Your backups are being done.

If you're partnered with us.

Knox Findata watches over the financial data of businesses that cannot afford to reprocess. The process is simple: you get one email confirming your data is safe and you don't think about this again.

2,500employees paid on time
3 hoursfrom the call to payroll processing
30databases restored in one morning
2 daysfaster than the hardware could be replaced

The story

07:28, Monday
25 September 2017.

The phone rings. Over the weekend, thieves took both servers from a client's premises. The accounting server. The payroll server. Thirty desktop machines. Two large steel safes. Everything.

This client ran 20 accounting databases and 10 payroll databases. Their payroll department was four people, and those four people had 2,500 employees to pay in the next three days.

Our team pooled every available resource. Extra laptops packed. We arrived 45 minutes after the panicked call.

By 10:30 that morning, their payroll team was processing again on borrowed laptops, every database restored. Two days before the stolen hardware could even be replaced, the business was running.

Every employee was paid on time.

The call
On site, laptops out
Payroll processing

That morning is why Knox Findata exists. Not because backups are complicated, but because on the worst morning of their year, our client needed a team that had already done the work, and could move.

Fit

Who this is for

Knox is for you if

  • You are a director who has no time to check whether backups ran, but when you need them, they have to be there
  • Your staff process 100 or more invoices a day, each
  • You run multiple company databases on one server
  • Losing three days of processing would be a catastrophe you can measure in money and trust

Knox is probably not for you if

  • You process a handful of invoices a month
  • You are a one-person operation with time to run your own backups
  • You have a person whose job includes checking, testing and restoring your backups, and they answer for it
  • A free cloud drive genuinely covers your risk

We say this openly because assurance only works when it is watched. We take a limited number of clients and we watch all of them.

The service

What Knox does

Everyone needs backups and there are many ways to do them. A hard drive once a month. A homemade script that copies files to a “server” stored at someone's house. These solutions can work, until the day nobody notices they stopped.

Knox is the version where someone is watching.

We set it up properly

Your accounting and payroll data, identified precisely, backed up automatically every day to secure South African data centres. Set up by people who know exactly where Sage Pastel keeps what matters.

We watch it so you don't

Every backup is monitored. If one fails, we fix it before you know it happened. When your financial year rolls over, we move the backup with it, so it never quietly protects last year's folder while ignoring this year's books.

When the worst happens, we bring you back

Restores measured in hours, not days. Priority clients are processing again the same morning. We know, because we have done it.

Financial data only. We do not back up your entire server, and that is deliberate. Full-system backups are the job of IT service providers, and good ones do it well: a week after the theft, our client's IT provider had restored 95% of their general data, and we salute that work. But payroll could not wait a week. Small, precise backup sets are what make same-morning recovery possible. It can be the difference between making payday and large-scale strike action.

Pricing

Three ways to never think about this

Knox Core

R350 / month

Software only. For self-managers.

  • Automated daily backup of your financial data
  • Daily email confirmation
  • 3 company databases, 5 GB
  • 33-day retention
  • No support, no monitoring. You watch it yourself.
Explore Knox Core

Knox Elite

R3,500 / month

You never think about this again.

  • Everything in Premium, for unlimited databases and 100 GB
  • Monthly verified test restore
  • Monthly data integrity checks on live Pastel data, 3 databases included (activated at your request)
  • After-hours emergency services included
  • Virtual server spin-up during a disaster
  • 5-year statutory retention included, aligned to SARS record-keeping
  • 66-day daily retention
  • Preferential support rate
Explore Knox Elite

Once-off onboarding R890. Month to month, one calendar month notice. Prices exclude VAT; Knox is not currently VAT registered, so no VAT is charged. Add-ons and full inclusions

Security & sovereignty

Where your data lives

Encrypted end to end

Your data is encrypted before it leaves your server and stays encrypted at rest. Nobody at Knox can read its contents. Neither can anyone else.

It never leaves South Africa

Your backups live in South African data centres, mirrored across locations. Local jurisdiction, local recovery speed, POPIA-aligned.

Isolated from ransomware

A synced drive copies encryption as faithfully as it copies your files. Our backups are held apart from your network, which is the entire point.

Evidence for your auditors

Backup health reports on request, and a formal confirmation letter for your auditor or insurer when you need one.

The team watching

Kalla Napier, Founder and Managing Director of Knox Findata

I have supported Sage Pastel Accounting and Payroll for over a decade. I have restored client data at 7am on the worst Monday of their year, and I have taken calls from businesses asking if I had backups of their data when nobody had asked me to make any. They suffered. That second kind of call is the one I intend never to take again.

Knox exists so that when you call, the answer is yes.

Kalla Napier, Founder & Managing Director · WhatsApp

FAQ

Asked, answered

Is my cloud drive not already a backup?

No. Dropbox, OneDrive and Google Drive are sync tools. When ransomware encrypts your files or someone deletes them, the sync faithfully copies the damage to the cloud within seconds. A backup is separate, versioned and isolated. That is what Knox runs.

Where is my data stored?

In secure South African data centres, encrypted, mirrored across locations. It does not leave the country.

Can Knox see my financial data?

No. Data is encrypted before transmission. We manage the backups. We cannot read their contents, nor can anyone else.

What about the SARS five-year rule?

SARS requires financial records to be kept for five years. Knox Elite includes five-year retention as standard. Core and Premium clients can add it from R145 per month, or R1,500 per year prepaid. Retention runs as a rolling five-year window: years older than five drop off automatically, with deletion confirmed in writing, and longer retention is available on request. You are not paying for disk space. You are paying for certainty of access when SARS asks.

What exactly do you back up?

Your accounting and payroll databases, precisely scoped at onboarding. We do not back up your full server, your email or files outside the agreed scope, and we put that scope in writing so there is never a surprise.

How fast is a restore, honestly?

Priority clients: we work to have you processing within 3 hours of your call. That assurance depends on your internet connection and software reactivation, which is why we call it an assurance and not a stunt. Our record is a 30-database restore with payroll running by 10:30am.

How does support work?

Remotely, via TeamViewer, by people who know Pastel. Premium and Elite clients raise a ticket or send a WhatsApp. Support time is billed hourly, with a preferential rate for Elite.

What does leaving look like?

Month to month, one calendar month notice. If you need your data downloaded or software uninstalled on exit, that time is billed as consulting. No lock-in, no hostage-taking.

SOUTH AFRICAN DATA CENTRES · MIRRORED · WATCHED

The application

We take a limited number of clients.

Not everyone needs Knox. The businesses that do, know the feeling: too busy to check, too exposed not to. Tell us about your setup and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right fit, and which tier actually suits you. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.

Request an assessment Or WhatsApp us directly.