#indie-hackers
Financial guidance for indie hackers and solo founders
Рамка от пет фактора — 36-месечна обща цена на притежаване, време до стойност, диференциация, интеграция и регулаторен риск — за решаване кои SaaS финансови инструменти да купите и кои да изградите, с практически пример при $20 000 MRR, където закупуването на таксуващ двигател струва приблизително $25 000–$45 000 срещу $50 000–$100 000+ за изграждане на такъв.
Плащанията от магазините за приложения са около 60% под обявената цена след ДДС, комисионна на магазина, възстановявания, удържан данък и валутна конверсия. Това ръководство проследява всяко приспадане от брутните продажби до банковия депозит и представя 30-минутен месечен процес на съгласуване за независими разработчици.
Микро-SaaS и API бизнеси с 70%+ брутен марж все още се нуждаят от счетоводство на база текущо начисляване — как да структурирате хибридно таксуване с абонамент плюс надвишаване и кредитни пакети, да сверявате изплащанията от Stripe и Merchant of Record към брутните приходи и да поддържате отсрочени приходи, COGS и таксите на процесора готови за одит.
Sri Lanka now charges 18% VAT on digital services sold by non-resident providers once revenue exceeds LKR 36 million a year or LKR 9 million in a quarter, effective July 1, 2026, with quarterly filing and registration due within three months of crossing the threshold.
GitHub Copilot's 2026 shift to usage-based AI Credits, an 18.6x rise in per-developer token consumption, and $60–$200/month agentic tiers are turning flat AI subscriptions into unpredictable bills. Here is a practical framework for indie developers to cap, track, and reconcile AI coding tool spend.
Upwork's Future Workforce Index 2026 finds freelancers doing AI-related work earn 34% more per hour, with earnings on complex AI work up 45% year-over-year while per-contract pay for commodity generative-AI gigs fell 13% — here's what the "AI Orchestrator" split means for freelancers and indie developers, and how to land on the right side of it.
Google deprecated Chrome Web Store Payments in 2021, leaving extension developers to reconcile Stripe, Paddle, or ExtensionPay payouts by hand — here is a three-way match workflow, per-extension ledger structure, and how to treat review-delay refund spikes as a distinct bookkeeping category.
Most indie developers are principals under ASC 606's principal-versus-agent test, so a $9.99 App Store sale is $9.99 of revenue plus a $3.00 platform-fee cost of sales — not a $6.99 net deposit. Here's the three-indicator control test, current Apple and Google fee tiers, and the exact journal entries to book it correctly.
Software acquired as part of buying a business amortizes over 15 years under IRC Section 197 — not the 36 months standalone software gets. How to allocate a micro-SaaS purchase price across the seven IRS asset classes, agree on Form 8594 with your seller, and record it in a plain-text ledger.
US iOS developers can currently run external purchase links at 0% Apple commission while courts settle a replacement rate. This guide covers the bookkeeping fallout — the merchant-of-record shift, sales tax nexus, reconciling two 1099s, and Apple's 15-day transaction reporting rule.
2026 data from 600+ Acquire.com listings shows bootstrapped SaaS selling at roughly 2.6x TTM revenue and 10.7x profit — a 30–50% discount to public comps. Here's how NRR, CAC payback, customer concentration, and reconciled books move your multiple, and the diligence documents buyers actually request.
Form 1099-K reports gross App Store and Google Play sales — before the 15–30% platform commission, refunds, currency conversion, and marketplace-remitted taxes — so it will never match your bank deposits. Track four numbers (gross revenue, net payout, after-tax income, real take-home) with a five-step monthly reconciliation routine.
