Year-round tax planning for business owners
Your tax return records what already happened. OpenYear finds the tax strategies that fit your business, helps you put them in place before the deadline, and keeps the proof organized for your accountant.
Works alongside your accountant. It doesn't replace them.
Why year-round
Your return records decisions already made. The strategies worth the most need action — and records — during the year.
How it works
Connect your books and answer a few questions. OpenYear shows which strategies may fit, and why.
Choose what to pursue and get the steps, not another article: what to create, approve, pay, record, or take to your accountant.
Evidence is gathered as you go. At year end your accountant gets what was done, when, how each amount was calculated, the documents behind it, and what still needs their review.
Recommended isn't done. A strategy without its paperwork shows as unfinished — not as money saved.
The facts suggest it's worth a look. Nothing is assumed yet.
A judgment call — a salary, an eligibility question — waits for your accountant.
The action happened, but the paperwork that proves it isn't attached.
Done and documented, with the arithmetic your accountant needs.
Reads your books from QuickBooks Online or VisiBooks and never changes them. Xero is coming.
Built to say no
Rules decide who qualifies. Arithmetic decides whether it's worth it. You and your accountant make the judgment calls. AI reads your documents and explains the result — it never decides the verdict.
What it looks for
The S corporation election check runs today. The rest are being built with the businesses that use it.
Reimburse yourself, tax-free, for business costs you already pay personally — with the records to back it.
The business share of your home and your car, calculated the same way every month and written down at the time.
Your salary against your distributions, with comparable pay gathered for your accountant's review.
When employing a spouse or child actually helps, what payroll it takes, and the timesheets that prove the work.
Up to fourteen days a year, at a market rate you can document, for meetings that really happened.
Whether a plan fits your payroll and profit, and which deadlines apply to setting one up.
Eligibility varies. OpenYear shows the requirements and the assumptions before it shows an estimate. Read the guides →
With your accountant
One shared record of the planning decisions made during the year — instead of a reconstruction in March.
| Tax preparation | OpenYear |
|---|---|
| Begins after the year ends | Works while the year is open |
| Records what already happened | Plans what happens next |
| Rebuilds the paperwork at tax time | Collects it as you go |
| Usually one meeting a year | A running record all year |
Questions
No. It finds and tracks planning opportunities during the year and keeps the evidence behind them. Your accountant stays responsible for professional advice and for your return — OpenYear gives them an organized record to work from.
No. Every estimate depends on your facts, your eligibility, whether the strategy is actually carried out, and the law as it applies to you. That's why each one shows its assumptions and its status, and why nothing counts as saved until it's done and documented.
Your books, connected so OpenYear can read them — it never changes them — and answers about your business. Before OpenYear takes anyone's tax returns, the rules on handling return information have to be settled in writing, so it doesn't take them yet.
Yes. That's the point. Each strategy carries what was done and when, how every amount was calculated, the documents that support it, and what still needs a professional's judgment.
Owner-operated S corporations with books in QuickBooks Online or VisiBooks — where the most common strategies need action during the year and records to back them. Other kinds of business come next; apply and you'll see where yours stands.
Apply
OpenYear is built for owner-operated S corporations with books in QuickBooks Online or VisiBooks. Three quick questions tell you whether yours fits — and if it doesn't yet, you'll be on the list for when we support businesses like yours.
OpenYear was created by Robert O'Neill, a business owner who wanted tax planning to happen while decisions could still be changed — not months later, when the return was being prepared. It runs on his own operating businesses.