Financial fraud is no longer a peripheral concern for large organisations. It sits on audit committee agendas, features in board risk registers and has become a direct reputational exposure for listed companies. The question for CFOs and their teams is not whether controls are needed, but whether the systems they rely on can actually enforce them.
A significant number of South Africa’s Top 50 JSE-listed companies have answered that question with Peresoft Cashbook, the cash management solution built for Sage 300 that has been in continuous use across African enterprises for over 40 years.
Bobby Perel, Managing Director of Peresoft, says the pattern is consistent: large organisations come to Peresoft because they need financial controls they can demonstrate, not just describe.
“Listed companies are under constant scrutiny from auditors, boards and regulators. They need a system where every payment approval is on record, every change to vendor banking details is traceable, and nothing moves without the right authorisation in place. That is what Cashbook is built to do,” he says.
The risk that keeps CFOs up at night
EFT fraud has become one of the most significant financial risks facing South African businesses. According to the South African Banking Risk Information Centre, digital banking fraud accounted for 65.3% of reported financial crime incidents in 2024, with losses exceeding R1.4 billion. A large proportion of these cases involve internal process failures, including unauthorised changes to vendor banking details, payment files intercepted before reaching the bank and approvals that existed on paper but not in practice.
For listed companies, the consequences extend beyond the financial loss. A material payment fraud event carries governance implications, potential regulatory scrutiny and reputational damage that is difficult to contain.
Perel says this is precisely the environment Cashbook’s recent development has addressed. “The risk is real and it is growing. Our job is to make sure the system removes the gaps that fraud exploits, not just for the finance team but for the organisation as a whole.”
Controls that hold at scale
What distinguishes Cashbook at enterprise level is not the breadth of its features, but the enforceability of its controls. Authorisation rules are configured to company policy. Vendor banking details are locked once approved and cannot be changed without a formal authorisation process. Payment batches cannot be released without the required approvals, and every action, including who approved, when, and under what authority, is logged in a full audit trail.
For organisations using SFTP-based payment processing, the control environment extends further. Authorised payment batches are transmitted directly and securely to the bank, bypassing the manual file-handling steps where intervention and error most commonly occur.
“Auditors want evidence, not assurances,” says Perel. “Cashbook provides the evidence. The trail is there from the moment a vendor detail is entered to the moment a payment reaches the bank.”
Why the relationship endures
Peresoft’s 99% renewal rate among its user base is unusual in enterprise software. Perel attributes it to a straightforward principle: the product continues to solve real problems, and the support behind it is direct and responsive.
For JSE-listed companies managing multiple entities, complex approval structures and significant payment volumes, that consistency carries weight. Changing financial management systems is costly and disruptive. Organisations that have built their controls around Cashbook tend to stay and deepen their use of it as new capabilities are added.
“Large organisations don’t stay with a product out of inertia,” says Perel. “They stay because it works, because it keeps getting better and because when something needs to be addressed, we address it. That’s the relationship we’ve built over 40 years.”
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