Case study Tax Assistant for Solopreneurs & SMEs
How we reduced a business's tax filing time
from 10 hours to 30 minutes
A year-round financial operating system for Australian sole traders, freelancers, contractors, and small businesses live tax visibility, bank ingestion, invoicing, and an AI layer that collapses filing from hours to minutes.
Who this was built for
Operators running on instinct not spreadsheets.
Australian sole traders, freelancers, contractors, and small business owners managing multiple income streams, chasing invoices, and reconciling bank statements manually every quarter. Their relationship with tax was reactive: collect everything in June, hand it to an accountant, hope for the best.
The product needed to serve three distinct users simultaneously the solo operator doing their own books, the growing SME needing compliance visibility, and the accountant managing multiple clients from a single workspace.
Pain points we resolved
What was burning time and clarity
- Ten-plus hours spent every BAS period gathering statements, categorising transactions, and preparing for an accountant meeting
- No visibility into tax position over the year only a surprise number at lodgement time
- Manual receipt management with no connection to the bookkeeping ledger
- Bank statements from different institutions requiring different manual processes
- Accountants spending billable time on data entry rather than advice
- Zero awareness of deduction opportunities until after the financial year closed
What we built
A year-round financial operating system not a June tool
The core shift was moving tax visibility from an annual event to a live dashboard number that updates every time a transaction is added, a receipt is uploaded, or a bank feed syncs.
Year-round tax and BAS clarity
A live tax engine calibrated against Australian FY rules brackets, LITO, Medicare levy, HECS, GST collected vs credits recalculates in real time. The user always knows their position. BAS periods are always current, not reconstructed under pressure.
Bank statement ingestion that handles anything
Deterministic parsers handle the major Australian banks. For everything else, an AI fallback processes the statement and flags anything that needs review. Any bank. Any format.
Invoicing and reconciliation in one place
Invoices move through a full lifecycle draft, sent, overdue, paid. When a payment hits the bank feed, it links back to the invoice automatically. Quotes convert to invoices. Everything ties together.
Accountant collaboration with proper access control
Owners invite accountants with scoped permissions. Accountants switch between client books from a single login. The accountant sees exactly what the owner sees no file exports, no emailed spreadsheets.
The AI layer
Where filing time collapses from hours to minutes
Classification, parsing, OCR, and a live tool-calling assistant grounded in the user's actual ledger, not generic FAQ answers.
Intelligent transaction classification
Every imported transaction is categorised against ATO deduction rules automatically home office, vehicle, equipment, subscriptions. The user reviews exceptions, not every line. The model is trained on Australian tax categories, not generic accounting labels.
AI bank statement parsing
When a bank isn't covered by a deterministic parser, an AI model reads the raw statement, extracts transactions, and maps them into the ledger. What used to require manual entry or accountant time now happens on upload.
Receipt OCR pipeline
Photograph a receipt. Merchant, date, and amount are extracted and surfaced for confirmation. The receipt attaches to the matching transaction. The shoebox is gone.
Agentic tax chatbot with live tool access
Not a FAQ bot. The assistant runs a live tool loop it can pull a real-time financial summary, calculate the current tax estimate, surface deduction gaps, check BAS status, and query ATO compliance rules. Ask "what can I still deduct before June?" and it works through the actual ledger data to answer. Responses stream with structured summary cards, grounded in the user's numbers.
Architecture worth noting
Multi-tenancy, metering, and grounded AI
Row-level security multi-tenancy
Data isolation is enforced at the database layer via Supabase RLS not just application-level checks. Every query is scoped to the authenticated user's tenant by default. The accountant collaboration model is built on top of this: relationship records define which accountants can access which client books, and the RLS policies enforce it without any risk of cross-tenant data leakage.
AI credit metering system
Every AI operation chat message, transaction classification, OCR extraction, unsupported-bank parsing draws from a credit balance. The system tracks per-operation costs against model-level pricing config, handles low-balance alerts, grace periods, and periodic renewal. It's a billing and metering engine built inside the product itself.
Tool-calling RAG chatbot
The assistant doesn't retrieve static documents. It has a structured tool registry financial summary, expense breakdown, tax estimate, GST summary, BAS status, deduction opportunities, ATO rules search, cash-flow trend. Each user query routes to the relevant tools, executes against live data, and synthesises a grounded response. Conversation context carries the last ten messages so follow-up questions work naturally.
Results
From quarterly panic to live clarity
Tax filing dropped from 10+ hours to 30 minutes. Tax position moved from once-a-year to real-time. BAS preparation stayed current year-round, receipts auto-attached via OCR, and accountants shifted from data entry to review and advice with deductions surfaced before year-end, not after.
10h→30m
Tax filing time
Live
Tax position visibility
AI
Deductions surfaced year-round
Before & after
What changed for the business
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Tax filing time | 10+ hours | 30 minutes |
| Tax position visibility | Once a year | Real-time |
| BAS preparation | Quarterly panic | Always current |
| Receipt management | Manual, disconnected | OCR, auto-attached |
| Accountant role | Data entry | Review and advice |
| Deduction awareness | Post-FY | Year-round, AI-surfaced |
| Invoices | Disconnected from bank | Connected pipeline with transactions |
Automating a messy tax workflow?
We've shipped year-round tax systems for solopreneurs and SMEs. Let's map yours.
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