Hnry Review: The App That Pays My NZ Taxes For Me

Last updated on 4 March 2026

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When I started selling digital products for the first time, I came to the fast and horrible realisation that I would have to figure out how to do my own taxes. What followed were years and years of spreadsheets, calculators, putting money aside so I wouldn’t be caught out when tax time rolled around at the end of March in New Zealand.

After a few years of struggling through doing my own taxes and stressing every single year about not getting it right, I started earning more money aside from my job, so I really needed to up my game when it came to looking after my additional finances. And that’s when I discovered Hnry for self-employed people. And I’ve never had to think about tax again.

At the initial writing of this Hnry review, I’ve been using Hnry for over four years and I never plan to go back to doing it myself.

It is fantastic.

In this post, I’m going to share my honest Hnry review (spoilers: I love it, as you’ve probably already caught on), and how to use Hnry as a freelancer, contractor, or sole trader in New Zealand.

Although Hnry has now branched out into Australia and the UK now, too. This review will be from a New Zealand user’s perspective, but I’m going to hazard a guess that it’ll be much the same, or at least very similar, to using Hnry in Australia and/or the UK.

Disclaimer: I’m a blogger and freelancer, not a financial advisor or tax professional. Everything I share here is based on my own personal experience – please do your own research and consult a professional if you need specific financial advice. This post also contains affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you sign up to Hnry through my link, at no extra cost to you. That said, Hnry has not asked me to write this, sponsored this post, or had any input into my opinions. I’m sharing this because it’s genuinely made my life easier.

Table of Contents

What you kinda forget when you go freelance in New Zealand

Obviously, I knew that I paid my taxes in New Zealand. We all do. But most of the time, you don’t actually have to think about it.

If you have a job where you have a salary or are an employee, then your employer and their accountant or payroll team sort out your tax for you.

You never really see that, other than a line in your payslip each fortnight or month. You’ll have your set salary or pay for the month, and you tax is taken off before it gets to you.

This is super easy – you don’t have to do anything other than make sure your Tax Code is correct.

But when you start earning anything outside of your salaried income, you need to pay tax on that … that’s where the stress and panic can come. 🤣🙈

💰 If you decide to check out Hnry, you can use this link here to get $25 NZD credit.

The other payments you didn’t realise you had to pay

It’s not just your income tax that you need to account for when you go freelance or take on extra work, either.

It’s things like ACC, GST if you meet the threshold, it’s provisional tax. It’s student loan repayments if you’re still trucking on with that (good job!).

Suddenly, ‘just paying your income tax’ got a lot more complicated.

When I tell you my colour-coded spreadsheet was working hard, it really, really was. I was making sure I was putting away money for my income tax (more than I thought I needed, too, just in case something hit me in the face later!), and for ACC, and then being super aware of provisional tax, too.

And I didn’t really know what I was doing. Thankfully, my best friend is an accountant, so I could always go to her and ask questions and make sure I was doing things correctly.

I know that she’s glad I started using Hnry for all this, that’s for sure!

The mental load

If you’ve had to pay your own taxes before, then you’ll know that the mental load is rough. Especially when we get to March in New Zealand (end of the financial year).

And then you throw in expenses! Which I haven’t even mentioned yet. When I first started earning money alongside my part-time job, I didn’t have many expenses at all. It was mostly just big things like a new computer (my old laptop was 13 years old and sloooooow and tired, and I couldn’t do what I needed to do on it), so I didn’t have too much struggle with it.

But then, when I started helping out other bloggers with their own blogs, and I really started to grow my own business, I had more expenses.

I’ll get into that more, too, but suddenly adding 1 x expense to my tax forms in March became a lot more complicated, and I was storing all my emails and receipts, and it was … a lot.

My brain was scared of March. And it was tired before we even got there.

So why not hire an accountant?

Girl, I don’t have that much money. 🤣🙈 Good accountants are expensive.

