About / Methodology
It's 11 pm in October.
Your tax appointment is in three weeks. You open the Google Sheet you started two years ago and try to remember what "professional services" was supposed to capture. The IRS website opens in another tab. ChatGPT opens in a third. By midnight you have three different answers and you trust none of them.
That feeling — the one that says "I make real money now and I have no idea if I'm tracking the right things" — is what Finnstatement was built for.
Mission
Help service-based solopreneurs stop guessing and start understanding their own money.
The two options on the market both fail this audience. Software made for accountants is complex, expensive, and treats you like a billing seat. Marketplace templates teach the what but never the why — empty cells, category headers, no citations.
Finnstatement is the third option: a file you own, written for the 1-person service business, with the IRS context attached to every category. Not a SaaS. Not a service. Not a template that's just pretty cells.
Methodology
How a category gets into the file.
Five steps. Every category in the tracker passed all five before shipping. No exceptions.
Open the relevant IRS source.
IRS.gov Business Expenses guidance, Pub 463 (travel/meals/car), Pub 587 (home office), Pub 560 (retirement), Form 7206 (health insurance). Read the rule. Note the source.
Locate where it actually files.
Cross-reference to the form a self-employed filer actually files — a Schedule C line, or Schedule 1 / Form 7206 when it isn't on Schedule C. If a category doesn't map cleanly to a current IRS source, it doesn't ship.
Draft the plain-English explainer.
What it covers, what it doesn't, what an audit would expect to see. No "may want to consider potentially" hedging.
Run the AI verification pass.
An LLM cross-checks the explainer against the source publication. Disagreements get flagged for human re-read — never auto-merged.
Human signs off and ships.
A human reads the final draft, verifies the page number, and approves it to ship. Every line in the file passed this gate.
This is educational content, not tax advice. Tax rules change annually. Always verify against current IRS publications or consult a licensed CPA. We will not advise on your specific tax situation — that's a CPA call.
Update cadence
The file you bought is the file you keep getting.
Tax rules change every year. The IRS revises a publication. A deduction threshold shifts. A Schedule C line gets reorganized. The file gets revised. Every revision is yours — free — for as long as Finnstatement is in production.
That's not "lifetime access" to a subscription you might cancel. It's the actual file, sent to the actual email you bought with.
2026 update log
Updated to 2026 rate. IRS Notice 2026-03
Simplified vs. actual method comparison added.
100%/110% prior-year thresholds clarified.
Values
Four convictions that shape every decision.
01 · Anti-slop
Transparency over magic.
Every "Ask Gemini" prompt is public. Every claim is cited. If we can't show our work, we don't make the claim. AI is a tool, not a curtain.
02 · IRS-cited
Sources over slogans.
Every category lists its current IRS source. "The tax code says…" is not a citation; "Pub 463, ch. 4" or "IRC §162" is. Verifiable beats authoritative. Pub 463 · ch.4
03 · Owned, not rented
Files outlast subscriptions.
A file you own can't be discontinued, repriced, acquired, or "rebuilt." Buy once. Updates included. The relationship doesn't depend on a recurring charge.
04 · Honest about limits
"This isn't for you" is a feature.
If your business needs payroll, S-corp filings, or bank-feed integration, we'll tell you and point you to what does fit. A correct "no" earns trust for the next "yes."
The file does what we say it does. The methodology is how you can tell.
Read it. Verify it. Then decide whether the file is for you.