Can I track income and expenses by client or project in one account?

Yes. Create a lens for each client or project, with its own categories, and let rules file matching payments into it. All Transactions, Expenses, Bills and budgets follow the lens you are viewing. Client and project lenses are on ELITE+ and AUTO+.

How do I stop putting an expense under the wrong client?

Give each lens a colour and turn on Lens colours in Preferences, Appearance. The buttons and a thin edge at the top of the window take the colour of the lens you are in, so switching client changes the whole frame.

Does each project get its own tax return?

Your tax is worked out across everything, the way the tax office sees it: GST and income tax use every transaction, whichever lens it sits in. A separate business under the same sign-in gets its own activity statements, profit and loss and exports.

Is this only for freelancers?

It suits anyone whose money comes in pieces: consultants, studios, creative technologists, landlords, people with a side business, households sharing costs, and club treasurers.

Every client and project in one account, each in its own colour.

Give each client, project or side business a lens: its own categories, budgets and insights, and its own colour across the app, so you always know whose books you are in. Your tax is still worked out across everything. Client and project lenses are on ELITE+ and AUTO+.

Get 2Fin free Themes & lens colours

Five clients, three tools, one tax return

Project work splits money in ways a single budget never shows: which client is profitable, which project ran over, what the side business actually costs. The usual answer is a spreadsheet per client and a separate app for the business, and then tax time means stitching them back together. Worse, it is easy to file an expense under the wrong client when every screen looks the same.

One account, a lens per client or project

A lens is a way of reading the same transactions. Your tax lens never changes; client and project lenses sit beside it.

A lens for each client or project
Create a lens for a client, a project, a department or anything you split by, with categories of its own. Rules file matching payments into it as they arrive.
Each lens in its own colour
Turn on Lens colours and the app’s buttons and a thin edge at the top take the colour of the lens you are viewing. Switch client, and the whole frame says so. Bills, done and error colours never change.
Its own breakdown
All Transactions, Expenses, Bills and budgets follow the lens you pick, and on AUTO+ so does Insight+, so each client’s spending, trends and budget stand on their own.
Tax across all of it
Lenses never split your tax. GST and income tax are worked out across every transaction, and a second business under the same sign-in gets its own statements, profit and loss and exports.

Example figures

Built for work that comes in pieces

Freelancers and consultants

A lens per client: what each one cost you to serve, next to what they paid, with the tax worked out once for the year.

Creative technologists and studios

A lens per project or commission: hardware, software and contractors per job, so a quote for the next one starts from real numbers.

Side businesses

Run a second business under the same sign-in. Every transaction belongs to one business, and each gets its own activity statements and reports.

Landlords

The Properties lens, on every plan, keeps each property’s rent, rates, repairs and loan interest apart.

Households and shared money

A lens for whose money it is — yours, a partner’s, the household’s — beside the tax view.

Clubs and committees

Funds, members and events as lenses for a club’s books, with every fund’s balance.

A week across four clients

Ines starts Monday in the violet lens for the gallery commission. The payment to her electronics supplier arrives from her bank feed, and her rule files it under the commission’s Hardware category. The violet edge at the top of the window tells her she is in the right books before she presses Save.

On Wednesday she switches to the teal lens for the agency retainer. The budget there shows the month is 80% spent with a week to go, so she pushes a software purchase to next month.

At the quarter’s end she opens the activity statement. It covers every client at once: the GST on all four lenses’ purchases, worked out from the same transactions she sorted all quarter.

Who it is for

Ines · creative technologist
Builds interactive installations for three agencies. Each agency is a lens in its own colour, so the sensors bought for one job never land on another’s budget.
Ben · freelance developer with a SaaS on the side
Client work and his product are two businesses under one sign-in, each with its own BAS, while his personal spending stays out of both.
Aroha · photographer and landlord
Shoots are a lens per client; her rental is in Properties. One account, one year-end, nothing double-counted.

Projects & clients, answered

Questions about clients, projects and lenses

Can I track income and expenses by client or project in one account?: Yes. Create a lens for each client or project, with its own categories, and let rules file matching payments into it. All Transactions, Expenses, Bills and budgets follow the lens you are viewing. Client and project lenses are on ELITE+ and AUTO+.
How do I stop putting an expense under the wrong client?: Give each lens a colour and turn on Lens colours in Preferences, Appearance. The buttons and a thin edge at the top of the window take the colour of the lens you are in, so switching client changes the whole frame.
Does each project get its own tax return?: Your tax is worked out across everything, the way the tax office sees it: GST and income tax use every transaction, whichever lens it sits in. A separate business under the same sign-in gets its own activity statements, profit and loss and exports.
Is this only for freelancers?: It suits anyone whose money comes in pieces: consultants, studios, creative technologists, landlords, people with a side business, households sharing costs, and club treasurers.