The Problem
After three years away from a CTO role at Caterspot, the goal was clear, get back to shipping products to production, work on new challenges, and go deeper into payments oriented work. Contract work was the right fit for that.
But stepping off payroll in Malaysia introduced a new problem. Tax reporting became a personal responsibility, and without a proper accounting tool, keeping track of what needed to be reported was painful.
Tools like Xero exist, but they felt overbuilt for the actual need. Too many features, too much complexity, too much friction for someone who just needed the fundamentals done well, reconciliation, receipt management, tax summaries, and the ability to process things on the go.
The Insight
The gap wasn’t “no tools exist.” The gap was that existing tools were designed for businesses with finance teams, not for solo contractors who need to stay compliant without spending hours on bookkeeping.
The real need was a seamless flow, upload a receipt, auto process the data, reconcile with bank transactions, and generate a tax summary. That entire chain should feel effortless, not like a second job.
The Approach
FSpend started as a single entry accounting system. Simple, fast, enough to track income and expenses.
But along the way, the learning curve revealed a fundamental truth about accounting, single entry only gets you so far. To properly track a balance sheet, to get reconciliation right, to produce numbers that actually hold up under scrutiny, double entry is the way it has to work.
That shift wasn’t just a technical refactor. It required learning accounting from the ground up, understanding debits and credits, journal entries, chart of accounts, the full foundation. Not just design challenges, but accounting 101 as well.
The Build
The core product loop is built around one question, how do you make accounting invisible for a solo contractor?
Key areas of focus:
- Receipt upload and auto processing, snap a receipt, let the system extract the data automatically
- Bank reconciliation, match transactions without manual effort
- Tax summary, always have a clear picture of what needs to be reported
- Double entry foundation, proper accounting under the hood, simple experience on top
The whole process is what the product is solving for, a seamless user flow from receipt capture to reconciliation. The end goal is full automation, leveraging AI to handle the tedious parts so the user never has to think about them.
What’s Next
The next phase integrates AI as an audit assistant. The idea is an AI skill that reviews your books, flags potential gaps, highlights what you might have missed or overlooked, and surfaces things that need attention before they become problems.
Not replacing an accountant, but giving a solo contractor the confidence that their records are solid before they hand them over.
What I Learned
Building FSpend forced a shift from “engineer solving an engineering problem” to “engineer learning an entirely new domain to solve a real problem.” The accounting knowledge wasn’t optional, it was the prerequisite.
The biggest lesson was that the right abstraction for accounting isn’t fewer features, it is the right features with the right flow. Double entry felt like unnecessary complexity at first, but it turned out to be the foundation that made everything else work properly.
Every product decision since the switch to double entry has been cleaner, more correct, and easier to extend. The upfront learning cost paid for itself many times over.