Write-offs
The deductions no bank feed can see.
A bank statement knows about the fuel you bought. It does not know you drove 240 miles to a closing, that a room in your house is an office, or that you paid a contractor in cash. Those are things only you can assert, and a product that quietly mixes them into the figures that tie to a statement has damaged the only thing that made those figures worth having. So Ezra records them, prices them, and keeps them on their own side of that line.
Two tiers of evidence, and they never touch
Ezra keeps figures in two kinds and never adds one to the other. Not in a total, not on a chart, not in the package.
- Bank verified
- A line that reconciles to a statement. There is a document behind it, printed by an institution, and Ezra has checked its own arithmetic against that document.
- Owner asserted
- A figure you entered. There is no document behind it unless you attached a receipt, and Ezra has no way to check it. That is not a criticism of the figure. It is a different kind of claim, and it is labeled as one everywhere it appears.
In the year-end package the owner-asserted side gets its own schedule, its own totals, its own key in the summary facts, and a paragraph in the cover memo saying in words which tier the reader is looking at. An accountant should never have to ask which of your numbers came from a bank and which came from you.
What you can record
Deliberately few kinds. A long list of categories is how a form stops being filled in.
Entered for 2026
Owner assertedMileage
84 miles at 76 cents, the rate for a September trip
Home office
Simplified method, 180 sq ft at $5
- Mileage
- A trip, with a destination and a business purpose, priced from the rate in force on the day of the trip. Not the rate for the year: 2026 has two, 72.5 cents a mile through June 30 and 76 cents from July 1, and pricing a June trip at the July rate is a real error with a real number attached. Move a trip across that date and it is re-priced rather than keeping a rate that no longer matches its own date. A trip dated outside the rates on file is refused rather than priced at zero.
- Home office
- The simplified method: five dollars a square foot, capped at 300 square feet, so the computed figure never exceeds 1,500 dollars. Ezra does the arithmetic and states the method it used, which is the part your accountant needs to see.
- Cash
- Money that left your pocket and no feed will ever mention. Recorded with its date, amount, description and business purpose, and marked as what it is.
- Paid from an account Books cannot see
- A card you have not connected, a spouse’s account, a payment method that never appears anywhere in this product. It still belongs in the year, so it can be entered, and it is labeled so nobody later mistakes it for something reconciled.
- Charitable contribution
- Its own kind, kept out of your business expense categories, so it reaches your accountant as its own line rather than buried in one. What is done with it from there is their call.
The double count, which is the real hazard here
Somebody logs a cash expense on Tuesday and the same charge lands in the bank feed on Friday. Now the year is overstated by exactly that amount, and nothing will ever point at it.
So Ezra looks. When a write-off is saved, and again when the package is built, it searches the same set of books for a bank line of the same amount within a week. If it finds one, it neither merges them nor quietly keeps both: it shows you the pair and asks. Your ruling is remembered, so the question is asked once.
Substantiation, not judgment
This is the line Ezra does not cross, and it is worth being plain about.
Ezra records what you assert, computes the arithmetic you would otherwise do by hand, and flags what an accountant will ask for: a missing business purpose, a trip with no destination, an amount of zero. It does not decide what is deductible, does not compute anybody’s tax, and does not say where a figure belongs on a return. Ezra is a bookkeeper, not a CPA, and this section is what that sentence actually means.
Start with the trips you already know about.
Create an account and enter this year's mileage. Ezra prices every trip from the rate in force on its own date, totals them on their own, and has them waiting when the rest of the year is put together.