Many freelancers, like myself, just can’t justify the cost or the time it takes to get all the information to an accountant every month. And you don’t want to hire someone super cheap and give your finances to someone who may not look after them or give you bad advice. You need reputable people.

So that was a no-go for me.

💰 If you decide to check out Hnry, you can use this link here to get $25 NZD credit.

So what exactly is Hnry?

Hnry is a registered tax agent and a financial admin service, and it was built and designed specifically for self-employed people in New Zealand. And it’s really simple in how it works.

The simple explanation

Every time you get paid, Hnry automatically calculates and pays your:

Income tax
ACC levies
GST (if applicable)
Student Loans (if applicable)
Whatever else you might set up with it

Then whatever is left goes straight into your bank account. Tax sorted. 👏🏻

But it’s also more than tax that it sorts

If that wasn’t good enough, you can also use Hnry for other money management things for your freelance/sole-trading/contracting/whatever it is. And they all work together to make your life easier.

Files your tax (yay!)
You can send invoices with Hnry, and Hnry will follow up on your behalf so you don’ tneed to chase people
Tracks your expenses; you just need to put them in
Create quotes for clients or customers
And then, if accepted, those quotes can be immediately turned into invoices with just the click of a button
Provides support if you do need to talk to anyone about anything
Helps you save in other areas, too, by letting you create different allocations eg Kiwisaver

It’s basically an accountant, bookkeeper and tax agent all rolled into one.

And for someone who is very much a word person and very much not a numbers person, Hnry has been such a lifesaver, especially as my business has grown over the years.

Where did Hnry come from?

Hnry was built by freelancers who were frustrated about all these same problems.

Started in Wellington, New Zealand, in 2017, by Claire and James, who wanted a tool that they just couldn’t find in the market. And now Hnry has grown into one of Australasia’s biggest specialist agencies for tax. Looking at their Story page, they have a team of over 100, now serving not only New Zealand but also Australia and they’re expanding into the UK.

What an incredibly cool story for a small New Zealand start-up. They’ve also just recently announced that the main stadium in Wellington is now called the Hnry Stadium. What! So cool.

I love how I can not only get my taxes sorted with very little thought on my part, but also support New Zealand businesses. We love!

How Hnry works in Real Life … as someone who uses it every month

Okay so Hnry is starting to sound like something you might just need in your life? Here’s how it works, as someone who uses it every single week/month.

Step 1: You Sign Up and Get a Hnry Bank Account

This sounds weird, I know, but bear with me for a moment! When you sign up to Hnry, you’ll create your account like you would any other online endeavour. And then Hnry will give you a dedicated bank account number.

This is the account number that you’re going to give to your clients or customers, or link up to your PayPal or Stripe account if you have money coming in from those channels.

Don’t freak out. This is how it works.

You get your own unique Hnry bank account, and this is what is going to make everything automatic and smooooooth.

Step 2: Client Pays Into Your Hnry Account

Once you’ve got that set up (super easy!), you can start getting paid. Hazaa!

When a client pays you (or you pay yourself – more on that soon!), that money goes directly into your Hnry account.

Then Hnry will see that you’ve been paid, and will automatically calculate exactly what tax you need to make on that payment, as well as any ACC you need to pay, anything for GST (if applicable), and any percentages you’ve previously set up to go to other places (such as Student Load repayments or Kiwisaver).

Whatever’s left goes to your personal bank account/whatever bank account you’ve set up to receive payments to.

Think of your Hnry Bank Account as the sorting room, or the mail room. Income comes in from somewhere, Hnry sorts how much goes where, and then sends the rest of it to you.

Quick example*

I invoice Jane Smith $100 and send her an invoice.
Jane pays the $100 either through the email Hnry sends or manually from her bank account.
Hnry looks at that $100 and puts 17.5% aside for tax
It puts $1.52 of that towards your ACC Levy
It takes 1% as the accounting/Hnry fee
It puts $20 toward your student loan that you’ve pre-set up
It puts $10 into one of your own bank accounts called Travel Fund, as you’ve previously set up
You’re left with $49.98 which comes into your own bank account.

