Most finance apps assume a steady paycheck. BrassWell doesn’t.
Self-employed income comes in waves — three invoices in March, nothing in April, a
platform payout that lands whenever it feels like it. BrassWell is built around that, not against
it.
14 days of Core free, no card required — then $19.99/mo (or $199/yr, save 17%), or go Pro for $29.99/mo (or $299/yr, save 17%).
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Bank connectedBusiness checking
PlaidSecure
●
Expense trackedMaterials · receipt filed
−$86.40Auto
↓
Income loggedKirby & Co · retainer
+$3,000.00Today
↗
Recurring invoiceNorthwind Co · monthly
$99.99Draft
Connect the account, or type it in by hand — both work.
Expenses land with the receipt attached to them.
Income lands, and the tax comes off it before you can spend it.
The invoices that repeat write themselves — a draft appears on schedule and you press send.
The problem
Budgets built on a number you never actually earn
Every mainstream money app starts with the same question: what’s your monthly
income? Answer it honestly when you’re self-employed and you’re already lying — there is no monthly
income, there’s a year of peaks and gaps that happens to average out to something.
So the budget breaks in February, the tax bill arrives as a surprise in April,
and the app quietly becomes another thing you don’t open.
What a self‑employed year actually looks likeincome, by month
Self-employed income doesn’t arrive through one pipe, so there isn’t one
way to log it. Use whichever suits the moment: most people end up living on the receipt scanner.
✎By handDate, source, category, amount
⤓CSV importStraight from your bank’s export
◎Photograph a receiptAI reads the amount and category
⊙Connect a bankProTransactions flow in on their own
Receipt scanning is in Core, not just Pro —
you shouldn’t have to pay more to avoid typing.
Step two
Buckets, not budgets
Instead of committing to fixed monthly amounts you can’t honor, you set
percentages once. Whatever lands that month gets split the same way — a big month and a thin
month are handled by the same rule.
That split is one
person’s. The percentages are yours to set, and the app will not let them add
up to anything but 100%.
Step three
The tax bucket, filling quietly in the background
Nobody gets caught out by tax because they forgot it exists. They get
caught out because the money was already spent by the time the bill arrived.
BrassWell estimates what to set aside from your income and an adjustable
rate, and earmarks a percentage of everything coming in. By quarter end, the money is sitting
there.
An estimate to help you plan — not tax advice, and it doesn’t
file for you. The figures are built around US self-employment tax and quarterly
federal payments.
Step four
Invoice, and get paid where you already get paid
Build an invoice from line items with quantities and rates, add tax or a
discount, set a due date, send it. Track it as draft, sent or paid — and a paid invoice can
flow straight into your income without being typed twice.
Money never passes through BrassWell. You add your own
payment details and a payment link — PayPal, Stripe, whatever you already use — and they appear
on every invoice. The link becomes a “Pay this invoice” button; the bank details are spelled
out underneath so it still works on a printed copy.
Core includes 5 invoices a month with print-ready PDFs. Pro makes it
unlimited and adds time tracking that bills itself onto an invoice.
Step five
Tax time is an export, not an archaeology dig
Every expense can be marked deductible and categorized as you go, so
deductions are tallied through the year rather than reconstructed in a panic in April. It feeds
the tax estimate and the CPA export from the same records.
And you can take everything out, any time: a CSV of income, expenses,
invoices and clients, plus a zip of your receipt photos with a manifest.
The export isn’t behind a paid plan. Even a locked account can pull
everything out — those records are yours whether or not you’re still subscribed.
Connecting a bank is optional — three of the four ways to log money need no
bank at all. But if you want the feed to fill itself in, it’s worth knowing exactly what you’re
agreeing to. So here it is, plainly.
Plaid supports over 10,000 institutions across the US and
Canada — the big banks, regional banks, credit unions and the newer
app-only accounts. Yours is very likely on the list.
Names shown are a sample of supported institutions, not partnerships or
endorsements. Coverage is Plaid’s and can change —
check the current list.
Bank connections are a Pro feature; every other way to log money is in Core.
Plaid handles the sign‑in
The bank login screen belongs to Plaid, not us. Your username and password go from you to
Plaid to your bank and never touch BrassWell. What comes back to us is a token that reads
transactions — not your login, and not the ability to sign in as you.
Transactions, and only transactions
That’s the single permission we request. Dates, amounts, descriptions, the account they came
from — the things you’d see on a statement. We use them to fill in your income and expenses.
Disconnecting really disconnects
Remove a connection and we tell Plaid to sever the link and delete the token we held. Nothing
can read the account afterwards. Deleting your BrassWell account does the same, automatically,
for every bank you’d linked.
✕We cannot move money. There’s no payment permission on the connection. No transfer can be initiated from BrassWell — by us, or by anyone who got into your account.
✕We never see your bank credentials. We couldn’t hand them over if we were asked, because we never receive them.
✓You can revoke us anywhere, any time. From inside BrassWell, or from Plaid Portal — Plaid’s own site, which lists every app you’ve connected to anything and can delete your data from Plaid’s systems too.
✓You can skip it entirely. Manual entry, CSV import and receipt scanning cover the same ground. Plenty of people prefer it — it keeps you closer to your own numbers.
Plaid publishes its own account of
how this works at plaid.com,
and what Plaid itself does with your data is covered by its
End User Privacy Policy —
worth reading before you connect anything. Bank import is a Pro feature and currently covers US banks
and credit unions.
Your data
Yours to take, yours to delete
There’s a lock on the app — a PIN or your device’s Face ID, with auto-lock
after a period of inactivity — because someone picking up your phone shouldn’t be able to read your
finances.
And there’s a door out. Export everything whenever you like. Delete the account
from inside Settings, with a 30-day window to change your mind before it’s gone for good. We hold
your data; we don’t hold it hostage.
Pricing
Two plans. No free tier, and we’d rather say so upfront.
Every account starts with 14 days of Core, and we don’t ask for a card. When
the trial ends you pick a plan or the account locks — nothing is deleted, and your data stays
downloadable for 30 days either way.
The trial runs on Core deliberately — nothing you
get used to during it disappears when you pick Core at the end. Move between plans whenever you
like. Annual works out cheaper on either.
Built for the way self‑employed money actually arrives.
Fourteen days of
Core, free, no card. Then pick Core or Pro and keep going — if it doesn’t fit the way you work,
you’ve lost nothing.
