What Pastel / Sage do well
Trusted accounting backbone with statutory reporting.
Bookkeeper-friendly — your accountant already knows it.
VAT, PAYE and other compliance handled cleanly.
Bank reconciliation and AP/AR are core competencies.
Slabr vs Pastel / Sage
Pastel and Sage are great accounting tools. They're not quote builders, production trackers, or client portals — and they were never meant to be. Slabr runs operations; Pastel/Sage runs the books. They sync.
Honest take
This isn't Slabr replacing Pastel. It's Slabr filling the gap Pastel was never designed to fill.
Trusted accounting backbone with statutory reporting.
Bookkeeper-friendly — your accountant already knows it.
VAT, PAYE and other compliance handled cleanly.
Bank reconciliation and AP/AR are core competencies.
Building a custom quote with material, labour and wastage logic.
Tracking a job through real production stages.
Showing the floor what to do next.
Showing the client where their job is.
Closing the loop between quoted margin and actual margin per job.
How they work together
Quote → Job → Production → Install → Invoice
Native push of invoices and customers to Pastel/Sage is on the roadmap; CSV export today
Books, VAT, payments, statutory reporting
What goes where
| Capability | Pastel / Sage | Slabr |
|---|---|---|
| General ledger and trial balance | Yes | No |
| VAT submissions and statutory reporting | Yes | No |
| Accounts payable / receivable | Yes | Partial |
| Building a quote with material + labour logic | Partial | Yes |
| Per-material wastage % rules | No | Yes |
| Quote-to-job conversion | No | Yes |
| Production stage scheduling | No | Yes |
| Connected floor status and QC | No | Yes |
| Client portal for job updates | No | Yes |
| Margin actuals on every closed job | Partial | Yes |
| Card payments on invoices | Partial | Yes |
| Native accounting sync (Xero/Sage/QuickBooks) | No | No |
Integration roadmap
We are deliberately specific about timing so "coming soon" doesn't turn into 18 months of drift. CSV export works today and stays in place permanently as the fallback path your bookkeeper relies on, regardless of native sync status.
CSV export of invoices, customers and payments — formatted to import into Pastel Partner, Pastel Xpress, Sage Business Cloud Accounting and Sage 50cloud.
Native two-way sync with Sage Business Cloud Accounting and Xero (the two cloud-first SA accounting platforms with stable public APIs).
Pastel Partner desktop bridge — uses Sage's ODBC connector. This trails the cloud sync because Pastel's public integration story is API-on-cloud, file-import-on-desktop.
Clean CSV export stays — regardless of native sync status. Your bookkeeper's workflow does not break if a sync goes down.
Accounting profession context
South African professional bodies (SAICA and SAIPA) advocate a clean separation between operational subsidiary systems and the financial system of record used for statutory reporting (VAT201, EMP201, IRP5, audit trails for SARS). Slabr is the operational subsidiary system; Pastel / Sage stays as the financial system of record. Audit-trail responsibility, journal posting and statutory submissions all stay where your accountant already trusts them.
General ledger, trial balance, journals, year-end.
VAT201 submissions and the SARS-facing audit trail.
Payroll integration (PAYE, UIF, SDL, IRP5).
Bank reconciliation and AP/AR ageing.
Anything your auditor or external accountant signs off.
Quote building with material + labour + wastage logic.
Quote-to-job conversion and production stage tracking.
Client portal with progress photos and pay-by-card invoice.
Closed-job margin actuals (invoiced revenue vs consumed cost).
Operational audit trail — who priced what, who pushed to floor.
Common questions
No. Pastel stays where it is — your bookkeeper, accountant or auditor keeps using it for the general ledger, VAT201 submissions and statutory reports. Slabr sits alongside it as the operations layer (quotes, jobs, production, client portal) and produces the invoices and payment data Pastel needs. The relationship is additive, not substitutive — most Slabr customers running Pastel keep both indefinitely.
Slabr generates clean CSVs for invoices, customers and payments in the column order Pastel's import wizard expects (DocType, AccountCode, Description, Amount, VATCode, Date — for invoices). Your bookkeeper imports them on whatever cadence suits — daily, weekly, or per VAT period. The export respects VAT-inclusive line totals so you don't double-count tax. SAICA / SAIPA-trained bookkeepers familiar with Pastel's standard import format have zero learning curve here.
Cloud accounting first — Sage Business Cloud Accounting and Xero in Q3 2026, because they have stable public REST APIs. Pastel Partner desktop sync follows in Q4 2026 / Q1 2027 via Sage's ODBC connector. We are deliberately conservative: every Slabr roadmap timeline is dated honestly so we don't make a "Pastel sync coming soon" promise that drifts for 18 months. CSV export covers the gap with no degradation in bookkeeper workflow.
A lot — and that's by design. Pastel handles the full general ledger, trial balance, journal entries, depreciation schedules, VAT201 + EMP201 + IRP5 statutory submissions, audit trails for SARS, and the chart-of-accounts work your auditor signs off on. Slabr does not duplicate any of this. We are an operations system, not a financial accounting system, and our customers' SAICA-registered accountants strongly prefer that separation. SAICA itself recommends a clean line between operational systems and the system of record for statutory reporting.
Sources
External documentation behind the roadmap dates, professional-body guidance and integration claims.
Slabr syncs with Sage natively. Pastel sync is on the roadmap; meanwhile we export clean CSVs your bookkeeper will love.