Intuit's app helps self-employed workers invoice, manage expenses, and file taxes

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

Self-employed workers are faced with a lot of pain points when tax time comes around. Not only do they need to carefully monitor expenses as well as send and follow up on invoices for jobs, getting all the necessary information to file taxes accurately and on time is a constant challenge. Intuit's QuickBooks Self-Employed mobile app eliminates the pain points associated with financial management and helps self-employed workers easily manage their operations from anywhere.

"We identified this new market, the independent contractor and we noticed that there wasn't a quick adoption of the traditional QuickBooks App.  We did a ton of research and identified what their unique needs were. Rather than needing a full financial picture of their business, the things that were important to them were being able to keep track of their expenses and getting ready for tax time," says Melika Hope, Senior Product Manager at Intuit.

 "We wanted to come up with a simple app to use that would be a big uplift. You wouldn't necessary have to work with an accountant. It would be super intuitive to help them get there." Hope adds.

The app, which I installed on my iPhone, was easy enough to use and has specific sections for tracking expenses, mileage and sending invoices.

"It is designed for a self-employed users filing a T-1 Tax Return. There's a form on that return called a T2125 where you report you're self employed income and expenses. We have invoicing and  allow you to accept payments through the app. If you're using the invoicing function there, we will have a record of the income you've created with your business," Hope notes.

"We allow users to categorize their expenses according to the T2125 form. when it comes to tax time and you're filling up that form you simply have to go to your Tax Tab and you can see the totals you have for each expense category and you simply input that information to a form and you should have most of what you need to complete that." 

"Before we launched this product, customers would go through a really manual process of keeping track of every receipt throughout the year. When it came to tax time they would take all those receipts, try and remember if it was related to business and then enter it into the form. With the app, we encourage users to do that real time so at tax time all the information is already organized." She explains.

 The app also provides automatic mileage tracking using smartphones. A feature that Intuit says helps when attributing mileage expenses to self-employed use. "We found a lot of self-employed people drive around with a mileage log on their car or they write down every single trip. We know mileage is an area where the CRA are really strict when they audit. If you don't have a comprehensive mileage log when you travel, you can find yourself in trouble."

Ideal use of this app is to use it on a daily basis and not just as tax time gets closer. The long term benefit of noting down expenses for tax purposes saves a lot of time when tax preparation comes along.  The app costs $9.99 a month but is currently being made available at a 50% off discount in a limited offer.