*note these percentages and amounts might not be correct, but they’re just to give you an idea.

Step 3: You do basically nothing

There are no spreadsheets (unless you really, really want to – you do you!), no manually setting aside your tax after you get paid, no surprise payments you had zero idea about in a few months, and not end-of-financial-year panics!

Hnry will file your tax return at the end of the year to the IRD (or equivalent in Aus or UK) and all you have to do is double-check the details before confirming they can do so.

Let’s dive into the other tools Hnry offers

Hnry for invoicing

Selling digital products on Etsy when I first started earning extra money meant I didn’t actually invoice anyone. People headed to my store, they made a purchase, I got paid. No invoices needed.

But then when I started contracting (website management, content creation, communications, design, event organsiation etc), and also running my own blogging business, I needed to start invoicing organisations and companies.

I was so glad that Hnry had everything I needed right there on the platform and I didn’t need to figure out how to make my own PDF look prettier. 🤣

Note: If you’re a blogger reading this, and you’re earning anything from your blog (even a couple of bucks a month from ads!) you need to be logging your income. I have everything I earn funnel into an account I’ve created inside my own banking app, and then every so often I will pay that into my Hnry account. More on that here.

*Screenshot from inside the invoicing system at Hnry.co.nz*

It’s really simple to raise an invoice in Hnry.

Before you invoice someone, make sure they’re in your Clients list.
1. Head to your account, and on the left-hand side of the web version, there is Clients in the menu.
2. Click New Client and add all the details you need to add
3. You will be adding an email address here for your client – this is really important because that’s how they get the invoice!
Then you can head to Invoices and choose New Invoice or duplicate a previous one
Add all the details you can/need to the invoice
Schedule or Send the invoice from there.

Then they’ll get an email, and they’ll have two options:

Pay using the online payment option (which does have a fee)
Or they can bring your invoice into their own accounting software like Xero and use the Invoice number and bank account details on the bottom of your invoice to pay how they’d like. As long as the invoice number is in the Reference, Hnry will know that they’ve paid it, even if it’s not from their digital payment button.

And then the Hnry automations for tax, GST, etc all kick in!

How to log an expense

One of my favourite aspects of Hnry is having the space to upload and log my expenses.

Now that I am more than one every so often, it makes it all so much easier. And because you can duplicate expenses, you can streamline your workflow and just change the details for each month (for subscriptions, for example), and leave the things like descriptions.

Here’s how you do it

Log in to Hnry

On the left-hand side menu (on the web version) you can see Expenses

Create Create new +

You’ll be prompted to input a bunch of information first in a popup:

What kind of Expense is this? It’ll be a Business Expense or a Client Reimbursement. For now, let’s go Business Expense.
Choose which one of your Work Types this is for. You would have set this up previously, but it’s what work you’re charging this expense to.
Choose an Expense Category. If you’re not sure which category this expense fits into, check out this helpful article.

Then you’ll be taken a page where you can include all the nitty gritty details, with what you just added in the pop up at the top of the page.

Expense Date: What day the money came out of your account

Total Cost: Make sure this in NZD (or AUD or GBP if you’re there). Even if you paid in USD, as many of my subscriptions are, you need to raise it as the NZD equivalent. I look at my bank account to get the exact exchange/what it was actually charged.

Is there GST included in this price? Select Yes or No. Most of my expenses are No. But this will be on your expense invoice or receipt.

Claimable income amount: This is automatically calculated based on the above. You don’t fill this in.

Description of business purpose: Here’s what you describe what this expense is for and why it’s for your business. For example, I add my blog hosting payment to this every year as I make money from my blog. I write something along the lines of “Website hosting payment with Lyrical Host”. And that’s enough.

