QuickBooks publishes one South African telephone number, and it is a sales number. There is no South African support line. If you already have a subscription and something is broken, the phone will not help you and the routes below will.
The number, and what it is for
- Sales: +27 80 098 3896, toll free, labelled by Intuit as Call sales
- Dialled locally that is 0800 983 896
- It is for buying, plans and pricing — not for a problem with an existing file
The distinction is not pedantry. Sales agents cannot see your company file, cannot reset a bank feed and cannot open a support case. Phoning them about a broken reconciliation costs you the call and then a transfer that may not exist.
Where support actually is
- Inside the product. Sign in to QuickBooks Online and use the Help button. That is the only route where the agent can see your account, and it is the fastest.
- Learn and Support at quickbooks.intuit.com/za/learn-and-support/ for the South African guides.
- Small business help at quickbooks.intuit.com/za/smallbusinesshelp/
- The community at quickbooks.intuit.com/learn-support/en-global/, which is a global forum rather than a South African one.
- A formal complaint has its own published process in the help centre under Make a complaint.
Note that the support content is largely global with a South African layer on top. Guidance about tax, VAT and payroll is the part that differs by country, so check that an article you are following is the South African one before you act on it.
Watch out for fake QuickBooks support numbers
This is one of the most heavily impersonated support brands in the world. Search results and sponsored ads carry numbers claiming to be QuickBooks support; they are not. The pattern is a person who asks to install remote access software on your machine, then finds an urgent problem and asks for payment. Intuit does not cold-call you, and the only place to start a support session is from inside your signed-in QuickBooks account. Never let anyone who phoned you take control of the computer your accounts live on.
Before you contact anyone
- Know which product you have. QuickBooks Online is a subscription; the old desktop products are different software with different support.
- Have the company name exactly as it appears in the file, and the email the subscription is billed to.
- Note the exact error text. A screenshot of it is worth three paragraphs of description.
- If a bank feed has stopped, note the bank and the last date that imported.
Accountants have a separate route
Intuit runs a distinct programme for accountants and bookkeepers, with its own section of the site. If your books are managed by an accountant, ask them first — a ProAdvisor can often see and fix a file issue immediately, and they have a support channel that a subscriber does not.
Billing, cancellation and tax
- Subscription billing and cancellation are handled in the account settings inside the product, not by the sales line.
- A billing dispute on a card can also be raised with your bank, but cancel the subscription properly first or it simply bills again.
- For South African tax questions the site publishes SARS tax tables as a resource, but that is reference material, not advice.