The method behind the numbers
How Fin checks its figures
A tax figure is only useful if you can trust how it was reached. This page sets out how Fin’s figures are tested before a release, and what you and your accountant can check for yourselves in the app. It describes a method and gives no score.
Sample people, with worked answer keys
Before a release, the tax code is run on a set of sample people in Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Each one has an answer key, and the figures have to match it.
- 01
A sample person, with a year of transactions
Each sample person has a profile, accounts and a year of bank rows: an employee, a sole trader registered for GST, a sole trader who is not, a landlord, someone with two businesses. Every row is labelled the way a careful person would label it.
- 02
An answer key, worked separately
The expected figure for each box, period and year is worked out from those labelled rows in plain arithmetic, apart from the tax code, and then frozen. Changing an answer key is a deliberate act that gets reviewed.
- 03
The real tax code, run on that person
The same code that fills your statement, your estimate, your profit and loss and your depreciation schedule runs on the sample person, on a real database, with the country rules the app ships.
- 04
Every figure compared with its key
Each box on each period is compared with the answer key. The run happens before a release goes out, so a change to one rule is seen against every sample person first.
Checks that compare one screen with another
A figure can match its own answer key and still disagree with the screen next to it. So the same run also checks that the screens agree with each other.
- Sales before GST agree across the activity statement, the profit and loss and the tax estimate.
- The periods add up to the year.
- A transaction is counted in one business only.
- Salary never reaches a sales box.
- The saved figures of a lodged statement stay as they were when later transactions change.
When a figure does not match
A mismatch is recorded as a finding against that sample person, period and box, and it stays on the list until the fix lands. Nothing is rounded away or averaged out.
That list is why this page gives a method and no score. A pass rate would describe the sample people, and your books are your own. The useful question is whether you can see how your own figure was reached, which is what the next section is about.
What you can check yourself
The tests cover the sample people. For your own books, the app shows its working, so you or your accountant can follow a figure back to the records behind it.
Every figure opens to its records
Select any figure on an activity statement, or a main line of the return, and it opens to the records behind it, with the GST and the net of each. You can adjust the figure there, and copy or export the list for your accountant.
A badge on every figure
Each label says how its figure got there: Auto-filled from the tax treatment of your transactions, Inferred, typed in as Manual, or Adjusted.
A record of every adjustment
When a figure is adjusted, the original figure, the new one, the reason, who made the change and when are stored beside it.
Fin proposes, and you decide
Each transaction arrives with a category, a deductible flag, a business-use share and the reasoning in words. You accept it or change it, and the change is remembered.
The accountant pack
At year end the pack holds a typed workbook, a one-page summary PDF and the receipts, with a list of any receipt that could not be included and a note of the basis the pack was built on.
More on each: tax treatment and statements, how Fin decides what a transaction is, the practice view and the accountant pack, and 2Fin for growing businesses.
What stays with you and your accountant
Fin prepares figures from the records you bring in and the choices you make about them. You or your registered agent review the statement and lodge it through your tax authority’s own service.
This page is general information about how 2Fin is tested. It does not say that any figure is right for your circumstances, and the rules differ by country and change over time. Confirm your own position with your accountant or your tax authority before you lodge.
The method, answered
Questions about how the figures are checked
- Does 2Fin publish an accuracy rate for its tax figures?
- 2Fin publishes the method and no rate. A rate would describe the sample people in the test set, which is a different thing from your books, so this page says how the figures are tested and what you can check yourself.
- What is a worked answer key?
- It is the expected figure for each box on a statement or line of an estimate, worked out by plain arithmetic from a sample person’s labelled transactions, apart from the tax code. The tax code then has to arrive at the same figure.
- Which countries have sample people in the test set?
- Australia, the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. Australia has several: an employee, a sole trader registered for GST, a sole trader who is not, a landlord and a person with two businesses.
- What happens when a figure does not match its answer key?
- The mismatch is recorded as a finding against that case and stays on the list until the fix lands. The list is the reason this page gives a method and not a score.
- How do I see which transactions make up a figure on my statement?
- Select the figure. Every figure on an activity statement, and each main line of the return, opens to the records behind it, where you can adjust it and copy or export the list. Each label also carries a badge saying whether its figure was auto-filled, inferred, typed in or adjusted.
- Who checks the figures before a statement is lodged?
- You do, with your registered agent if you have one. Fin prepares the statement and shows where each figure came from; reviewing it and lodging it stay with you or your agent.
See the working on your own figures
Import a statement and read the reasoning beside every line. Free to start, no card needed.
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