🧾 EMP501 Season: Interim Reconciliations open 22 September 2025

13 Sep 2025
As the interim Employer Reconciliation window opens from 22 September to 31 October, openHR is here to help you navigate the SARS maze with clarity, speed, and zero fluff.
openHR free payroll and HR

🔄 First, a defensive housekeeping ritual:

Before diving into declarations, we recommend a clean sweep of your e@syFile setup:

  • Backup your current e@syFile data - especially if you’ve been wrangling version 8.
  • Uninstall the old version completely. Partial installs have been known to cause silent failures.
  • Download the latest version directly from the SARS website - not from third-party mirrors or cached links.
  • Install fresh. This ensures compatibility with the latest EMP501 schema and avoids the version 8 glitches that plagued many users.

🗓️ Key Dates to Know:

  • EMP501 Interim Submission Opens: 22 September 2025
  • EMP501 Interim Submission Closes: 31 October 2025

🛠️ Tools to Use:

  • SARS e@syFile™ Employer, or
  • SARS eFiling as an alternative to e@syFile for smaller entities, can still import IRP5 files, and
  • openHR - the best FREE payroll and HR software in South Africa

🧠 openHR Tip:

Make sure your payroll software exports EMP501/IRP5 data, openHR allows you to do this for free, no matter how many employees.

⚠️ Missing Income Tax Reference:

SARS requires income tax reference numbers and will no longer accept submissions for employees without. You can get a tax reference number for your employees in minutes from eFiling:

  1. Log in to eFiling
  2. From the Taxpayers list, click the blue View Taxpayer button next to the entity
  3. Click Organisations in the top navigation menu
  4. Select Employee Registration from the sidebar
  5. Click on New Application
  6. Complete the required fields and then Submit - we like to copy and paste the employee data from their openHR employee profiles directly into the SARS form as this is faster and reduces errors
  7. View their tax number from the History option under Employee Registration
More Posts
openHR free payroll and HR
You Are HR-ing Wrong

This week, a leaked video from Stellenbosch Municipality surfaced, showing an HR manager allegedly advocating for hiring practices designed to make specific employees “uncomfortable enough to resign.” The fallout has been swift and polarised. But beneath the outrage lies a deeper systems failure - one that affects all staff, regardless of demographic. read more

September 3, 2025

openHR free payroll and HR
⚖️ Why openHR is free - and why dignity shouldn’t depend on your budget

When I was in Grade 2, I didn’t have propelling crayons. Not because I didn’t want them, but because we couldn’t afford them. My teacher made sure I felt that difference - publicly, repeatedly, and cruelly. She didn’t just mark my work. She marked me. That experience stayed with me. Not as bitterness, but as a blueprint for what not to do. read more

August 15, 2025