Add your Receipt. You can’t add an expense without this, as it’s what Hnry will check your details against and make sure they’re correct. You can add it as a doc, pdf, and even an image of a receipt.

You Submit your expense and if there’s anything that needs tweaking, they’ll let you know, otherwise it will be Accepted and logged in a few hours usually.

A note on Duplicating Expenses: Because most of my expenses are subscriptions for things (things like Canva, Metricool, things I use every month or annually for running my blog and business) I can easily find the previous month’s expense and duplicate it. Then the main details are all in there, and I just need to change the Date, Cost (it changes a few cents every month due to exchange rate), and Receipt.

💰 If you decide to check out Hnry, you can use this link here to get $25 NZD credit.

Paying yourself with Hnry

You can also pay yourself with Hnry. And what I mean by that is that if you’re getting payments from somewhere that’s not directly through a Hnry invoice, you simply need to take that money and transfer it from your own bank account to your Hnry account.

And then the usual automatic things will kick in.

I wanted to add this in, as it was something I didn’t understand when I got started with Hnry. I got a bit confused as to how to do it, but you basically can add your Hnry account as an account in your own banking app/website that you pay often, so you can send money to your Hnry account when you need ot.

Example 1

I use PayPal and Stripe for my digital products business, blog coaching business, and blogging membership payments, which means money accumulates in those accounts.

From there, I have two options:

Connect up my Hnry account so that when I transfer money from PayPal or Stripe, it goes directly to Hnry.
Create a new account in my own banking app called something like “Transfer to Hnry” and have the PayPal and Stripe money go there. Then I transfer that into my Hnry account.

While the former is a lot easier and one less step, I tend to do the latter as I tend to have many payments per month, so I find it easier to bulk pay myself/my Hnry account.

Example 2

Say you do a one-off job for someone and they pay you a set amount that you haven’t invoiced them for. Perhaps they have your own bank account and not your Hnry account.

You would then take that exact amount and transfer it from your own bank account to your Hnry account.

And then let Hnry do the usual automations it needs to do.

What I love about Hnry (and what could be better)

You can probably tell there is a lot I love about Hnry. But there are also some things that I think need tweaking or that I think would make great additions to the site.

The Pros to Hnry

Peace of mind is genuinely life-changing: I love how I don’t have to think about my tax other than making sure I’ve uploaded all my expenses, and then approved Hnry to file the return. Amazing!
Tax is sorted: Obviously the big one is this. I don’t have to have that separate account for keeping 17.5% (or whatever) of all my additional income
No surprise bills: Like, ever.
Milage: I love this feature! This is a relatively new feature, but you can add in your milage and the expense is automatically calculated for you.
Invoicing is built in: One less tool I have to pay for, and no need for a chaotic Google Drive folder full of invoices and making up my own invoice numbers.
Expense tracking reduces your tax bill: There were so many things prior to using Hnry that I just didn’t log as an expense. But because it’s so easy to do so, then I’m making sure that my business expenses are actually logged. Which means my tax is reduced and I usually get a good refund.
Access to accountants: If I need to talk to someone and not just work through the website, I can. Totally free.
They file your return: I just need to hit ‘yes you can file this for me’.
Scales with you: One of the things I love is the Hnry scales with you. If I’m only making $100 extra a month, then I’m only paying that 1% fee to Hnry. But if I’m making $1000 I still only pay that 1% capped at a maximum of $1,500 +GST per year.
Additional accounts: I can choose various percentages to add into other accounts. So if I wanted to have a Travel Fund and put 5% of all my paid invoices into that account (in my own banking app), I can set that up.
Auto pay into my Kiwisaver: Kiwisaver is super important and it’s not something you often think about when you’re freelancing or are earning extra money. I can set up what % of my income through Hnry I want going into my Kiwisaver. When I was doing my own taxes, I didn’t add anything from that income to my KiwiSaver, but now I can, super easily! Which is great for savings.

