— Issue 01 · The Modern Money Stack —
How money moves
through modern work.
An independent publication covering the tools, platforms, and financial workflows that small businesses, freelancers, and creators use to get paid, manage expenses, and stay financially organised. Reviews, tutorials, and industry analysis — with no affiliate-driven verdicts.
From the Editor
The financial back office of a self-employed person, taken seriously.
For most of the last two decades, the financial infrastructure of small businesses, freelancers, and creators looked roughly the same as it had in the 1990s. You invoiced clients through Word documents you saved as PDFs. You filed receipts in a shoebox. You did your books once a quarter, badly, on a spreadsheet your accountant inherited from someone else. You moved money through bank transfers that took three days to clear and cost forty kronor to send.
That world has been quietly replaced in the last five years. Stripe and Adyen have made payment processing accessible to a one-person business. Klarna and similar tools have shifted how customers actually pay. Modern accounting platforms have replaced the shoebox with something resembling real financial visibility. AI-powered expense categorisation has made the boring parts of bookkeeping mostly automatic.
The change has been fast enough that nobody has had time to properly explain it. The financial press writes for institutional investors. Software vendors write for themselves. Personal-finance media still treats the self-employed as a special case rather than a major segment of the economy. There is a gap between the tooling that genuinely exists and the knowledge that gets to the people who would benefit from using it.
Spent is a small editorial project trying to close that gap. We review tools. We compare platforms. We write tutorials on the workflows that separate a working financial back office from a chaotic one. We are not a fintech company. We have no software to sell. We are an editorial team that has spent more than its share of time inside the tools we write about, and now writes about them honestly.
Three editorial tracks.
Written for the self-employed.
What we cover
Track 01
Tools & Reviews
Honest, in-depth reviews of the expense trackers, invoicing tools, accounting software, banking platforms, and AI-powered finance tools small businesses actually use. No sponsorship. No affiliate-driven verdicts. We test the tools and report what they actually do.
Track 02
Payments & Fintech
Deep guides on the payment infrastructure that runs modern business — Stripe, Adyen, Klarna, PayPal, and the newer challengers. How they actually work, what they cost, when to use each, and where the trade-offs land. Technical when needed; readable always.
Track 03
The Freelance Stack
Tax mechanics, dunning, retainer structures, contract terms, the legal entity question, working with accountants — the financial workflow content that doesn’t get written about because it doesn’t market well. We write about it because it matters more than the bits that do.
Start here.
The Stripe cluster.
Four foundation pieces on payment infrastructure for small business.
The real benefits of Stripe for small business.
Henrik Vance, ex-Stripe payments engineer, on what 2.9% + 30¢ actually buys you, when Stripe is the right answer, and when it isn’t. The case for 80 percent of small businesses — and the honest case for the other 20.
Read the analysis
How low will Stripe fees go with volume?
The actual volume thresholds for negotiating Stripe pricing, realistic rate ranges by tier, and when Interchange-Plus through a different processor becomes the better answer. Insider numbers nobody else publishes.
See the rate bands
How to connect WooCommerce and Stripe properly.
A working setup guide by someone who has spent eight years inside payment systems. Forty minutes to set up well, the five problems that bite at month two, and three cases where this setup isn’t right.
Read the setup guide
How to add Stripe to WordPress in four steps.
Four legitimate ways to add Stripe to WordPress, compared honestly. The one approach that costs nothing and almost no setup guide mentions — because no plugin maker pays an affiliate commission for recommending it.
Compare the options
“
The financial infrastructure of self-employment used to require a part-time accountant. It now requires roughly nine pieces of software, most of which the typical freelancer is using badly.
— Editorial Position, Spent
Quick reference
The modern money stack in 2026.
| Category | Common tools | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Payment processing | Stripe, Adyen, PayPal, Klarna | The single highest-leverage decision after choosing your bank |
| Invoicing | Stripe Invoicing, Wave, Bonsai, FreshBooks | Determines how fast clients actually pay you |
| Accounting | Xero, QuickBooks, FreeAgent | Either eats half your weekends or hours per year, depending on setup |
| Expense tracking | Ramp, Brex, Expensify | Mostly automatic now if configured well; mostly manual if not |
| Business banking | Mercury, Wise Business, Revolut Business | Same money — better tooling — than traditional business accounts |
| Tax filing | Local accountant + Xero export | Where most self-employed waste two weeks a year |
| Provider | Standard rate | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Stripe | 2.9% + $0.30 | Developers, online businesses, technical integrations |
| Adyen | Volume-based | Larger businesses, enterprise needs, international scale |
| PayPal | 2.9% + $0.30 | Marketplaces, peer-to-peer, established consumer trust |
| Klarna | Variable per region | Consumer-facing retail with buy-now-pay-later optionality |
| Square | 2.6% + $0.10 | In-person retail, small service businesses, point of sale |
| Local Nordics (Swish, MobilePay) | Free to ~1.5% | Domestic small-business consumer payments |
| Workflow | Frequency | Typical time investment |
|---|---|---|
| Sending invoices | Project completion / monthly | 5–15 minutes with templates, hours without |
| Following up on late payment | 30 / 60 / 90 days | Automated if set up correctly |
| Categorising expenses | Monthly | 10 minutes if AI-categorised, ~2 hours if manual |
| Reconciling bank statements | Monthly | 15 minutes via accounting software |
| Quarterly tax filing | Quarterly | 1–3 hours with clean books, full day without |
| Year-end accounts | Annually | Half a day with an accountant + clean data, weeks otherwise |
Latest Reviews & Analysis.
