SERVICE AGREEMENT
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This Service Agreement ("Agreement") is entered into between DoubleDown AI (Pty) Ltd, registration number 2026/041829/07 ("Provider"), and {{biz}} ("Client"), represented by {{name}} ({{email}} · {{phone}}).
1. WHAT THE SERVICE IS
The Provider gives the Client access to DoubleDown Books — {{plan}} plan: a hosted bookkeeping, quoting and invoicing service for South African businesses, delivered as a secure installable web app (Progressive Web App).
The service includes quotes, tax invoices, credit notes, customers, an item catalogue, payment records, statements with ageing, VAT handling at the standard rate, PDF documents in the Client’s own branding, and the reporting and analytics included in the Client’s plan. The exact feature set for each plan is the one shown on the plan screen of this signup and on the product page, and forms part of this Agreement.
The Provider is a software provider. The Provider is not the Client’s accountant, auditor, bookkeeper or tax practitioner, and nothing produced by the service is professional advice. See clause 9.
2. FEES AND PAYMENT
There is no setup fee. The amount the Client pays at checkout is the first month’s subscription, in full and in advance.
Monthly subscription: {{monthly}}. The first month is the payment made today. The next payment is taken one calendar month after the payment date, and monthly on that date thereafter. No client can be suspended for non-payment during their first month.
How the monthly is collected: at checkout PayFast stores a secure token against the card used. The Provider charges that token each month. The Provider never sees, stores or transmits the Client’s card number, expiry date or CVV. The Client can change the card or cancel at any time from inside the app.
Term: month-to-month. There is no contract period and no minimum term. The Client may cancel at any time and will keep access until the end of the month already paid for.
VAT on our fees: the Provider’s prices are not subject to VAT. No VAT is charged or invoiced on the subscription.
Failed payments: if a monthly payment fails, the Client is notified by email and the Provider retries. If payment has not succeeded after the grace period shown in the app, document creation is paused. The Client’s existing records stay readable and exportable throughout — the Provider does not hold a business’s books hostage over a failed card. Service resumes immediately once payment succeeds. There is no reactivation fee.
3. DELIVERY
The account is built, seeded and delivered within 30 minutes during business hours — Monday to Friday, 08:00 to 16:30 South African time, excluding South African public holidays — from the moment payment is confirmed.
A signup completed outside those hours is delivered at 08:30 on the next business day. The same turnaround applies to every plan and there is no charge for faster delivery.
Delivery consists of an email to the address given at signup containing the app link and sign-in instructions. Sign-in is by a one-time six-digit code emailed to that address; the Provider does not issue or email passwords.
4. DOCUMENT ALLOWANCE
Each plan includes a monthly allowance of issued documents — quotes and invoices — as shown on the plan screen: {{cap}} per month on the {{plan}} plan. The allowance resets on the Client’s monthly billing date.
A draft costs nothing. Only a document that is issued counts. Credit notes do not count against the allowance, because the Client must always be able to correct an invoice.
If the allowance runs out the Client may buy a top-up pack from inside the app or move up a plan, effective immediately. Existing documents remain fully readable, printable and exportable when the allowance is exhausted.
5. HISTORY AND THE CLIENT’S DATA
The books belong to the Client. The Provider processes them; it does not own them.
How much history the app shows depends on the plan: the Minimum plan shows the most recent 6 months of documents; the Intermediate and Pro plans show everything. This is a display limit, not a deletion policy. Nothing is deleted when a plan limits the view, and moving up a plan makes the older records visible again immediately.
Export is unlimited on every plan, including Minimum. The Client can export their complete data — every business record, customer, item, quote, invoice, line, payment, supplier, expense, bank transaction, ledger account and journal — at any time, ignoring the display limit, in a machine-readable format. This is deliberate: SARS requires the Client to keep five years of records, and a plan tier must never stand between a business and its own tax records.
On cancellation the Client keeps export access for 30 days after the last paid day. After that the Provider may remove the data from active systems.
