Close Menu
TechCentralTechCentral

    Subscribe to the newsletter

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    Facebook X (Twitter) YouTube LinkedIn
    WhatsApp Facebook X (Twitter) LinkedIn YouTube
    TechCentralTechCentral
    • News

      Public money, private plans: MPs demand Post Office transparency

      13 June 2025

      Coal to cash: South Africa gets major boost for energy shift

      13 June 2025

      China is behind in AI chips – but for how much longer?

      13 June 2025

      Singapore soared – why can’t we? Lessons South Africa refuses to learn

      13 June 2025

      10 red flags for Apple investors

      13 June 2025
    • World

      Yahoo tries to make its mail service relevant again

      13 June 2025

      Qualcomm shows off new chip for AI smart glasses

      11 June 2025

      Trump tariffs to dim 2025 smartphone shipments

      4 June 2025

      Shrimp Jesus and the AI ad invasion

      4 June 2025

      Apple slams EU rules as ‘flawed and costly’ in major legal pushback

      2 June 2025
    • In-depth

      Grok promised bias-free chat. Then came the edits

      2 June 2025

      Digital fortress: We go inside JB5, Teraco’s giant new AI-ready data centre

      30 May 2025

      Sam Altman and Jony Ive’s big bet to out-Apple Apple

      22 May 2025

      South Africa unveils big state digital reform programme

      12 May 2025

      Is this the end of Google Search as we know it?

      12 May 2025
    • TCS

      TechCentral Nexus S0E1: Starlink, BEE and a new leader at Vodacom

      8 June 2025

      TCS+ | The future of mobile money, with MTN’s Kagiso Mothibi

      6 June 2025

      TCS+ | AI is more than hype: Workday execs unpack real human impact

      4 June 2025

      TCS | Sentiv, and the story behind the buyout of Altron Nexus

      3 June 2025

      TCS | Signal restored: Unpacking the Blue Label and Cell C turnaround

      28 May 2025
    • Opinion

      Beyond the box: why IT distribution depends on real partnerships

      2 June 2025

      South Africa’s next crisis? Being offline in an AI-driven world

      2 June 2025

      Digital giants boost South African news media – and get blamed for it

      29 May 2025

      Solar panic? The truth about SSEG, fines and municipal rules

      14 April 2025

      Data protection must be crypto industry’s top priority

      9 April 2025
    • Company Hubs
      • Africa Data Centres
      • AfriGIS
      • Altron Digital Business
      • Altron Document Solutions
      • Altron Group
      • Arctic Wolf
      • AvertITD
      • Braintree
      • CallMiner
      • CYBER1 Solutions
      • Digicloud Africa
      • Digimune
      • Domains.co.za
      • ESET
      • Euphoria Telecom
      • Incredible Business
      • iONLINE
      • Iris Network Systems
      • LSD Open
      • NEC XON
      • Network Platforms
      • Next DLP
      • Ovations
      • Paracon
      • Paratus
      • Q-KON
      • SkyWire
      • Solid8 Technologies
      • Telit Cinterion
      • Tenable
      • Vertiv
      • Videri Digital
      • Wipro
      • Workday
    • Sections
      • AI and machine learning
      • Banking
      • Broadcasting and Media
      • Cloud services
      • Contact centres and CX
      • Cryptocurrencies
      • Education and skills
      • Electronics and hardware
      • Energy and sustainability
      • Enterprise software
      • Fintech
      • Information security
      • Internet and connectivity
      • Internet of Things
      • Investment
      • IT services
      • Lifestyle
      • Motoring
      • Public sector
      • Retail and e-commerce
      • Science
      • SMEs and start-ups
      • Social media
      • Talent and leadership
      • Telecoms
    • Events
    • Advertise
    TechCentralTechCentral
    Home » Company News » Scotty BusinessLine halves cellphone allowance costs

    Scotty BusinessLine halves cellphone allowance costs

    By Trabel11 November 2020
    Twitter LinkedIn Facebook WhatsApp Email Telegram Copy Link
    News Alerts
    WhatsApp

    Corporate telephone spend inside the office is mostly well addressed and well managed by advanced PBX systems that include controls like employee call spend limits, employee security access Pins, and call barring.

    Conversely, allowed business telephone spend by employees when outside of the office has been largely unaccounted for and uncontrollable. Until now.

    The problem with traditional employee cellphone allowances is that they do not provide the employer with any level of accountability, cost efficiency, or tax efficiency. Similarly, reimbursement policies are expensive, cumbersome, tax inefficient, admin intensive and prone to misuse.

    There are traditionally two ways that companies can accommodate employee cellphone spend:

    1. By giving employees a cash “cellphone allowance”; or
    2. By allowing employees to submit claims for reimbursement of business calls made.

