Payroll
Sage 300 People vs Sage Pastel Payroll
Sage 300 People and Sage Pastel Payroll compared on what a South African buyer has to live with: what each one costs, what it is good at and where it gives ground.
Sage 300 People
Payroll
8.4out of 10
Medium and large employers with complex pay structures and HR needs
Read the review
Sage Pastel Payroll
Payroll
8.4out of 10
Payroll administrators who want proven local compliance on their own server
Read the reviewThe short answer
What the record adds up to
- Sage 300 People scores 8.4 and Sage Pastel Payroll scores 8.4. That is close enough to be a tie, so the decision rests on the detail below rather than the headline.
- Sage 300 People is ahead on depth of features.
- Sage Pastel Payroll is ahead on value for money and support and skills.
- Sage 300 People and Sage Pastel Payroll are not published on a basis that can be set beside the other price, so the two cannot be subtracted honestly. Read the plan notes instead.
Scored side by side
Where the difference actually sits
| Dimension | Sage 300 People | Sage Pastel Payroll | Our view |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall | 8.4 | 8.4 | Line ball |
| Everyday useSage 300 People: Powerful, and correspondingly heavy to learn and to administer. | 7.4 | 7.6 | Line ball |
| Depth of featuresSage 300 People: Bargaining councils, shifts, equity reporting and workflow in one place. | 9.4 | 8.4 | Sage 300 People |
| Value for moneySage Pastel Payroll: Annual licence with no public price and a renewal to negotiate. | 7.2 | 7.5 | Sage Pastel Payroll |
| Support and skillsSage Pastel Payroll: A very large pool of trained South African payroll administrators. | 8.5 | 9.0 | Sage Pastel Payroll |
| South African fitSage 300 People: Employment equity and council rules are core, not an add on. | 9.6 | 9.5 | Line ball |
Every score is our editorial judgement and the reasoning sits in the full review. A gap under two tenths is called line ball, because it is not a difference worth acting on.
Checked facts
What each vendor commits to
| Attribute | Sage 300 People | Sage Pastel Payroll |
|---|---|---|
| Deployment | On premise or hosted | Desktop with optional online modules |
| Ideal team | Medium and large employers | Small and medium employers |
| Pricing | On request, scoped by module and headcount | On request through a Sage business partner |
| Support | Partner and Sage professional services | First year support usually bundled |
What it costs
Price, on the same basis or not at all
| Attribute | Sage 300 People | Sage Pastel Payroll |
|---|---|---|
| Entry price | On requestscoped by module and headcount | On requestquoted by a Sage business partner |
| What that buys | Licence plus implementation; quoted per project | Annual licence banded by employee count; no public rate card |
| Billed in | Rand | Rand |
| Free tier | None | None |
| Free trial | No free trial | No free trial |
| Demonstration | On request | On request |
| Named AI feature | None advertised | None advertised |
Sage 300 People and Sage Pastel Payroll are not published on a basis that can be set beside the other price, so the two cannot be subtracted honestly. Read the plan notes instead.
Sage 300 People
Quoted per project. The licence is scoped by module and headcount, and the implementation is quoted separately. The licence is rarely the expensive part. Insist on a written statement of work that names the consultant, lists the modules, states the data migration approach and gives a go live date. Ask what the annual support cost will be in year two, because that is the number you will pay for a long time.
Sage Pastel Payroll
No public price. It is sold through Sage business partners as an annual licence banded by employee count, usually with the first year of telephone and email support included. The questions that matter are what the renewal costs in year two, whether the annual tax update is part of the renewal or a separate charge, and what happens to your licence if you skip a year of cover. Get those answers before you buy, not at renewal.
Capability
What each one actually does
The capabilities we tested in each review, written out rather than reduced to ticks in a grid. A tick tells you a feature exists. It does not tell you whether it is any good.
Sage 300 People
- Complex earnings and deductions
- Handles shift differentials, bargaining council contributions, allowances and the layered deduction rules that defeat simpler payrolls.
- Employment equity reporting
- Produces the reporting South African employers are obliged to file, built into the employee record rather than assembled from exports each year.
- Employee self service
- Staff manage leave, payslips and personal details themselves, with proper approval routing rather than email requests to the payroll office.
