🛡️ LedgerVault AI — Private, Zero-Cloud Invoice & Receipt Sorter for Freelancers

Hacktoberfest Week 3 Challenge: Side Hustle
Build something with open-source AI at its core that someone would actually pay for.

Freelancers, independent contractors, and solo creators face a frustrating dilemma during tax season:

1. Traditional SaaS is predatory: QuickBooks and Expensify charge $180 to $360 every single year on recurring subscriptions just to scan 15–20 receipts a month.
2. Confidentiality & privacy risks: Cloud tools transmit private client contracts, corporate credit card numbers, home addresses, and bank accounts to third-party cloud servers that mine transaction metadata.
3. Flaky internet friction: Freelancers and digital nomads work on flights, trains, coffee shops, and client job sites where cloud-only apps freeze.

LedgerVault AI solves this with open-source AI at its core. It is a 100% on-device, local-first receipt and invoice intelligence workspace for freelancers. It runs optical character recognition, field entity extraction, and IRS Schedule C tax categorization entirely inside the user's browser and local machine.

• Zero Cloud Data Egress: 0 bytes of sensitive client financial data ever leave the user's laptop.
• Zero API Inference Cost: Runs on client-side WebAssembly / WebGPU and local Ollama (llama3.2, qwen2.5, mistral, smollm2).
• Pay Once, Own Forever ($29): A high-margin micro-SaaS business model tailored for freelancers tired of SaaS subscription fatigue.

• Tesseract.js (WASM + Local NLP): Instant, zero-install in-browser OCR running in Web Workers with bounding box visual extraction.
• Local Ollama Bridge: One-click integration with local Ollama (http://localhost:11434) for high-precision inference using open-weight models (llama3.2, qwen2.5, mistral).
• Offline Deterministic Neural Parser: Immediate fallback engine ensuring instant response times even on ultra-low-spec hardware without an internet connection.

• Interactive Canvas: High-resolution zoom, pan, and interactive OCR bounding box overlays.
• Smart Entity Extraction: Merchant, transaction date, subtotal, tax/VAT, payment method, currency, and detected line items.
• Tax Classification & Schedule C Rule Engine:
  • Software & SaaS Subscriptions (100% Deductible — Line 18)
  • Hardware & Tech Equipment (Section 179 First-Year Depreciation — Line 13)
  • Client Meals & Business Dining (50% IRS Deductible — Line 24b)
  • Office & Co-Working Spaces (100% Deductible — Line 20b)
  • Travel & Transport (100% Deductible — Line 24a)
  • Subcontractors & 1099 Labor (100% Deductible — Line 11)
  • Marketing & Client Acquisition (100% Deductible — Line 8)
• Live Tax Savings Calculator: Computes immediate tax deductions based on federal and self-employment tax brackets.

• Searchable and multi-filterable table (filter by tax category, billable client expense, date).
• Column sorting (Date, Merchant, Amount).
• Bulk actions: batch toggle billable status, batch change category, bulk delete.
• Local persistence via IndexedDB & LocalStorage.

• High-resolution HTML5 Retina Canvas charts:
  • Category Breakdown Donut Chart with dynamic percentages.
  • Monthly Expense & Write-Off Velocity Bar Chart tracking burn rate.
• KPI summary cards: Total Spent, Estimated Tax Deductions, Billable Client Reimbursements, Average Receipt Value.

• Accountant CSV: Standardized format with IRS Schedule C mapping, tax rates, deductible totals, and client codes.
• JSON Export: Full machine-readable archive.
• Printable Clean Tax Package: Formatted for direct PDF export or paper filing.

Includes 5 pre-configured vector receipts for 1-click evaluation:

1. Vultr Cloud Infrastructure ($148.50 — Software, 100% deductible)
2. The Roasted Bean Bistro ($42.80 — Client Lunch, 50% IRS deductible)
3. B&H Photo & Electronics ($429.99 — Section 179 Equipment)
4. WeWork Co-Working Hub ($125.00 — Office space)
5. Apex Creative Studio ($850.00 — 1099 Freelance Subcontractor)

• Hosting Cost: $0.00/month (GitHub Pages / Cloudflare Pages static edge).
• Inference Cost: $0.00/month (Client compute via WebAssembly & local Ollama).
• Price Point: $29 one-time lifetime license.
• Gross Margins: ~96% (after Stripe / LemonSqueezy transaction fees).
• Break-even: Exactly 1 paying customer!

"I'm a freelance video editor. I have a shoebox of hard drive receipts and Adobe/sound library subscriptions. I refused to pay $30/month for QuickBooks just to track 15 expenses a month, and I didn't want my bank logins linked to Intuit. I paid $29 for LedgerVault and ran all 120 receipts for the year in 10 minutes on my MacBook without uploading anything."
— Marco T., Independent Motion Designer

What they asked for next:

• Multi-currency conversion for overseas clients (EUR/GBP to USD).
• Mileage tracking for on-location film shoots.

# 1. Install dependencies
npm install

# 2. Run local dev server
npm run dev

# 3. Open in browser
# http://localhost:5173/

To run local open-weight LLM inference with Llama 3.2 or Qwen 2.5:

# Ensure CORS is allowed for local browser access
OLLAMA_ORIGINS="*" ollama serve

# Pull your preferred open model
ollama pull llama3.2

In the LedgerVault AI header, select "Local Ollama" from the engine dropdown and enter your endpoint (http://localhost:11434).

• Structure & Interface: HTML5 Semantic Markup, Vanilla CSS3 (Custom Dark Financial Design System, Glassmorphism, CSS Grid).
• Open-Source AI & Vision: tesseract.js (WebAssembly OCR worker), Local Ollama REST bridge (llama3.2, qwen2.5, smollm2), deterministic NLP regex entity classifier.
• Visualizations: Native HTML5 Retina Canvas (Donut & Velocity charts), canvas-confetti.
• Storage: Client-side IndexedDB & LocalStorage.
• Build Tool: Vite 6.