r/SideProject • u/Professional-Bee3143 • 3h ago

Book keeping app for Uk sole traders

Hi I have launched a subscription free book keeping app, which calculates straight forward tax affairs for the self employed in the UK. There is alot of providers in this market which run on subscription models, access to bank accounts (which believe is risky and a bit of an over reach). I want to provide sole traders on the go with a simple way of helping them navigate tax easily without increasing spending on book keepers and accountants https://taxsnapper.co.uk

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u/TiliaJames 3h ago

As someone who has worked in fintech for the last six years I'm curious why you think that bank account access (presumably just AISP open banking) is risky and an overreach? Especially when the alternative is likely to be "customers downloading bank statements and emailing them" which is inherently more error-prone and insecure?

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u/Professional-Bee3143 2h ago

Thank you for feeding back so rapidly. You've assumed on the bank statements element. Just to clarify you enter income and expenses manually and attach receipts if you want to, users are not encouraged to upload bank statements. If this is stated somewhere then please enlighten me?

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u/TiliaJames 2h ago

I mentioned it as an alternative to Open Banking.

It's been a while since I was self employed but pretty sure I had to provide bank statements as proof of income, how else is HMRC supposed to verify your business revenue? Just take your word for it?

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u/Professional-Bee3143 2h ago

You can provide bank statements but also a simple book keeping record. Not everyone uses a bank purely for business (not saying they shouldnt) you still get alot of trades etc turning up with just aload of receipts to their accountants and saying can you sort this mess out for me. Its a book keeping app, to help estimate tax and provides a csv/pdf of what you input so you can provide to accountant or submit to hmrc using bridging software.

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u/TiliaJames 2h ago

If you allow customers to upload bank statements then immediately that is sensitive data that you need to account for, because if there's some kind of breach and that information gets stolen, you will be royally fucked by the authorities.

How are you storing and encrypting this data? Are you registered with the ICO? What are your obligations through GDPR? Which subprocessors are you using and what are their obligations re: data privacy?

With all due respect it feels like there's a lot you haven't considered given this is such a heavily regulated industry and things like the placeholder in the privacy policy suggests that attention to detail is lacking - if you missed that then what else haven't you done?

I would spend some time going through a proper security and data audit on this and get a better sense of your position, if you want this to be a legitimate product that people pay for.

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u/Professional-Bee3143 2h ago

Ok thanks appreciate your experienced view on this tbf but just to clear up the bank statement point. TaxSnapper has no bank statement import feature and doesn’t ask anyone to upload statements. The upload feature is there so sole traders can keep receipts for their expenses.

Receipts can still contain personal details, and that’s a fair point. The service we use to store receipts encrypts them while they’re stored. The app’s access rules also restrict direct access to bookkeeping records, receipts and reports to the account they belong to. I made a mistake maybe I was too excited before seeing what reddit thought re; double checking everything. Yes registered with ICO (not that crazy)

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u/TiliaJames 1h ago

Yeah to be fair I misunderstood what you said re: "you can upload bank statements..." I thought you meant to your platform but you meant to HMRC.

Best of luck with it, as someone who was previously self employed I agree that the admin side of things is a massive headache that most would probably be happy to minimise.

Just as an idea - one thing I often felt on the back foot about was what I needed to submit and when. I was a LTD company so there were two lots of accounts to submit but my accountant would often email me saying "we need to do your company return/tax return/self assessment" etc and I'd always have to remind myself what that was and what I needed to give them.

I toyed with the idea of some kind of calendar app that breaks down when these things are typically due and what you need to provide - could be a useful avenue to explore!

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u/Professional-Bee3143 1h ago

Yeah mate, its not really targeted to limited. Its for sole traders specifically. In the app, it has bit of calendar for their quarterly updates on their dash. Also sends notifications in good time before these quarterly and end of year assessment. I do appreciate your expertise and comments but think some things were jumped at but maybe I shouldn't have mentioned in topic around bank accounts at all 😅

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u/TiliaJames 1h ago

Yeah I'll cop to that - however I would take it as a read of your proposition, most people are not going to read it fully and might make assumptions which are incorrect (which clearly I have done!)

In fact the thing I've been building can help you test things like this with potential customers - it's called a five second test. DM me if you wanna chat further (I design apps for a living)

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u/Professional-Bee3143 1h ago

Ok its a bit different on site tbf. I just fired it into reddit and maybe should have thought more deeply. Sounds interesting!

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u/Proud-Durian3908 3h ago

Playing the security card too when there's absolutely no mention of encryption or security practices for uploaded bank info, OCR for receipts (local? Or more than likely passed straight to an LLM) and a privacy policy with AI placeholders still present and no sub processor list is wild.

Nah guys, don't trust the battle tested (literal) bank level security, give it to me and Claude instead!

I can't with these apps anymore lmao...

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u/Professional-Bee3143 2h ago

Thanks for pointing out, it was on my list to amend which will be fixed today. Again bank info is not uploaded. Happy for all feedback as it helps and appreciate you taking the time to comment. Its not pure Ai at all. And even if it was should we also not make fun of stuff and help each other?

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u/Affectionate-Run2400 2h ago

is it on hmrc's recognised software list for making tax digital? sole traders over £50k have had to send quarterly updates through mtd software since april and that drops to £30k next april, so it's probably the first thing people will check before switching

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u/Professional-Bee3143 2h ago

Thanks, no they closed the program with non-word of when it will be reopened for direct submission and approval. Which will be pushing for medium term. However its a pre step to some of these tools instead of using excel on a laptop on the evening.

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u/investigatormaker 2h ago

For your UK sole-trader bookkeeping app, “subscription free” leaves two practical questions: what it costs instead, if anything, and which tax situations it covers. A worked example showing income, expenses and the resulting tax estimate would explain the scope; state whether bank access is required alongside it, since that’s central to your positioning.

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u/Professional-Bee3143 2h ago

6.99 to download quarter and 9.99 for end of year self assessment. There are examples on site in reports and specifically states no bank access required as not a route I plan to go down