6. RECORD RETENTION — THE CLIENT’S LEGAL DUTY
South African law requires the Client, not the Provider, to retain business records:
- Five years from the end of the tax period, under the Tax Administration Act, No. 28 of 2011, and for VAT records under the Value-Added Tax Act, No. 89 of 1991.
- Seven years for company records, under the Companies Act, No. 71 of 2008.
The Provider retains the Client’s data for as long as the subscription is active and provides unlimited export so that the Client can meet those duties.
The Provider does not accept, and cannot accept, responsibility for the Client’s statutory record-keeping. The Client is strongly advised to take a full export at least once a year and store it independently.
7. SARS COMPLIANCE OF DOCUMENTS
The service produces documents in the form required by the Value-Added Tax Act: it applies the correct document type by value (a full tax invoice above R5 000 including VAT, an abridged tax invoice between R50 and R5 000), it prints the words "TAX INVOICE" and a VAT number only where the Client has told us they are VAT registered, and it carries the mandatory fields.
This depends entirely on the information the Client gives us being correct — the registered name, address, VAT number and VAT status. The Provider does not verify these against SARS or CIPC and cannot do so. If the Client’s VAT status or registered details change, the Client must update them in the app. Documents issued on the strength of incorrect information supplied by the Client are the Client’s responsibility.
8. ISSUED DOCUMENTS CANNOT BE EDITED
Once a quote or invoice is issued it is locked. It cannot be edited and it cannot be deleted, by the Client or by the Provider. Document numbers are gapless and sequential.
This is not a limitation, it is the point: an accounting record that can be quietly changed after the fact is not an accounting record, and SARS and any auditor will treat a gap in an invoice sequence as a red flag. Mistakes are corrected the correct way — with a credit note, which the service issues in one click and which leaves both documents visible.
The Client accepts that they cannot ask the Provider to alter, renumber or delete an issued document.
9. NOT TAX, ACCOUNTING OR LEGAL ADVICE
DoubleDown Books is software. It is not a tax practitioner, an accountant, an auditor or a legal adviser, and it does not give advice.
Calculations, VAT positions, VAT201 preparation figures, compliance calendar dates, reports and financial statements produced by the service are generated mechanically from the data the Client enters and the settings the Client chooses. They are a starting point for the Client and the Client’s professional adviser, not a substitute for one.
The Client remains solely responsible for the accuracy and completeness of every return, declaration and submission made to SARS, CIPC or any other authority, and for any penalty, interest, assessment or dispute arising from one. The Provider strongly recommends that the Client engages a registered tax practitioner or accountant.
The Client accepts that a figure being produced by the service does not make it correct for the Client’s circumstances.
10. DATA PROTECTION AND POPIA
Both parties will handle personal information in compliance with the Protection of Personal Information Act, No. 4 of 2013 (POPIA).
The Client is the Responsible Party for the personal information of the Client’s own customers, suppliers, employees and contacts. The Provider is an Operator processing that information on the Client’s behalf and on the Client’s instruction. This Agreement is the written Operator agreement required by section 21 of POPIA.
The Provider will: (a) process personal information only to provide the service and only on the Client’s instruction; (b) apply appropriate, reasonable technical and organisational security measures, including per-tenant database isolation enforced at the database itself; (c) not sell, rent or share the Client’s data, and not use it to train any model; (d) notify the Client without undue delay, and in any event within 24 hours, of a confirmed compromise; (e) return or delete the data on termination, subject to clause 5.
Where the data is: the service is hosted in the European Union, which the Information Regulator recognises as providing an adequate level of protection under section 72 of POPIA. Backups and processing stay within that region.
The Client warrants that it has a lawful basis for every piece of personal information it puts into the service.
11. SECURITY
Access to the app requires authentication on every login. Each business’s records are isolated from every other business’s records by row-level security enforced inside the database, not merely by the application — so a fault in the app cannot expose another business’s books.