From the archive
Reader questions
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is Spent written for?
Small business owners, freelancers, creators, and self-employed professionals who handle their own financial operations — or who work with an accountant but want to understand what is happening rather than just paying the bill. We assume readers are intelligent but not specialists in fintech or accounting.
Is Spent affiliated with any fintech company?
No. We have no commercial relationships with Stripe, Adyen, Klarna, or any other payment processor. We have no equity in any tool we review. Where we earn affiliate commission from a recommendation, we disclose it within the specific post; the recommendation is always made first on merit, with the commission as a secondary consideration.
How often do you publish?
We publish reviews and analysis pieces approximately twice a week, plus occasional longer industry pieces. Quality of analysis comes first; we would rather publish three thorough pieces a month than ten shallow ones.
Do you cover personal finance, or only small-business finance?
Mostly small-business and freelance financial operations. Personal finance content is everywhere; small-business and self-employed financial workflow is underserved. That said, the line is blurry for sole-proprietors — many of our pieces cover the overlap where personal and business finance touch.
What is the difference between Stripe and Adyen for a small business?
Stripe is built for developer-led integrations and small-to-mid businesses; pricing is transparent at 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction. Adyen offers volume-based pricing that becomes significantly more attractive above roughly $1 million in monthly processing, but requires more setup overhead. For most freelancers and small businesses, Stripe is the right starting point; for businesses approaching seven-figure annual processing, Adyen becomes worth evaluating.
Should I use Stripe Invoicing or a dedicated invoicing tool?
If you already process payments through Stripe, Stripe Invoicing is fine for invoice volumes under fifty per month and adds essentially no cost beyond the payment processing fee. Dedicated invoicing tools (Bonsai, FreshBooks, Wave) add value when you need detailed time tracking, project management integration, or specific invoice templating — capabilities Stripe Invoicing does not have natively.
How important is bookkeeping software for a freelancer?
More important than most freelancers realise. The difference between using Xero or QuickBooks for two hours a month versus spreadsheet-based bookkeeping that gets done badly at year-end is typically twelve to twenty hours of recovered time per year, lower accountant fees, and dramatically reduced tax-time stress. The monthly subscription pays for itself within the first three months.
Is AI-powered expense categorisation reliable?
Mostly yes for routine categories, mostly no for ambiguous edge cases. Modern tools (Ramp, Expensify, the AI features in Xero and QuickBooks) correctly categorise 85 to 95 percent of standard transactions automatically. The remaining 5 to 15 percent require human judgment, but the time saving compared to fully manual categorisation is substantial.
Do you accept sponsored content?
We do not accept paid content disguised as editorial. We may include affiliate links to tools we recommend, where we earn a small commission if you purchase — these are disclosed within the relevant post. The recommendations themselves are made on merit and the affiliate revenue does not determine editorial direction.
Can I submit a tool or service for review?
Yes. Independent fintech founders, accountants, and tool developers can write to the editor with submission details. We do not guarantee coverage, and we do not accept payment for reviews. If we cover a submitted tool, the review is editorially independent and the verdict may be unfavourable.
Why is the site called Spent?
Spent was originally established as a consumer expense-tracking and automated cash-back service. Under new independent editorial ownership, the publication has expanded scope to cover financial operations for small businesses and freelancers more broadly. The name reflects the origin; the editorial scope reflects where the gap actually lives.
What is Spent’s affiliation with the original site?
Spent originally operated as a consumer financial-tracking and cash-back application. The domain is now operated under new independent ownership as an editorial publication on financial tools, payment processing, and freelance financial workflow. The site maintains no affiliation with, nor successorship to, the original operators of the Spent App. Historical app functionality is not available on this site.
Lead Editor
Henrik Vance
Henrik spent eight years as a payments engineer at Stripe and Klarna, working on merchant onboarding, dispute systems, and small-business product before moving into independent editorial work. He lives in Copenhagen with his partner and a sceptical cat.
He now writes about the tools, platforms, and financial workflows that small businesses, freelancers, and creators use day to day. Particular interest in the gap between what fintech vendors claim their tools do and what the tools actually do once a working business tries to use them.