After the mid-year launch of Athena, the web-based tool is off to a great start with two significant oil companies subscribing to the service.
“We identified the need for a system that can provide members of the petrochemical industry quick and accurate information about their excise exposure on a monthly basis,” says Gregory Marks, National Excise Manager at Turners. “So, we designed and developed a computer-driven, real-time indirect tax management system for the Customs and Excise, Clearing and Forwarding environment.”
Athena integrates with logistics software systems and gathers and processes information on imports, exports, local removals and storage to make the calculations. This automated system replaces the time-consuming manual operation, is more accurate and offers greater comfort by providing real-time management dashboards to gauge exposure.
“We were confident that there was a need for Athena within the industry and getting two clients within the first few months reinforces our belief in our product,” says Gregory.
The software enables clients to provide SARS with records reflecting an audit trail ensuring full Tax compliance. System efficiency is important as there is a limited two-year period for companies to recover revenue due which is provided for by legislation.