Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service form a binding agreement between SOUS CHEF (PTY) LTD, a private company (registration number 2026/803346/07) trading as Sous-Chef ("Sous-Chef", "we"), whose registered address is 46 Kings Road, Bedfordview, Johannesburg, 2007, and the entity or natural person who registers an account ("Customer", "you"). By creating an organisation or signing the in-app Service Agreement you accept these Terms on behalf of the business you represent, and you warrant that you have authority to bind that business.

Where the Customer also processes personal information of its employees through the service, the parties additionally enter into the Operator Agreement, which forms part of these Terms.

1.1 Order of precedence

The agreement between the parties consists of these Terms, the Operator Agreement, the Privacy Policy, the Service Level Agreement, and the Service Agreement the Customer accepts on activating an organisation. Where the Customer is an HR or industrial-relations practice, it also includes the Consultancy Terms of Service. If they conflict, the following order applies, highest first:

1. the Operator Agreement, on any question of the processing or protection of personal information;
2. the Privacy Policy, on how we handle personal information as the responsible party in our own right (account, billing and support information) and on retention periods;
3. the Consultancy Terms of Service (between us and a practice) and the Client–Consultancy Operator Agreement (between a practice and a company that has chosen it), each on the matters it governs;
4. these Terms of Service, on every other question;
5. the Service Level Agreement, on availability, support and maintenance;
6. the Service Agreement, which prevails only as to the commercial particulars it records — plan, billing cycle, fee basis and start date.

Nothing in any of these documents limits a right the Customer has under South African law that cannot be limited by agreement, including under the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 where it applies to the Customer.

2. The service

Sous-Chef is a multi-tenant SaaS platform that helps South African employers manage employees, leave, schedules, contracts, disciplinaries and statutory documents. The service is delivered over the public internet and depends on third-party infrastructure providers listed on our sub-processors page.

We may improve, modify, or discontinue features of the service. If a change materially reduces the core functionality of your plan, you may cancel under section 7 and, where you prepaid an annual term, receive a pro-rata refund for the unused portion. Features identified as beta, preview, or experimental are provided as-is, may change or be withdrawn without notice, and are excluded from the Service Level Agreement.

2.1 Employment start dates and leave accrual

Leave accrual, notice periods and severance calculations are anchored to each employee's employment start date. Where no start date has been recorded for an employee, leave accrual and the compliance checks use the date that employee's record was created on the platform instead, so that leave continues to accrue rather than stopping altogether. That fallback date is an approximation and may be later than the employee's true start date, which would under-state accrued leave and years of service. Terminating an employee from their profile, and issuing a certificate of service, need a start date first.

The Customer is responsible for recording an accurate start date for every employee. An owner or admin can set or correct it at any time from the member's profile; every change is written to the Customer's audit log with the previous and new value. Once a start date is recorded it takes precedence over the fallback from the next nightly run. Correcting a start date does not retrospectively recalculate leave already accrued — the Customer remains responsible for any adjustment it owes an employee under the BCEA.

3. Compliance guidance is not legal advice

The service includes South African labour-law guidance: minimum-wage and wage-floor checks, working-time and rest-period warnings, leave entitlements, notice periods, sectoral overlays (such as the CATRA Collective Agreement), and a compliance score (together, "compliance guidance").

Compliance guidance is informational only. It is not legal advice, does not create an attorney-client relationship, and is not a substitute for advice from a qualified labour-law practitioner or the CCMA and bargaining-council processes.

• Where it can, the service warns and lets you proceed. In some places it refuses to save a record until you change it or record an override. A refusal is not advice that the alternative is lawful. A warning shown, missed, suppressed by an exemption you recorded, or not shown at all does not transfer any employment-law responsibility to us.
• Compliance guidance depends on the accuracy and completeness of the data and configuration you provide — including, materially, the province of each branch. Where you have not confirmed a province, the service applies only national minimums and no sectoral overlay, and says so in-product.
• Laws change. We update the rule content in good faith but do not warrant that it is current, complete, or correctly applied to your circumstances at any moment.
• Documents generated by the service (contracts, warnings, notices) are templates completed with your data. You are responsible for reviewing them before use.