The Provider never asks for and must never be given: the Client’s SARS eFiling username or password, internet-banking login credentials, or card numbers. Bank statement data is imported by file (CSV or OFX) that the Client downloads from their own bank. Anyone asking the Client for those credentials in the Provider’s name is not the Provider.
Sign-in is by a one-time code emailed to the address on the account, so access to that mailbox is access to the books. The Client is responsible for keeping that mailbox secure, and for the actions of every user they invite.
12. WHAT THE PROVIDER IS NOT LIABLE FOR
The Provider’s total aggregate liability under or in connection with this Agreement is limited to the
fees paid by the Client in the three months immediately preceding the claim. The Provider is not liable for indirect, consequential or incidental loss, including lost profit, lost business or lost opportunity.
Without limiting clause 9, the Provider is not liable for:
- any penalty, interest, additional assessment, audit or dispute with SARS, CIPC or any other authority, however it arises;
- data the Client or the Client’s users entered incorrectly, or a setting the Client chose incorrectly, including a wrong VAT status, a wrong VAT rate or a wrong opening balance;
- a document sent to the wrong recipient by the Client;
- the conduct of the Client’s own customers, suppliers or invited users;
- outages of third parties the service depends on, including PayFast, the Client’s bank, email delivery, or the Client’s own internet connection;
- loss arising from the Client failing to keep their sign-in email account secure, or from sharing access;
- any failure caused by events outside the Provider’s reasonable control, including power or network outages, natural disaster, government action or third-party API failure.
The service is provided
as is. The Provider targets 99.5% monthly uptime but does not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted or error-free. Nothing in this clause excludes the Client’s rights under the Consumer Protection Act, No. 68 of 2008 for genuine non-delivery or a defective service.
13. INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY
The software, its configuration, workflows and code remain the intellectual property of DoubleDown AI (Pty) Ltd. The Client receives a non-exclusive, non-transferable licence to use the service for the duration of an active subscription.
Everything the Client puts into the service — their data, documents, logo, branding and content — remains the Client’s property, in full, at all times.
14. SUPPORT
Support is provided by email to info@doubledownai.co.za and on WhatsApp at +27 76 847 0371, at the response times shown for the Client’s plan. Scheduled maintenance, where required, is announced 48 hours in advance and carried out outside business hours.
15. CANCELLATION AND TERMINATION
By the Client: at any time, from inside the app or by email to info@doubledownai.co.za. Cancellation takes effect at the end of the month already paid for. There is no notice period and no cancellation fee. Months already paid are not refunded, and no part-month is refunded.
By the Provider: the Provider may suspend or terminate the service on notice for non-payment beyond the grace period, or immediately for use of the service for an unlawful purpose, or for conduct that threatens the security or stability of the service for other clients.
On termination, in either direction, clause 5 applies: the Client has 30 days of continued export access.
16. GENERAL
Changes: the Provider may change these terms or the price on 30 days’ written notice to the Client’s signup email address. Because the Agreement is month-to-month, the Client’s remedy is simply to cancel before the change takes effect.
Disputes: the parties will attempt to resolve any dispute in good faith for 15 business days, then by mediation, before any legal proceedings are started.
Governing law: the laws of the Republic of South Africa. The parties consent to the jurisdiction of the courts of Gauteng.
Entire agreement: this document, together with the plan and price shown on the plan screen of this signup, is the entire agreement between the parties and supersedes anything said or written before it.
ELECTRONIC ACCEPTANCE
By typing their full legal name, ticking the acceptance box and continuing to payment, the Client confirms that they have read, understood and agree to this Agreement in full, and that they are authorised to bind {{biz}}.
This electronic acceptance is legally binding under South African law and carries the same weight as a handwritten signature in terms of the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, No. 25 of 2002. The accepted version, the name typed, the date and time, and the plan and price agreed are recorded against this signup.
Typing your name here is a signature under the Electronic Communications and Transactions Act, No. 25 of 2002.