    The financial negatives of cellphone allowances are multiple:

    • The allowance becomes a taxable benefit in the employee’s hands, taxed as a fringe benefit at usually around a 50% inclusion rate — so the business technically loses the purchasing power of this tax amount before they start;
    • The employee then buys call airtime, usually at expensive personal cellphone contract rates, which can be at as much as a 50% premium on business call rates. The business therefore unnecessarily loses this margin, too;
    • The employee then also pays VAT (currently at 15%) on the (unnecessarily expensive) airtime they are buying, which is effectively another hit to the business’s bottom line.

    In reality, of every rand a business spends on employee cellphone allowances, the first 50% or more is immediately lost to income tax, higher call rates, and VAT.

    The problems with entertaining employee call claims are similar to those of cellphone allowances. There is no taxable benefit issue, but:

    • The employee’s call airtime is usually at expensive personal cellphone contract rates;
    • The employee calls claimed include VAT, which is another hit to the business bottom line as the business cannot claim this back when reimbursing the employee; and
    • The latent time and administration overhead cost of the tabulation, presentation, scrutiny and payment of these monthly claims is significant and should not be overlooked.

    Luckily for hard-pressed post-Covid South African businesses, there is now a solution: the newly launched, South African-developed Scotty BusinessLine service. It dramatically reduces the costs and also addresses the softer issues of employee cellphone call allowances.

    In a nutshell, the Scotty phone app allows you to choose in real time whether to make each call through your Sim card or through your Scotty business phone line, using a choice of two separate dial-out buttons. “SIM” calls go via your Sim as usual, but “Scotty” calls are made from your Scotty phone number and use neither your Sim card’s airtime nor data. Instead, they are billed directly to your Scotty (or company) account.

    As an added bonus, Scotty calls use a business phone number and so preserves the employees’ privacy by not showing their personal cellphone number.

    A triple saving

    Scotty is a compelling financial proposition for companies currently paying out cellphone allowances: The Scotty smartphone app is free, and there are no monthly line rentals or fixed charges for the service. As all Scotty calls are business calls, Scotty airtime is fully VAT deductible as a company expense, and is also not subject to fringe-benefit tax. And as far as call rates go, these are best-in-class low (currently 79c/min including VAT to South African numbers) on pure per-second billing with no call setup, minimum or hidden charges, and Scotty airtime credit never expires. Scotty therefore scores a 3-0 against cellphone allowances for financial efficiency, meaning cost saving.

    For larger accounts, the Scotty administrator can set monthly call limits for each user, restrict time-of-day use of the Scotty lines (for both inbound and outbound calls), and even upload the company name and logo to display on the app for internal brand enhancement.

    New customers can sign up online at www.scottyapp.mobi and their Scotty service will immediately be active and working. All account and user administration can be done online and is in real time, so hundreds of users can be rolled out and managed effortlessly.

    With large parts of South Africa still working from home for the foreseeable future, Scotty BusinessLine offers a fresh new approach to providing remote voice connectivity to employees that does not depend on decent data connectivity or on staff having airtime of their own in hand, and solves all the existing drawbacks of paying traditional cellphone allowances.

    About Trabel and Scotty BusinessLine:
    Trabel (Pty) Ltd is a South African technology development company founded in 2019 and based primarily in Cape Town. Scotty BusinessLine is a telecommunications product of Trabel, driven by an Android smartphone app. More information can be found at www.scottyapp.mobi.

    • This promoted content was paid for by the party concerned


    Scotty BusinessLine Trabel
    Subscribe to TechCentral Subscribe to TechCentral
    Share. Facebook Twitter LinkedIn WhatsApp Telegram Email Copy Link
    Previous ArticleToshiba will stop building coal-fired power stations
    Next Article How the Da Vinci Institute is pivoting online with the cloud and FuseForward

    Related Posts

    PBX over GSM ‘just works’

    21 September 2022

    SA innovation NoPBX delivers company switchboards in less than 8 minutes

    5 October 2021

    International fraud deterrent adds layer of protection to PBX systems

    14 September 2021
    Company News

    Huawei Watch Fit 4 Series: smarter sensors, sharper design, stronger performance

    13 June 2025

    Change Logic and BankservAfrica set new benchmark with PayShap roll-out

    13 June 2025

    SAPHILA 2025 – transcending with purpose, connection and AI-powered vision

    13 June 2025
    Opinion

    Beyond the box: why IT distribution depends on real partnerships

    2 June 2025

    South Africa’s next crisis? Being offline in an AI-driven world

    2 June 2025

    Digital giants boost South African news media – and get blamed for it

    29 May 2025

    Subscribe to Updates

    Get the best South African technology news and analysis delivered to your e-mail inbox every morning.

    © 2009 - 2025 NewsCentral Media

    Type above and press Enter to search. Press Esc to cancel.