- Workflow approvals
- Configurable approval chains for leave, changes and terminations, which is what turns payroll from a personal process into a controlled one.
- Multi company and multi currency payroll
- Several entities in one system with consolidated reporting, so a group sees the whole picture without combining spreadsheets.
Sage Pastel Payroll
- Statutory PAYE, UIF and SDL
- Calculations maintained through the annual update cycle, with mid year adjustments handled rather than left for the administrator to work out.
- IRP5 and IT3(a) generation
- Produces the certificates in the format required for reconciliation season, which is the single busiest week in a payroll administrator year.
- Bulk payslip email
- Sends payslips to the whole payroll in one action with password protection, replacing the printing and folding that used to consume a full day.
- Leave and loan tracking
- Employee loans, garnishee orders and leave balances tracked against the payroll rather than in a side spreadsheet that nobody reconciles.
- Sage Pastel Partner integration
- Posts the payroll journal into Pastel accounting directly, keeping the ledger and the payroll in agreement without manual capture.
| Attribute | Sage 300 People | Sage Pastel Payroll |
|---|---|---|
| Covers |
|
|
Getting it running
Setup, and who answers when it breaks
Sage 300 People
What it takes to start
A project with a consultant, a scope and a timeline measured in months for a large employer. Earning and deduction definitions, bargaining council rules, approval workflow and organisational structure are all configured to your business. Insist on a written statement of work, a named consultant and a parallel run before cutover.
When something breaks
Support comes through the implementation partner and Sage professional services. Because the configuration is specific to you, the person who built it is the person who can fix it, so continuity of consultant matters more here than with a packaged product. Get that continuity addressed in the contract.
Sage Pastel Payroll
What it takes to start
Desktop installation with an annual update cycle that has to be planned around the tax year. Migration is normally done by a partner and includes employee masterfile, year to date figures and leave. The critical scheduling point is that you do not want to migrate mid tax year unless you have to.
When something breaks
First year support is typically bundled, then it follows the renewal. The deeper safety net is the size of the trained administrator pool, which means cover during leave and a replacement who already knows the product if your payroll person resigns. That is a real operational benefit.
Strengths and limits
Where each one gives ground
Sage 300 People
- Handles complex earnings, shift and bargaining council structures
- Human resources, self service and payroll sit in one database
- Reporting depth that finance and HR can both work from
- Implementation is a project with real consulting cost, not a signup
- Overkill for an employer under roughly fifty people
- Total cost depends heavily on which modules you licence
Sage Pastel Payroll
- Long track record with SARS submissions and annual tax year changes
- Optional modules for employee self service and human resources
- Skills are widely available in the local job market
- No public price, so budgeting means getting a quote first
- Desktop deployment adds backup and remote access work for you
- Annual update cycle has to be planned around the tax year
Local view
How each one behaves in South Africa
Sage 300 People
This is the product local groups move to when bargaining councils, shift allowances, employment equity reporting and multiple entities stop fitting a small payroll. Budget for the implementation properly. The licence is rarely the expensive part. Insist on a scoped statement of work and a named consultant before you sign.
Sage Pastel Payroll
The reason this product persists is the annual tax year change. Sage ships the update, the payroll administrator applies it and the submission season works. That reliability is worth a lot in a country where the rules move every year. Ask your partner in writing what the yearly renewal covers and whether the tax update is included or billed separately.
Closing judgement
What we said about each one
Sage 300 People
The right answer for a medium or large South African employer with genuinely complex pay structures. Substantial overkill for an employer under about fifty people, who should stay on cloud payroll.
Read the full Sage 300 People reviewSage Pastel Payroll
A dependable compliance tool for employers who want payroll on their own server and value a product their administrator already knows. New employers with no Pastel history should look at cloud payroll first.
Read the full Sage Pastel Payroll reviewWe may earn a commission if you subscribe through these links, at no extra cost to you. It never changes a score or a ranking. How we make money
How this page is put together
Where these figures come from
This page is assembled from our two reviews rather than written as a separate verdict. The scores, facts and prices are the ones published in each review, which is why they match. Where a figure has not been verified for both products we leave the row out instead of estimating it. Read the methodology
Keep comparing
