Outright is a online app for keeping and managing tax records. It’s intended for freelancers, the self-employed, and small businesses.

I’ve mentioned it before, but with tax season heating up, this product has had some buzzing discussions take place (no, I don’t mean that Buzz), and warrents a closer look.

Free is Good

First of all, Outright is free. That’s a popular price for items preferred by Gauchos. According to Kevin from Outright (who responded to a comment on this FreelanceSwitch post):

[...] this is Kevin from Outright.com. Just wanted to let you know that the core service will remain free. We will add other paid services (like the online 1099 filing service we launched last month: http://outright.com/contractors/1099) but the core bookkeeping will stay free. Hope that helps.

It does help, Kevin. Tracking and reporting income and expenses in an effort to estimate and stay prepared and keep your taxes on track, or playing catchup at the beginning of April, is usually a difficult and time consuming activity. By automating this process, small businesses can spend more time making money and less time accounting for it.

By the way, all information you keep on Outright is encrypted, so your data is kept secure.

The Live Feed

Many small business owners and consultant will tell you how important it is to use a real, living, breathing tax pro when tax season rolls around.

I’m not going to suggest that Outright might replace getting a real pro to help you. But, if you’re truly running on a shoestring budget, Outright will likely save you a lot of time and frustration. It will help you organize, compute, and report the information necessary if you elect to use a service like TurboTax, H&R Block, or another desktop or web-based product to file your taxes.

If you’re still going to use a bookkeeper, tax consultant, or accountant for help filing your taxes, that’s great. Imagine the time you’ll save when you walk in and drop a highly organized file on their desk with all the reports you’ve provided. You’ll save additional money by paying for less of their time. And, by empowering them to focus on finding additional tax deductions — instead of having them babysit you while you get your basic tax needs in order — they might find a way to save you even more.

Simple

Outright is dead simple to use. I was impressed with its easy navigation and its ability to import data from credit cards accounts, PayPal, eBay, invoicing apps, CSV files, and more.

Once such data is imported, Outright offers flexible and powerful reporting features. These include profit & loss statements, 1099 reports, plus reports on income and expenses by customer, vendor, and category.

Outright helps you to know what deductions you can take at tax time, reminds you about deadlines, helps you to avoid late fees, and has a knowledgeable user community helping to answer each others questions. You can even pay your estimated taxes via a secure payment portal.

It also supports users living in several countries outside the US.

Effortless

If you’re a Freshbooks user, as more and more small businesses and freelancers seem to be, you can link your Freshbooks account to Outright and it will import all of your data. Set the dates you want to import (it defaults to importing only current data), and then in literally a few seconds you’ll be ready to run profit and loss statements and expense reports. Think of Freshbooks as your cash register and Outright as your bookkeeper.

Outright also integrates with shoeboxed, a web product offering free and paid services for managing business receipts. (Use the Outright referral link to get $10 off annual plans.)

Nothing to Lose

Keep in mind that Outright is intended for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs who file a Schedule C tax form.

If you fall into that bucket, then there aren’t many, if any, good reasons for you not to give Outright a try. It will only make your tax season easier and it’s a useful year-round tool for figuring out estimated taxes.

Surprise! No more tax season surprises.