Sorted+ Creative Accounting
Founders
No.028
Studio management and bookkeeping software for South African creative businesses
Sorted+ began as the tool Sorted Design International built to run its own studio, so quotes, jobs, time, suppliers and the books sit in one place because a working studio needed them there. It handles South African VAT and gives an accountant a login that shows only what they need.
Zilla, Johan and Willem
Zilla, Johan and Willem are the three equal partners of Sorted Design International, a design studio that started in Pretoria in 2006 and now works from Cape Town. Willem is a designer and storywriter, Zilla is a designer and illustrator, and Johan is a designer for motion.
Running a studio meant juggling quotes, jobs, supplier costs, time and bookkeeping across separate tools. They built one app that did all of it for their own studio. Other studios and creative businesses now use it too, and it is sold as Sorted+ Creative Accounting.
Sorted+ Creative Accounting
Sorted+ Creative Accounting is studio and practice management software for creative businesses in South Africa: designers, architects, interior and fashion studios, agencies, photographers and other creative practices. It is owned and built by Sorted Design International in Cape Town.
Quotes and invoices run in one flow. A quote becomes an invoice, goes out by email and moves from pending to paid as the money arrives, with credit notes and client statements included. Supplier costs feed into each job's margin, and VAT is handled the South African way, with the words TAX INVOICE shown only when the business is registered.
Jobs live on a kanban board with owners, task lists and personal columns for each team member. Timers run per job and per task, and the logged time goes straight onto the quote. A client database keeps every contact, quote and payment history, and each client can be given a private, revocable link to their live statement.
For directors there is a view of bank balances, runway, cash flow, debtors, supplier exposure and monthly gross profit against target, which the rest of the team does not see. Roles control what directors, managers, staff, interns and freelancers can open. The accountant gets a scoped login, and one download packs the whole VAT period for them.
Bank statements are imported and matched to invoices and bills, with a suggestion for each line. Petty cash is tracked as well, and orders from an online shop import as sales.
An AI bookkeeping option lets a studio connect Claude, Codex or Cursor to its books and work in plain English: capturing a folder of supplier invoices, reconciling a bank statement or sending overdue clients their statements. The connection is limited to the one company's books, every change is recorded and can be undone, and a full backup can be requested first.
Sorted+ is available to South African businesses now. Visit sortedplus.com.