Sandton · Johannesburg  ·  011 000 0000 Client portal login →
H&V Hartsmith & ValeChartered Accountants
Book a consultation
The Hartsmith & Vale boardroom
Established 1997 · Sandton

The numbers are the easy part. The judgement isn't.

A small chartered practice for owner-managed businesses. You will deal with the partner who signs your accounts, not with whoever is free that week.

Book a consultation What we do

Who we work with

  • — Owner-managed businesses turning over R5m to R150m
  • — Family companies planning a succession or a sale
  • — Professional practices and their partners
  • — Trusts, estates and the families behind them
SAICA registered IRBA audit licence SARS registered tax practitioners B-BBEE Level 2 Est. 1997
Services

Four things, done thoroughly.

We have deliberately not grown into a firm that does everything. What follows is the whole list — if you need something outside it we will tell you, and usually tell you who to call.

Statutory audits, independent reviews and agreed-upon procedures. We plan around your year-end rather than ours, and we raise issues while there is still time to fix them — not in a management letter three months later.

  • — Statutory audit
  • — Independent review
  • — Agreed-upon procedures
  • — Due diligence support

Company, trust and personal tax, plus the awkward conversations: provisional estimates, SARS queries, voluntary disclosure and dispute resolution. We would rather structure it correctly at the start than argue about it afterwards.

  • — Corporate & personal returns
  • — Provisional tax
  • — SARS disputes & objections
  • — VAT & payroll taxes

Bookkeeping through to monthly management accounts and a finance function you can actually run a business on. For companies too small for a financial director and too big to keep guessing.

  • — Monthly management accounts
  • — Payroll
  • — Cash-flow forecasting
  • — Part-time FD

Valuations, restructuring, buy-and-sell agreements and the long conversation about what happens to the business when the founder stops. Usually the most valuable work we do, and always the least urgent.

  • — Business valuations
  • — Group restructuring
  • — Succession planning
  • — Estate & trust planning
28
Years in practice
3
Partners, no layers
190+
Client companies
11yr
Average relationship
People

You will know who is doing your work.

Three partners, eleven staff, one floor. Nothing is passed to a department you have never met.

Elmarie Hartsmith

Elmarie Hartsmith

CA(SA) · Managing partner

Founded the practice in 1997 after eight years in a Big Four audit division. Handles the audit portfolio and most of the succession work. Chairs the firm's technical committee and has an unpopular view about spreadsheets.

Read more +
Gerhard Vale

Gerhard Vale

CA(SA) · Tax partner

Joined as second partner in 2004. Runs the tax practice, including dispute resolution and voluntary disclosure. Has appeared before the Tax Court more often than he would like and won more often than he will admit.

Read more +
Sipho Ndlovu

Sipho Ndlovu

CA(SA) · Advisory partner

Made partner in 2019 having trained with the firm. Leads outsourced finance and advisory, and built the client reporting portal that most of our clients now log into every month.

Read more +
Clients

What they say when we're not in the room.

"We were with a large firm for nine years and never once spoke to the partner whose name was on the report. Here you phone Elmarie and Elmarie answers."

Managing directorManufacturing group, Germiston · client since 2016

"They found a structural problem in how we'd set up the trust six years earlier, told us plainly what it would cost to unwind, and then unwound it. No drama."

Family trustThree-generation business · client since 2011
Insights

Written when there is something worth saying.

No monthly newsletter for its own sake. We publish when legislation moves or when the same question arrives from three clients in a week.

Tax · 6 min read

Provisional tax estimates: the 80% rule and where it bites

Underestimating a second provisional payment is the most common penalty we see, and it is entirely avoidable with one calculation in January.

Read the article →
Succession · 9 min read

What actually happens to a family business when nobody plans

Three anonymised cases from our own files, and the single document that would have prevented all three.

Read the article →
Advisory · 4 min read

Management accounts you will actually read

Most monthly packs are forty pages nobody opens. Here is the one-page version we produce instead, and why it works.

Read the article →
Contact

Book a first conversation.

The first meeting is an hour, at our cost, with a partner. If we are not the right firm for you we will say so at the end of it.

What to expect

  • — One hour with a partner, not a junior
  • — No charge, and no obligation afterwards
  • — A written fee proposal within three working days
  • — Fixed annual fees, billed monthly, no surprise invoices
14th Floor, Fredman Towers
13 Fredman Drive, Sandton 2196
011 000 0000 · info@hartsmithvale.test
Please give us a name
That email doesn't look right
We need a number
Pick the closest one
Pick a date

We reply within one working day. Nothing you send here is shared outside the firm.

✓

Request received

Template demonstration. Hartsmith & Vale is an invented practice — every name, person, credential and client on this page is fictional.