The Cons of Hnry (Or Honest Limitations)

Can’t send contracts: Something I would love to see in Hnry is the ability to send Contracts or have people digitally signed things. It would be helpful to have this so I didn’t have to have another platform or software to do this.
It requires using their bank account: Which may be a con for some people. Some people feel uncomfortable with an intermediary account.
Best suited to service-based freelancers: If you have very complex business structures, you may still need additional accounting support, so do just bear that in mind. It’s not like a full on accounting software.
Not ideal if you’re earning very little: At a very low income, the fee may feel disproportionate (though the cap helps). You’ll want to judge whether you’re making enough on the side to make it worth while.
You need to remember to log expenses: It’s not fully automatic; you still have to input your deductions. However! There is a new Hnry Debit card which you can get, top up (almost like a gift card or a Wise card) and then you can put any of expense through that, so you don’t have to log as many.
There ARE fees: Hnry does charge 1% of your self-employed income (capped at $1,500/year). BUT I actually don’t mind this at ALL. They’re a business, they need to make money somehow, and 1% of my earnings is a measly fee for all they do for me. It’s also capped, which I love.

As you can see, even the Cons I could come up a) aren’t that bad and b) actually have a Pro alongside them.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide!

Is Hnry Right For You?

Hnry is ideal if you are:

A freelancer or contractor in NZ (or AUS or UK now!) earning any income from self-employment
A blogger, content creator, or social media manager monetising your platform
A consultant, designer, developer, writer, or creative
Someone who just went self-employed and has no idea what they’re doing with tax
Someone who does know what they’re doing but is sick of spending time on it
A side hustler whose income is growing and tax is becoming a real concern

Hnry is probably NOT the right fit if you:

Have a registered company structure (Hnry is for sole traders)
Have very complex financial situations with multiple business entities
Are earning under $5k self-employed income (it’s worth doing the maths on the fee here, though you may decide it’s worth it)
Genuinely enjoy managing your own tax admin (they exist — I don’t understand them, but they exist)

How Much Does Hnry Cost? Is It Actually Worth It?

There is a fee, but it’s minimal. Prices below in NZD as examples.

1% of self-employed income paid through Hnry
Capped at $1,500 per year
No monthly subscription, no hidden fees. And you only pay when you get paid

Here are some numbers for those who hate numbers (read: me):

At $50,000 freelance income = $500/year totally
At $80,000 freelance income = $800/year total
At $150,000+ freelance income = $1,500/year (capped)

But of course, you and I know that freelance money fluctuates. So you might bring in just 1 contract one month, but 5 the next. So every time you put money through Hnry, it’ll take that 1%. Still capped at $1,500 per year.

💰 If you decide to check out Hnry, you can use this link here to get $25 NZD credit.

What it’s actually like to use Hnry day-to-day

To wrap up this Hnry review, I wanted to just talk a little bit about how I use Hnry every day/week for my own accounting as a contractor, freelancer, business owner, and blogger.

An honest look at a typical week

Okay ‘typical’ might not be the right word as no week is the same. But! Here are some of the ways that I use Hnry each week or month.

But first, here is what I do as a freelance/self-employed person:

Communications and Creative contractor role at two different organisations: I track my hours and invoice them both, one fortnightly, the other monthly.
One-off roles: Occasionally, I do one-off projects for organisations (eg book cover design). I create Invoices in Hnry for this.
Digital product creator: I have an Etsy shop and also a store on my own website for selling digital products such as guides, templates, and digital tools. Money is stored in PayPal until I move it.
Blog Coaching: I offer 1:1 blog coaching and this is invoiced through Hnry. People are usually overseas, and they can pay by card.
The Blogging Room Membership: My membership for women in blogging and business. They pay monthly, 3-monthly or 6-monthly to be in the membership, and they can do this through a ThriveCart checkout that takes card via PayPal or Stripe. I then move that to my Hnry account.

