Statutory Returns & ETI — Agribantu Documentation

What this guide covers: Payroll → ETI & statutory filing, laid out across four tabs — Artifacts, ETI, Periods, and Impacts.

Part A

The human filing notice

There is no live connection to SARS eFiling. Agribantu calculates the correct figures and produces the return document — a real human still has to log in to SARS eFiling and submit it themselves. Agribantu then just needs a record that you did.

Keep that split in mind through this whole guide: Generate creates the document inside Agribantu; Record human filing (Part F) is you telling Agribantu it's now actually been submitted.

Part B

Generating an EMP201 monthly declaration

EMP201 is your monthly PAYE/UIF/SDL (and ETI) declaration to SARS. In the Artifacts tab, click Preview EMP201 first to check the numbers without creating anything permanent, then Generate EMP201 when you're happy. Fill in:

Field	What to enter
Reporting period	The monthly period this declaration covers.
Penalty/interest amount	Only if SARS has charged one — otherwise leave at zero.
Payment Reference Number (PRN)	Up to 19 characters, once you have one from SARS.

Example — Karoo Valley Farm

Reporting period: September 2026. Penalty/interest amount: R 0.00. Generate produces a permanent, versioned EMP201 artifact — every time you regenerate one, it's a new version, never an overwrite of the old one.

Part C

ETI — the Employment Tax Incentive

ETI is a SARS incentive that reduces your PAYE liability for qualifying employees (typically younger or lower-paid workers). It only applies if you set up an ETI classification for the employee during Getting an Employee Ready — Part I.

The ETI tab has two tables:

Calculations — one row per employee per period, showing qualifying status and the ETI amount, with Finalize/Supersede actions.
Accounts — your employer-level ETI position per period: Available, Utilised, and Carry-forward ETI, with a Finalize action.

A Retro corrections section on this tab handles advanced legal-compliance corrections to historic ETI — see Corrections & Terminations — Part D, and treat it as specialist territory rather than a beginner step.

Part D

IRP5 / IT3(a) certificates

This is each employee's annual (or interim) tax certificate. It requires their filing identity to already be captured. Click Preview IRP5/IT3(a), then Generate, and fill in:

Field	What to enter
Reporting period	Annual, or an interim reconciliation window.
Employee	Search and select who this certificate is for.
Non-deduction reason code	Optional, 1–10 — only if PAYE wasn't deducted for some reason.
Voluntary over-deduction indicator	Yes/No.

The generated certificate gets a certificate number, and appears as its own row in the Artifacts tab. If a certificate needs to be withdrawn entirely, use Record EMP601 cancellation on its detail page, with a reason.

Part E

EMP501 / EMP601 reconciliation

This is the interim or annual reconciliation across a period's monthly EMP201 declarations. Click Preview EMP501, then Generate, and fill in:

Field	What to enter
Reconciliation period	The interim or annual window.
Provenance	SARS pre-populated values, or your own.
ETI value source	Where the ETI figures come from.
Per-month liability grid	PAYE / SDL / UIF liability and payment amount for every month in the window.
Payroll software details	Your software provider/package name (Agribantu, for this field's purpose).

Part F

Recording that you filed

Open any artifact from the Artifacts tab to reach its detail page — it shows the artifact's identity (PRN or certificate number), version, downloadable files, a timeline of every version of this same return, and any submissions already recorded. Click Record human filing (Owner only) once you've actually submitted it on SARS eFiling:

Field	What to enter
Filed at	The date/time you submitted it to SARS.
Supersedes submission ID	Optional — only if this filing replaces an earlier one.

This button stays disabled while there are open Impacts on the artifact — check the Impacts tab for anything unresolved (for example, something changed after the return was generated but before it was filed) before trying to record filing.

The Impacts tab also tracks Refund positions and Refund closeouts for ETI — use Record outcome there only to log something that already happened externally (SARS paid or offset a refund), not to request one.

Troubleshooting

Troubleshooting & FAQ

I generated an EMP201 with the wrong numbers.

Generate a new one — every generation is a new, separate, permanent version. Never try to "fix" it by editing; the old version stays visible in the artifact's version timeline for audit purposes.

Why can't I generate an IRP5 for this employee?

They're missing their filing identity — go back to Getting an Employee Ready — Part H and capture it first.

Record human filing is greyed out.

Check the Impacts tab for open items on this artifact — they need to be resolved first. It may also be an Owner-only action you can't see as an Admin.

Does Agribantu submit anything to SARS automatically?

No. It calculates and formats everything correctly, but the actual submission on SARS eFiling is always a manual, human step (Part A).