Truffle: Finds business deductions in your personal spending history
gotruffle.com
gotruffle.com
Would make an interesting experiment to create a website that would 'promise' cash-money based on whatever in exchange of user connecting their email and other accounts. This hoax could then siphon the passwords and accounts directly to Troy Hunt [0] and warn user like SECs fake ICO site[1] does. ;-)
[0] https://haveibeenpwned.com/ [1] https://www.howeycoins.com/
edit: grammar
That is a limitation of the OFX version 1 protocol that is used by banks to exchange that data. OFX v2 does away with real account numbers in the api in exchange for account identifiers. The problem is that not all banks have switched to the new api, which was only finalized back in 2006, so give the big FIs a little time to get with the program.
The example of this application seems just like it wouldn't be too hard to implement with proper accounting (and tagging) of expenses.
You can easily self-host Firefly III in Docker [1], or use GNUCash [2].
I'm going to experiment with the former in the next months.
These two things combined together make me doubt that the customer reference might be fake (and nobody is ever going to challenge it!).
Instead, tell me something like "$RealFirstName $RealLastName, VP Product, $RealCompany", and I immediately believe you.
I'm a freelance software consultant working remotely and there isn't much I can expense as far as I know (working from home costs, hardware, software, insurance, accountancy fees, mobile bill).
I live in NL and (I checked with my accountant), I can deduct the cost of coffee I get at the cafe where I work, provided that I drink it while working.
Without travel expenses, purchasing lots of hardware or online service costs for running a project, I'd be interested in what people are expensing if their expenses are above say £5K a year.
However in case you get audited, make sure you keep reciepts (not just record of payment) and can justify it as being a food-while-working or bizdev expense.
You're only supposed to expense the items which were actually for business purposes, and no app can figure that out for you if your record-keeping throughout the year was sloppy. I don't think it will fly when you're sitting down uncomfortably with an IRS auditor if your defense is that some app told you to do it.
How does it work?
Connect your personal spending accounts, and we'll find all potential business deductions and categorize them for you.
If something isn't actually a deduction / business-related, you may remove it. If we got a categorization wrong, you can fix it.
I know that doesn't cover all use-cases, but it is what we started out with.
Presumably the same reason for the recent reddit redesign, and snapchat's awful UI changes.
Not all of those classes will have or even need a full business separation setup
Every year my accountant tells me to do this. And every year I lose cards and get distracted by promos.
I'll still be signing up for this just to see how it does.
I skimmed the question and answered in haste. My apologies.
It feels very dishonest to say that you delete the user's data, while handing it over to a third-party ...
For what it's worth, I actually like Plaid's API compared to Yodlee, but have serious concerns about privacy. There's no way to determine if they are _just_ collecting transactions when you request the user's transactions as a dev. The user is handing over their user/pass/MFA and Plaid could be doing god knows what with that.
Beyond audit by a third party, how would one go about proving they deleted something and absolutely no other copy remains?
Any plans to expand to other countries? I know it’s hard, tax is a different mess everywhere, but I could really use it here in UK...
Unfortunately, I also used HSBC last year which sucks at integrating with places, but I just switched to Azlo which is supported well.
FWIW, my feedback - I need a way to filter larger amounts of transactions at a time. I just connected all my credit cards. 100% of my uber and hotel usage is personal - it looks like as is I'd have to select each one instead of being able to search "uber" and check all to remove them.
But what is stopping an application like Mint or Truebill to offer this?
I’ve tried to give them money just because the aggregator is so good, and they said no thanks.
Disclaimer: Just a happy user of a financial tool.
I don’t think Plaid works with ANZ. I’ve tried to authenticate my account with Truffle but it kept erroring out.
If I miss a few Ubers and a few airport meals that I should have filed expense reports for, that's real savings to me as well. That might be a harder use case (separating the fly shit from the pepper in terms of personal vs business).
Also for the meals it doesn't really help much unless you already keep every receipt.
I generally have iPhone snaps of any receipt that is a business expense. I just don't always get around to doing the paperwork afterwards...
But in the case of meals, you would definitely need some documentation like notes on the purpose of the meal.
There's a lot that can be captured and recovered after the fact if a system can surface "hey, this is 75% likely to be a business expense; have a look!"
I have a business CC available for most of my expenses. It's enough of a hassle if I accidentally put a personal expense on the business card relative to the converse that many business expenses end up on my personal card. (This is typically where I use stored payment methods on the same vendor for personal and business charges [Uber, AirBnB, Amazon, Paypal, NewEgg, Monoprice, Delta].)
If Truffle operates like KeeperTax (https://keepertax.com/), you can set the ground truth to the CC statements; the user only needs to augment this CC statements with occasional meta-data (what was the business reason for the meal?), etc. -- fundamentally the user can work completely in the tax app.
If you need to submit expenses, working with your statements is a much worse model, because of the need for the user to associate receipts. Receipts are the model the employee should work with; statements are for validation.
First thought is I wish there was a way to bulk edit transaction.
I also have my rent which it picks up as a "utility," and which should be partially deductible as a home office. Doesn't seem to be able to handle that slightly more complex use case yet.
Taxes are complicated…
Great brand BTW