SARS eFiling banking details: the change every scam asks for

You change banking details on SARS eFiling by logging in as the registered representative, opening the Registration Amendments and Verification Form, the RAV01, and editing the bank account there. SARS then verifies the account before it accepts the change, and pays no refund until it has. Nobody from SARS will phone, email or SMS you to do it, and SARS says so itself.

That last sentence is the reason this guide exists. This week's ITWeb Weekly reports that scammers are "employing similarly advanced techniques to pretend to be SARS", with refunds as the bait. ITWeb's 17 September report has SARS confirming an R48 900 refund message as phishing. A banking-detail change is what every one of those messages wants. It is also the exact request a supplier fraud makes of your creditors clerk, which is why the banked piece on payment approval controls treats it as a control and not a form.

Before you start

• The person logging in must be the company's registered representative on SARS's records, or a registered tax practitioner. SARS's page on banking details limits the change to the taxpayer, a registered representative whose details match SARS's records, or a registered practitioner.
• The new account must be in the company's legal name: a cheque, savings or transmission account at a South African bank, per SARS's page. A director's account, a holding company's account, a credit card or a foreign account will not pass.
• The documents below must exist as files before you open the form.

Step 1: check who the registered representative is

Log in, open SARS Registered Details and read the name shown against the company. SARS's RAV01 guide is explicit that the registered representative must activate their own profile before they can update anything on the form. If the director who opened the account has since left, this is where the change fails, and it fails after you have done everything else. Fix the representative first, with the appointment letter SARS asks for.

Step 2: assemble the documents

For a company, SARS lists five items on your side. A copy of the registration certificate and notice of incorporation. The representative's identity document. Proof of the representative's residential address and proof of the business's physical address, each not older than three months. The appointment letter or an original power of attorney.

Then the bank's own confirmation, dated within three months, showing the account holder's legal name, account number, account type and branch code. A bank-stamped statement or a letter on the bank's letterhead both qualify.

Step 3: open the RAV01

From the company profile, choose SARS Registered Details, then Maintain SARS Registered Details. Inside the form, My Registered Particulars, then My Bank Accounts, shows the account SARS currently holds. Add the new one or edit the existing one, with bank name, branch code, account number, account type and account holder name exactly as the bank confirmation shows them, then Done.

Step 4: confirm with the one-time PIN

SARS sends a one-time PIN to the representative's preferred contact on record. Enter it. If the PIN goes to a cellphone number nobody in the business recognises, stop, because that is the contact detail somebody else changed.

Step 5: upload the documents when asked

SARS verifies the account before accepting the change, and may ask for the documents from step 2 through the supporting-documents route. They go in through eFiling, as files, under the case. Whoever uploads them must also supply a photograph of themselves holding their ID, with a handwritten note of the case number and the upload date. SARS's document list makes that a condition of submitting electronically, not an extra.

Step 6: wait, and do not change it twice

SARS publishes no turnaround for the verification and this piece will not invent one; the account simply shows as Pending, then Valid or Invalid. Refunds due are paid only once the account is confirmed. Submitting the same change again from a second login does not speed it up and creates a second case.

Step 7: tell everyone else who holds the old account

SARS is one record. Your customers' vendor masters, the bank mandates on your debit orders, your invoice template and your payroll provider all carry the old number. The SARS change is done in an afternoon; the rest is the part nobody owns, and a customer paying into a closed account is a debtor-days problem you caused yourself.

What breaks here

The channel. SARS states that it cannot change banking details if requested through fax, post or telephone, and that email is for exceptional circumstances only. The genuine routes are eFiling, the SARS MobiApp under Profile Management, or a branch visit by appointment. A message offering any other route is offering you a fraud.

The representative. In a business of 40 people the registered representative is often the founder, the accountant from three years ago, or a director who emigrated. None of them is in the office on the day the refund is stuck.

The mirror image. The same rule that protects you here should protect your suppliers from you, and you from them. When a supplier "changes bank details" by email, the check is a phone call to a number you already held, never one in the email. The banked piece on payment approval controls sets that rule out in full.

When this stops being enough

A bank account number lives in SARS's records, in your accounting package, on the invoice template, in every customer's supplier file and in the payroll mandate. The change is safe only when it propagates to all of them, with a record of who approved it and when.

That is the kind of record Zorah builds for South African businesses. The compliance register holds the SARS representative, the bank confirmation and the date of change as one item. The connected back office pushes one approved account number to the invoice, the statement and the payroll file. Nothing retyped, nothing left on the old number.

On Monday, open eFiling and read the name of the registered representative. If it is someone who no longer works there, that is the change to make first, before you need a refund.