BIG ON GIG
SELF- EMPLOYED, WITH EXPENSES IN A MESS? INTUIT HAS AN APP FOR YOU.
Intuit Canada says freelancers, independent contractors and on-demand workers will make up 45 per cent of the Canadian workforce by 2020, so the company is releasing new software that’s designed to help this growing segment organize its tricky financial data.
Last fall, Intuit Inc. partnered with Emergent Research to identify trends in the Canadian labour market through surveys and Statistics Canada data.
The two companies also found that 41 per cent of self-employed Canadians are working like this to supplement their regular income, while 47 per cent are doing it for greater work- life flexibility.
“This whole gig economy and on-demand worker class is coming out of things like Uber, Etsy or Fiverr, all of which really allow people to do self- employed work in a flexible fashion,” said Jeff Cates, president of Intuit Canada, in an exclusive interview. “Plus a lot of new jobs coming into the market are part- time, so people are looking to augment those part- time jobs with self- employed options.”
This growing segment is leading to some messy finances though. Intuit Can- ada said its research shows 29 per cent of self-employed workers manually keep track of their finances on paper, and two out of three on- demand workers said it would be helpful to have a better understanding of how to handle their financials.
“Historically, people working a full- time job would usually have a relatively easy tax situation,” said Cates. “But in this new world, there’s a large element of your income that you no longer have the employer helping you manage your obligation back to the CRA.”
Often people in the socalled gig economy aren’t thinking of themselves as a business while picking up supplemental income, said Cates, so they are managing this side of their finances out of their personal bank accounts and credit cards.
“When it gets to tax time, that becomes a bit of a nightmare because they have to try to uncouple these two different things and try to parse them out,” he said.
To help make sense of it all, Intuit has launched its new Quick Books Self- Employed mobile app in Canada for iOS and Android.
The app is designed with a straightforward interface that allows people to use their phone to track expenses on the go. As the user completes a transaction, they can swipe left to file it as personal or swipe right for business. The user can immediately attach an image of a physical receipt for a purchase or create a quick invoice in the moment after completing a job.
Quick Books Self - Employed can also use t he phone’s GPS to automatically log mileage when on the road, which will then prompt after a trip is complete to also swipe for personal or business. In addition to having everything more organized when filing to the Canada Revenue Agency, these various features are supposed to help find tax savings at the end of the year.
“The main benefit is you get your profits and current situation at a glance,” said Cates. “The self- employed can get a quick dashboard of how they are doing. They can see the money in and the money out.”
Quick Books Self - Employed is $ 9.99 per month and available in Canada following earlier launches in the U. S., U. K. and Australia. Though the app won’t directly file the end-of-year results to the CRA or your accountant, it provides the necessary information to input the data yourself or allow accountants to offer financial tips instead of having to sort through a pile of receipts from a shoebox at tax- filing time.
In addition to having a growing segment of the l abour market s el f - employed, Canada’s technology and mobile savviness makes the timing right for launching the product in the country, according to Intuit.
“We have a very high percentage of Canadians that have online banking and use it, so connecting an app to that data source is a huge part of what makes this so efficient,” said Cates.