Use casesCase study
Tax and compliance
SARS diesel refund reconciliation
How a diesel refund claimant moved from a manual, audit-exposed reconciliation to agents that consolidate the records, apportion eligible use and assemble a claim-ready pack.
Company profile
A South African business that claims the diesel refund under the Customs and Excise Act, with diesel bought and used across several sites and a mix of eligible and non-eligible use.
The challenge
The scheme refunds the fuel and Road Accident Fund levies on diesel used in qualifying activities, claimed through the VAT201 return. Every litre has to be traced from purchase to use, split between eligible and non-eligible activity, and backed by logbooks and purchase records kept for five years.
That tracing was done by hand from logbooks, invoices and spreadsheets every period. It was slow, it depended on a few people, and a claim found to be wrong on verification has to be repaid with penalties and interest.
The audit
A High Risers engineer embedded with the finance team and followed one claim period end to end: where the logbooks came from, how purchases were matched to them, how the apportionment was worked out, and what went into the submission.
The map showed the same records being handled several times, apportionment rules living in people's heads, and the audit trail assembled after the fact rather than as the claim was built.
The architecture
Records agent
Consolidates logbooks and purchase records for the period into one reconciled set, flags gaps and duplicates, and keeps every source document attached.
- Logbook and purchase record consolidation
- Gap and duplicate detection
- Source documents retained per line
Apportionment agent
Applies the eligible and non-eligible rules to each record, shows its working, and prepares the figures the VAT201 submission needs.
- Eligible versus non-eligible apportionment
- Working shown per record
- Claim pack for the VAT201 submission
Audit pack agent
Assembles the retention pack for the period as the claim is built, so the five-year record exists on the day of submission rather than when a verification request arrives.
- Five-year audit-ready retention
- Period pack per claim
Implementation
Deployed on the existing finance systems. Submission stays with the finance team; the agents prepare and the people sign off.
Proved on past claim periods before running on a live one.
What changed
The reconciliation is built as the period runs, not reconstructed at the end, and every figure in the claim traces back to a source record.
Verification is a matter of handing over the pack rather than rebuilding it.