You remain solely responsible, as the employer, for compliance with the LRA, BCEA, sectoral determinations, collective agreements, and all other applicable law, and for every employment decision you take — including decisions informed by compliance guidance.

3.1 Compliance audits and the inspector-ready score

The service includes automated and manual audit checklists, an "inspector-ready score", and corrective actions generated from failed checks (together, "compliance tools"). Compliance tools are informational tools within the meaning of this section. They report on the records held in the service and on the answers you record when walking a checklist; they do not inspect your workplace, verify documents, or assess the substantive fairness of any decision.

• A score, a passed check, a locked audit run or a closed corrective action is not a certificate, an assurance or a representation that you are compliant with any law, and creates no advisory relationship between us.
• Every citation shown by a compliance tool is dated. You are responsible for verifying citations against the current Government Gazette and for compliance with all applicable law, whatever the score shows.
• Where a third-party practitioner uses the service to review or sign off an audit, that practitioner acts on their own professional responsibility and not on ours.
• Section 17 (limitation of liability) applies expressly to any reliance on a score, an audit run, a report or a corrective action.

4. Accounts and access

• You must register with a real, working business email address
• You are responsible for keeping your credentials confidential and for using the multi-factor authentication the service provides
• You must promptly revoke access for users who leave your organisation
• The owner and admin roles can invite other users; you are responsible for the actions of all users in your organisation
• The service is offered for business use, to businesses operating in South Africa

5. Customer data and roles under POPIA

The Customer is the responsible party for the personal information of its employees-members entered into the service. Sous-Chef is the operator and processes that information only on the Customer's documented instructions, on the terms of the Operator Agreement. As between the parties, the Customer owns all its data; we claim no rights in it beyond the licence needed to run, secure, and support the service.

The Customer warrants that it has a lawful basis to load each employee's personal information into the service and that it has provided each employee with the notice required by POPIA s18. Sous-Chef supports this by capturing a per-member POPIA notice on first login.

6. Fees, trials and billing

6.1 What you pay

Fees comprise a base fee per organisation plus a per-employee charge, tiered by employee count, at the rates for your plan published on the pricing section of our website when you subscribe (and as adjusted under section 6.5). The employee count for a billing period is the number of active employee records in the organisation on the invoice date. All amounts are in South African Rand. Fees are generally non-refundable, except as section 6.6 and your statutory rights provide.

6.2 Trial

Only the first business organisation an account creates gets a 14-day free trial, with full access to Standard-plan features. No payment card is required to start a trial. The trial exists so that you can evaluate the service before paying. Your first billing cycle starts when the trial ends, unless the organisation is cancelled before then; if you cancel during the trial, no fees are charged. A practice's fees, and any trial, are agreed under the Consultancy Terms of Service.

6.3 Billing cycles and payment

• Monthly subscriptions are invoiced monthly in arrears, with the first cycle starting the day the trial ends or, for an organisation with no trial, the day it is activated.
• Annual subscriptions are invoiced annually in advance at the discounted annual rate published on the pricing page.
• Invoices are payable within 7 days of the invoice date by the payment methods stated on the invoice.

6.4 Late payment

If an invoice is more than 14 days overdue, we may suspend the organisation until payment is received. While it is suspended, the owner can still export the organisation's data (section 8). If an invoice is still unpaid 60 days after suspension, we may cancel the organisation, giving any notice section 7 requires. Its data is then deleted as section 8 describes.

6.5 Price changes and VAT

We may change the fees on 30 days' written notice by email to the organisation owner. Changes take effect from your next billing cycle after the notice period. Prices for a prepaid annual term are fixed for that term. If you object to a new price, you may cancel before it takes effect. A cancellation for that reason takes effect on the date you give, which can be no later than the day the new price would start, and we refund, pro-rata, the fees you prepaid for the period after that date (section 6.6). We are not currently VAT-registered, so fees are not subject to VAT; if we become VAT-registered, VAT will be added at the prevailing rate from the date of registration, and that will not count as a price change under this section.

