is no app to download, no login and no accounting knowledge needed. The service costs R99 per month.
Why WhatsApp. Our users already use WhatsApp every day, and many of them have limited data and phone storage. Other bookkeeping tools such as Xero, Sage or banking apps assume a formal business, a laptop or a separate app, plus some accounting knowledge. sorted removes all of those barriers. Recording a sale is as easy as sending a message, so owners actually keep doing it, and consistent record-keeping is what builds a business’s financial identity over time.
Stage and traction. sorted launched publicly in South Africa on 1 August 2026, +100 business owners have used the service so far.
Sorted is a member of FINASA (Fintech Association of South Africa) and is Level 1 B-BBEE, 100% Black-owned.
Geographic reach. We currently operate in Gauteng (Johannesburg, Soweto and Pretoria). Our next step is national rollout across South Africa.