Any time I get a receipt for an expense, I file them into a folder on my emails, and then at the end of each month, I do my expenses. I like to keep on top it so I don’t need to do all of them for the year in March.

Before Hnry

Before Hnry, I did only have a few small contracts lined up, and my digital products store. I’m so so so glad that I discovered Hnry before all my bigger stuff started happening.

Come March 31st each year it was always a bit stressful needing to do my own taxes. I was scared I’d get something wrong, the IRD would come after me haha! Kidding. … Kinda.

After Hnry

I am so glad I no longer have to deal with spreadsheets and keeping track of how much I should be putting away for tax every time I get paid.

It makes tax season so much easier! It sort of comes and goes without much hoopleda and I eventually get a refund in my account come July-ish.

How Hnry compares to your other options

Now I have to be honest, I have never hired an accountant, but rumour has it they’re not cheap! But after a quick google an average in NZ is probably $150 – $300 NZD an hour for basic but good accounting. Let me know in the comments if you think this isn’t quite right!

	Hnry	DIY (Spreadsheets + IRD)	Traditional Accountant
Cost	1% (capped $1,500/year)	Free	$150–$300/hr
Tax filed for you	✅ Yes	❌ No	✅ Yes
Invoicing included	✅ Yes	❌ No	❌ No
Expense tracking	✅ Yes	Manual	Varies
GST filing	✅ Yes	Manual	✅ Yes
Mental load	😌 Minimal	😰 High	😐 Medium
Access to accountants	✅ Included	❌ No	✅ (at cost)

DIYing works until it doesn’t, and the moment it doesn’t, the consequences are expensive. Or you’re scrambling to get things done! Traditional accountants are valuable for complex situations but probably overkill for most solo freelancers.

Hnry is that lovely in-between spot for the vast majority of NZ self-employed people, like myself.

💰 If you decide to check out Hnry, you can use this link here to get $25 NZD credit.

Hnry FAQs

Is Hnry safe? Who holds my money?

Hnry is very safe. They are a recognised company, award-winning, and even expanding into Australia and the United Kingdom.

What happens if I have both employed AND self-employed income?

Your employer sorts your own tax at their end. You usually only ever see what you’re paying in tax when you see a line on your pay slip. Anything you make as a freelancer, contractor, sole-trader etc you need to pay tax on. Hnry makes it easy for you to do that.

Can I use Hnry if I’m also registered for GST?

Yes! There is information on the Hnry website if you’re GST registered.

What if my clients pay directly to my personal account?

You can easily transfer that money that they paid you into your Hnry account so that it can be sorted and your tax can be taken off. To mitigate this, use the Invoicing function in Hnry to invoice them directly.

Does Hnry work if I freelance as a side hustle alongside a day job?

Sure does! That’s what I use it for. I have a part-time job, which is looked after from a money perspective by the payroll team. Anything I make outside of that, I need to organise my own tax for. Which is where Hnry comes in.

What happens at the end of the financial year?

In March, Hnry will start getting your information ready for the IRD. You’ll get a notification and an email giving you updates all throughout the process, mainly that they do not want you to file your own tax as it’ll muck up the system. When your tax is ready to be approved, they’ll let you know, and you go into your account and approve it.

Can I cancel Hnry whenever I want?

Yes you can. You’ll just need to do your own tax thereafter.

Is Hnry available in Australia?

Yes. You can use Hnry AU. Learn more about that here.

What if I get stuck?

You can contact Hnry support at any time using the chat. They also have a great lot of resources on their website.

Disclaimer: I’m a blogger and freelancer, not a financial advisor or tax professional. Everything I share here is based on my own personal experience – please do your own research and consult a professional if you need specific financial advice. This post also contains affiliate links, meaning I may earn a small commission if you sign up to Hnry through my link, at no extra cost to you. That said, Hnry has not asked me to write this, sponsored this post, or had any input into my opinions. I’m sharing this because it’s genuinely made my life easier.