6.6 Refunds

Because cancellation takes effect at the end of the billing period already paid for (section 7), the Customer keeps the service for everything it has paid for and we do not, as a general rule, refund a period already consumed.

We do refund, pro-rata for the unused part of a pre-paid term:

• where the Customer objects on reasonable grounds to a new sub-processor and terminates as a result (Operator Agreement section 6);
• where the Customer terminates because we are in material breach and have not remedied it within a reasonable period after notice;
• where the Customer cancels under section 2 after a change that materially reduces the core functionality of its plan;
• where the Customer cancels because of a price change under section 6.5 or a change to these Terms under section 20; and
• where we terminate the service, or discontinue it, other than for the Customer's breach.

This section does not limit the Customer's statutory rights. In particular, where the Consumer Protection Act 68 of 2008 applies to the Customer, section 14 of that Act gives a right to cancel a fixed-term agreement on twenty (20) business days' notice and limits any cancellation charge to a reasonable amount. Where that right applies it prevails over this section, and we will calculate any charge accordingly.

7. Term and cancellation

• These Terms apply for as long as you have an account. There is no minimum term.
• You may cancel at any time from within the service or by emailing support. Cancellation of a monthly subscription takes effect at the end of the current billing month; cancellation of an annual subscription takes effect at the end of the prepaid year (subject to sections 6.5, 6.6 and 20 and any CPA s14 right).
• We may terminate for material breach on 14 days' written notice if the breach is not cured. We may terminate immediately for unlawful use, breach of the acceptable-use rules in section 9, or insolvency events, and for non-payment as section 6.4 provides.
• Where the Consumer Protection Act applies to the Customer, we give 20 business days' written notice to remedy a breach before we cancel for it. That notice period applies instead of the shorter periods above, whatever the breach.

8. Export, deletion and your statutory records

While the organisation is active, you can export its data, including the POPIA data-subject export, yourself at any time. While it is suspended, the owner can export the whole organisation's data.

When the service ends after a cancellation (at the end of the period already paid for or, if the organisation was suspended or had stopped paying, on the date it is cancelled), the organisation enters a 60-day export window: access for new work is closed, but the owner may still export its data. After the window, we delete the organisation's data from production systems within 30 days, and from backups on the backup rotation cycle, except for records we must keep for our own legal, tax, or invoicing obligations, in line with the retention schedule in our privacy policy.

Your statutory records remain your responsibility. South African law requires employers to retain employment records for prescribed periods: at least three years from the last entry in the record (BCEA s31); written particulars for three years after termination (BCEA s29); and longer under tax and other legislation. The service is not an archival substitute for those obligations after your subscription ends: you must export and retain your records before the export window closes, and we are not liable for your inability to produce records you did not export.

9. Acceptable use

You may not, and must not allow any user to:

• Use the service for any unlawful purpose
• Upload personal information you are not lawfully entitled to process
• Attempt to access another organisation's data, reverse-engineer the service or probe for vulnerabilities outside a sanctioned disclosure programme
• Use the service to send spam, harass, defame or impersonate another person
• Use the service to store content unrelated to employee management
• Resell or sublicense the service without our written consent

We may suspend an organisation immediately where we reasonably believe continued operation creates a security or legal risk, and will notify you and lift the suspension when the risk is resolved.

10. Intellectual property

Sous-Chef and its licensors retain all rights, title and interest in the service, including all software, content templates, rule content and design. The Customer retains all rights in its data; nothing in these Terms transfers ownership of Customer data to Sous-Chef. We may use anonymised, aggregated data to improve the service. If you give us feedback, we may use it without restriction or payment.

11. Confidentiality

Each party will keep the other's non-public information confidential and use it only for purposes of this agreement, except where disclosure is required by law. This section survives termination for 3 years; Customer data is protected under the Operator Agreement for as long as we hold it.

