1. Setting up your Hnry Account.
Getting to know you
First things first, you’ll be asked to provide some basic information about you. This helps us run mandatory anti-money laundering checks to confirm your identity.
Later on, you’ll also be asked for your IRD number, which is required so that we can pay tax on each of your payments through to IRD on your behalf.
How do I find my IRD number? You can find your IRD number on letters and statements from IRD, in the MyIR online portal, in online banking, or on payslips from current or past employers.
Creating a Client
You’ll also be asked to provide some basic information about the kind of work you do and the people who pay you (these are called ‘Clients’ in Hnry). This helps us get you ready to be paid.
Here, you can indicate the name and email address of the contact person who will be paying you. You can enter multiple email addresses separated by a comma if you have more than one Client.
If your client or recruiter deducts a percentage of your income for tax prior to paying you (called ‘Withholding Tax’), you can indicate this here. You’ll just need to let us know how much they’re deducting, as this will affect the tax rate we’ll have you on.
If your client is based overseas, they won’t be required to collect or pay GST to IRD, so they’ll be considered ‘zero-rated’ for GST.
NB: later on, you can add some more specific details about your client and how you work with them.
Don’t have a client yet? No worries! You can enter your own name or ‘Unknown’ to get started, and come back to add in some Client info once you know a bit more about who will be paying you.
Once all of that info is confirmed, you’ll be given a unique Hnry Account number to send to your clients:
Now you’re ready to get paid! Feel free to click on this text and your account details will be copied to your clipboard, ready to be sent to whomever you like.
Each time one of your Clients pays you into this Account, we’ll automatically calculate, deduct and pay all of your taxes, and make any necessary deductions on your behalf, before passing the rest on to you.
2. Completing the Switch to Hnry
Once you’ve got your Hnry Account details, the next step is to declare any income you’ve earned in the current financial year. This information helps us determine the most accurate tax rate to place you on, so that the service can work at peak optimisation for you and so that you won’t end up with a big tax bill at the end of the year.
You’ll see this box at the top of your Hnry Dashboard:
Have you earned any income this financial year (since 1 April)?
If you haven’t earned any income at all this financial year, simply click ‘No’, then ‘Submit’ and you’re good to go!
If you have earned income so far this year, we’ll just need to know how much income and the different types of income you’ve earned (schedular payments, self-employed income, PAYE income, and ‘other’).
Schedular payments refer to payments in which your client or recruiter has deducted tax prior to paying you. In the case of schedular payments, only some tax will have been deducted or paid, so you’ll likely have some tax left to pay at year-end.
Self-employed income refers to any income you’ve earned through working as a freelancer, contractor, sole trader or as a small business owner. In other words, any income earned outside of a more traditional employer relationship, such as a salary position.
Salary/PAYE income refers to money you’ve earned from a job in which you receive a regular wage and annual/sick leave, and where your employer is making KiwiSaver contributions on your behalf.
Other income refers to money earned from dividends, property ownership, sales of shares, trusts, subsidies, income earned outside of NZ, and several others. Here, you’ll just need to add the estimated amount you expect to earn from these other sources of income.
Once you begin to fill in these fields, you’ll start to see the ‘estimated annual income’ section change slightly to reflect your earnings.
The next step is to let us know how you’d like to handle this income: if you’d like to receive a tax quote; if you’d like us to inflate your tax rate to make up for any tax owing; or if you’d like to handle it yourself.
It’s also important here to indicate how you were managing your expenses during the financial year, before joining Hnry – this helps us provide you with the right information on getting expense exports loaded into Hnry.
3. Confirm Income Sources
Declaring all of your income sources to us is incredibly important, as it helps us get you on the most accurate tax rate possible. If we don’t have all of the right information from you, we can’t guarantee that the Hnry service will help you to avoid a big tax bill at the end of the year. This screen is another opportunity to make sure all of your information is up-to-date:
Note: you can always update your income sources in your Hnry Dashboard (‘My Account’ > ‘Income Sources’)
4. My Financial Info
This section of your Hnry Dashboard (found under ‘My Account’) contains your unique Hnry Account details, and is where you’ll need to enter your personal bank account info. We need to know your personal bank account details (account name and number) so that we can pass your payments through to you, once the tax has been deducted and paid.
You can also provide some basic tax details in the next tab over, such as whether you’re registered for GST, if you have a student loan, if you make Provisional Tax payments to IRD, and if you work part-time.
And those are the basics to your Hnry profile!
Want to get even more out of the service? Read on for some extra tips about expenses, allocations, invoicing, payslips, and income reports.
Invoices are an optional feature in Hnry. If you usually Invoice your Clients, it only takes a few clicks to draft and send an Invoice. Alternatively, your Clients can pay straight into your Hnry Account, or you might have a recruiter or 3rd party that pays you along with an invoice of their own creation.
Quotes, like Invoices, are also entirely optional. You can send Quotes to your Clients, and once they approve, you’ll be able to convert that Quote into an Invoice.
Expenses: There are two types of expenses you can raise in Hnry: business expenses, which help to reduce the amount of income you’re required to pay tax on at year-end; and client reimbursements, which are payments that you’ve agreed with your Client will be reimbursed.
Payslips display the amount of tax deducted on each payment you receive into your Hnry Account, as well as any Allocations (see below) and expenses you’ve entered into the platform.
Allocations are automatic deductions that you can set up to go towards any NZ bank account (your savings, your KiwiSaver scheme, your utility bills, and many more), every time you get paid.
Services, or the work you provide to your Clients. When you first sign up to Hnry, your Service will be defaulted to your job type (ie, "graphic designer" or “business analyst”). From there, you can enter specific services if you wish, such as "ad design" or “day-long workshop”, or you can leave these set to their default.
Reports display your total taxable income earned, the amount of income tax paid on that income, the total amount of ACC levies paid, and your net pay. You’ll also see the total amount of expenses raised throughout the financial year. Feel free to download these whenever you like, and use them to prove your income and compliance to anyone.
Filings at year-end are included in your Hnry fees, and we’ll be in touch before the end of the financial year with some information. If you’re GST-registered, we’ll file your GST returns for the periods as indicated on your myIR.
Now that you’ve got a good handle on your Hnry Dashboard, we've got an abundance of helpful guides, articles, and tax resources for you to check out, if you want to learn more. Just click on one of the below links to start exploring!
Or, if your questions weren’t answered in this guide, feel free to reach out to the team via the green bubble in the bottom-right corner. 👉