Kevin Reeth, CEO and co-founder of Outright.com, spent over 12 years bringing successful software applications and services to market. During that time, he noticed a growing need for small business owners to get organized and to more easily calculate their tax payments. "What many don’t realize is that once they start to earn a living by working for themselves, they’re a business to the IRS. Many small business owners know nothing about accounting," says Reeth.

He decided to contact a pool of eBay sellers to understand how they deal with record-keeping and learn about their thought process. After hundreds of sellers shared their desktops and spreadsheets with Reeth, he and the team built Outright.com. "Our free Web service tracks all your income and expenses to get taxes done accurately and on time to help you avoid costly fines from the IRS," says Reeth. "It’s bookkeeping on autopilot."

The Outright.com goal is to keep financial management as simple as possible, while helping entrepreneurs enter their income and expenses quickly by hand or by importing them directly into the system. "When we began accepting signups last year, we had less than 100 customers using the service. Today we have tens of thousands of customers ranging from eBay sellers to pet sitters," says Reeth.

The free Outright.com Web service helps eBay sellers

• identify exactly what can be deducted to save money come tax time
• know when taxes are due to avoid late fees from the IRS
• have a safe and secure tax experience by knowing that personal data has been encrypted before it is sent to the Outright.com servers
• import income payments received, fees, receipts, invoices, expenses, and credit card payments into Outright.com
• invite their personal bookkeeper to join their account, allowing the bookkeeper to edit transactions, create and change categories and run reports
• work on PCs and Macs
• export all data entered onto a simple text file that can be read by any spreadsheet or text editing program
  

In preparation for the eBay Selling Manager Applications launch this summer, Outright.com will be adding several more key enhancements to make self-employment and online-selling significantly easier. "We’re looking forward to getting to know even more sellers after the launch," says Reeth. "Hearing stories about their individual businesses and seeing how supportive they are of each other is very inspiring."

Outright.com is designed for the U.S. tax system for sole proprietors and single-member LLCs who file a Schedule C tax form. However, support for other countries and currencies are in progress, so stay tuned!