12. Third-party sub-processors

The service is built on third-party infrastructure and email providers. The current list, their hosting regions and the categories of personal information they handle is published at /legal/sub-processors. We notify Customer-administrators by email before adding, replacing or materially changing a sub-processor.

13. Service levels and support

Our availability commitment (99.5% monthly uptime target), support channels, response targets by plan, maintenance windows, and the service-credit remedy are set out in the Service Level Agreement, which forms part of these Terms. Service credits under the SLA are the sole remedy for failures of availability, subject to the Customer's statutory rights (including section 54 of the CPA where it applies). Support response times are targets; no credit is payable if one is missed.

14. Publicity

We may identify the Customer by name and logo in customer lists and marketing material, in a manner that does not suggest endorsement of specific claims. You may opt out at any time by emailing the address in section 22, and we will remove your marks from future materials within 30 days.

15. Warranties and disclaimers

We warrant that we will provide the service with reasonable skill and care and in accordance with applicable South African law. To the maximum extent permitted by law, the service is otherwise provided on an "as-is" and "as-available" basis and we disclaim all other warranties, express or implied. We specifically do not warrant employment-law outcomes (see section 3).

16. Indemnity

The Customer indemnifies Sous-Chef against third-party claims (including by the Customer's employees, unions, bargaining councils, or regulators) arising from: (a) the Customer's employment decisions and practices; (b) Customer data the Customer had no right to process; (c) the Customer's breach of sections 3, 4 or 9, or of its obligations as responsible party under the Operator Agreement.

17. Limitation of liability

Subject to applicable law, neither party is liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages arising out of these Terms. Each party's total aggregate liability under these Terms is capped at the fees paid by the Customer to Sous-Chef in the 12 months immediately preceding the event giving rise to the claim (or, where the claim arises during a free trial, R1,000). Nothing in these Terms limits liability for wilful misconduct, fraud, or any liability that cannot be limited under law (including under the CPA where applicable, and under POPIA).

18. Force majeure

Neither party is liable for failure caused by events beyond its reasonable control, including failures of upstream cloud infrastructure providers, provided the affected party notifies the other and mitigates where reasonably possible. Payment obligations for services already delivered are not excused.

19. Governing law and disputes

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Republic of South Africa.

Before either party commences proceedings, both will attempt in good faith to resolve the dispute by negotiation between senior representatives within fifteen (15) business days of written notice of the dispute. If that fails, the dispute will be finally resolved by arbitration under the rules of the Arbitration Foundation of Southern Africa (AFSA), seated in Johannesburg, before one arbitrator, in English. We may nonetheless bring collection proceedings for unpaid fees in any competent court.

Nothing in this section prevents either party from seeking interim or urgent relief in any competent forum, deprives either party of a right to approach a court that South African law confers regardless of agreement, or affects the Customer's right to refer a matter to the Information Regulator, the National Consumer Commission or any other body with statutory jurisdiction.

20. Changes to these terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. The version number and effective date at the top of this page change with each update. We email the organisation owner at least 30 days before a change to these Terms takes effect. When it takes effect, every user is asked to accept the new version in the app (we record the version each user accepted).

If you object to a change, you may cancel before it takes effect. A cancellation for that reason takes effect on the date you give, which can be no later than the day the change takes effect, and we refund, pro-rata, the fees you prepaid for the unused period after that date (section 6.6).

21. General

• These Terms and the documents they incorporate are the whole agreement on their subject and supersede prior discussions.
• No variation except in writing (including a versioned update under section 20), and no waiver by conduct or delay.
• Invalid clauses are severed; the remainder stands.
• The Customer may not cede or assign without our written consent, not unreasonably withheld.
• We may assign this agreement to a company incorporated to carry on the Sous-Chef business, on written notice to you, and references to Sous-Chef will then refer to that company.

22. Contact

Questions about these Terms: sous.chef.south.africa@gmail.com. Privacy / data-subject requests: sous.chef.south.africa@gmail.com.

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