Technology CAN make your life easier. Take as a clever example Taxbot, a mobile app and website which enables real estate agents (or other 1099 contractors) to track all their expenses easily, so at the end of the year it’s all in one place for your accountant. It even helps you track mileage! In this video, Jacob Randall, Managing Partner of Taxbot, talks about how his product can really help real estate agents.
As with our other interviews, our goal is to bring you information about ways to make your business better. This is not a paid advertisement for the product, nor is it an explicit endorsement of one product over another – it’s just an interesting conversation with someone whose services might come in handy for making your business run better.
Brian Fox: Hi, it’s Brian Fox, I’m with Rebo Reports, and I’m here with Jake Randall of Taxbot. Jake, can you tell us a little bit about Taxbot and what it does for realtors?
Jacob Randall: Yeah, absolutely. Well, nobody likes paying taxes, so what we do is we built an app that helps you track all of your tax deductions. So you can track your mileage from your smartphone. You can snap pictures of your receipts as you have, meet with clients and things like that. And then at the end of the year, you get everything itemized, ready to go for your accountant, and it makes your tax preparation really easy. And most of our users track about $22,000 in deductions their first year using this system. So it’s a real money-saver for realtors, especially as they’re out driving around. Those mileage logs can be a pain in the neck and all that.
BF: Hard things to track. And this just makes it easier to track. Now, can they do it, looks like, from the sign behind you, you can do it on a mobile device. Is it just mobile, or is it also a desktop application?
JR: Great question. We do it on all iOS devices and Android devices, as well as there’s a web app, so you can come on and that’s where your data’s hosted, in the cloud, so at the end of the year you go to taxbot.com, all of your reports are there, you download them there. You can also upload, add expenses and trips from there as well. So it’s mobile and with a web-based portal as well.
BF: Very good. And we’re at the California Association of Realtors Expo, here, but this is not just a California product, correct?
JR: That is correct. We work for everybody in the United States and Canada that’s 1099 or self-employed, so we do a lot. We have partnerships with about 30 of the state real estate associations as well. And we do a lot of education for those types of people.
BF: That’s awesome. Jake, thanks very much, I appreciate it.
JR: Thank you, I appreciate the time.
