Built for the people the paperwork forgets.

The problem

A deduction on tip income is worth real money to someone making most of it in cash and card tips. But claiming it properly depends on something almost nobody has: a contemporaneous daily record — a log written as the money was earned, not reconstructed from memory in March.

Most tipped workers keep that record in a notes app, a shoebox, or not at all. Not through carelessness. Because at 1 AM after a double, filling in a spreadsheet is the last thing that is going to happen.

The design constraint

So the whole app is built around one number: ten seconds. If logging a shift takes longer than that, the habit dies, and without the habit there is no record and no deduction. Everything else — the pre-filled defaults, the custom keypad, the reminder that opens straight into it — exists to protect that number.

A year of ten-second entries is the record. That is the entire product.

Why there is no server

An app holding a year of someone's undeclared-feeling income is holding something sensitive. The safest architecture for that data is the one where we never have it.

So Tipfolio has no backend for your earnings. Not "we don't look at it" — there is no networking code in the app that could send it. No analytics, no crash reporting, no third-party SDKs, no advertising identifiers. The optional iCloud backup is encrypted on your device with a key held in your own iCloud Keychain, so even the copy in the cloud is one we could not read if we were compelled to.

That decision costs us things. We cannot see how the app is used, cannot debug from telemetry, and cannot build a growth loop out of your data. We think that is the correct trade for this particular product. The privacy policy spells out exactly what that means.

Honesty about numbers

Money apps are unusually tempting to lie with. A rate looks better if you ignore tip-outs; a trend looks dramatic if you compare a partial month to a whole one; an insight looks smart if you generate it from four shifts.

Tipfolio refuses all three. Where there is not enough evidence for a claim, the card is hidden rather than filled with a guess. Where a figure can't be computed, it shows a dash rather than a zero. And tax figures are always framed as potential deductions derived from your own records — never as a promised saving.

Who makes it

Tipfolio is built by Lacewing Technologies LLC, a small independent software company. It is not venture funded, does not sell data, and has no growth target that depends on you doing anything other than logging your shifts.

If something is wrong, or the app misses something your job needs, write to support@gettipfolio.app. A person reads it.

Lacewing Technologies LLC · 30 N Gould St, Ste N, Sheridan, WY 82801, United States