Outright

For the baseball transaction, see Outright (baseball).

Outright

Company type	Private
Industry	Online Accounting, Bookkeeping Taxes, Schedule C
Founded	2008 (2008)
Defunct	July 18, 2022 (2022-07-18)
Headquarters	Mountain View, California
Key people	Kevin Reeth (Co-Founder) Ben Curren (Co-Founder) Steven Aldrich (CEO)
Owner	GoDaddy
Number of employees	16 (2014)
Website	www.outright.com [ dead link ]

Outright was an accounting and bookkeeping software application that assists small businesses and sole proprietors with managing their business's income and expenses. In May 2022, GoDaddy announced the software would be discontinued on June 18, 2022. ^[1]

The software also provided means to organize and categorize expenses for filing a United States Schedule C tax return. ^{[2] [3] [4]} It was acquired by GoDaddy in 2012 for approximately $20 million and had been rebranded as GoDaddy Online Bookkeeping. ^[5]

History

Kevin Reeth and Ben Curren worked together at Intuit in 2006 and then later at a web-application firm called Esomnie LLC. As a Product Manager and Software Engineer respectively, the two were heavily involved in the development and marketing of Quicken products.^{[ citation needed ]}

Curren and Reeth had become increasingly frustrated with the complexity of doing taxes for small businesses, so in 2008 they founded a company and website called BootStrap. ^{[6] [7]} The Website was renamed Outright just a few months after launch, though it continues to be operated by BootStrap, Inc. ^[8]

The BootStrap website existed for only a few months before being renamed Outright

In 2009, the company raised a total of $7.7 million funding from Sequoia Capital, First Round Capital, Shasta Ventures and SoftTech VC among others. ^{[6] [9]} Today, the website manages $1.2 billion in transactions from small businesses and independent contractors. ^{[7] [10]}

On July 17, 2012, Outright.com announced in an email to all customers that they had been acquired by GoDaddy.com. ^[11]

Functions

The software was designed as a software as a service model. It provided the following functions:

• Tracked and managed business income, expenses and tax liabilities. ^[12]
• Data import - The application could import financial information from PayPal, FreshBooks, oDesk, and other financial management tools. ^{[3] [6] [12] [13] [14]}
• Reports income and expenses for sole proprietors filing a Schedule C or 1040
• Managed W-9s for paying independent contractors, freelancers, and anyone outside of company staff for 1099 filings ^[15]
• On-line selling on eBay Bookkeeping Selling Manager app that imported transaction data from eBay and PayPal accounts to help eBay sellers manage their finances. ^{[16] [17]}

References

1. Steiner, Ina. "eBay Sellers Desperate after GoDaddy Bookkeeping Ends Support". eCommerceBytes. Retrieved 28 May 2022.
2. Meece, Mickey (2009-08-22). "On to Plan B: Starting a Business". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved 2023-03-09.
3. "Outright (September 2009)". PCMAG. Archived from the original on 2012-10-11. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
4. Klein, Karen E. "Advice for Tax Procrastinators, 2009 - BusinessWeek". www.businessweek.com. Archived from the original on 2009-07-05. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
5. "GoDaddy Acquires Outright, Establishes Mountain View Office". TechCrunch. 18 July 2012. Retrieved 2021-12-12.
6. Ty McMahan (2009-11-16). "Outright Lends A Hand To Small Businesses With $5.5M Funding". Wall Street Journal Blog. blogs.wsj.com. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
7. "Bootstrap launches financial management site for businesses that don't like financial management". VentureBeat. 2008-07-09. Retrieved 2023-03-09.
8. Ben Kepes, Cloud Ave (16 February 2009). "Accounting 2.0 at CloudAve". cloudave.com. Retrieved February 16, 2009.
9. "Outright.com launches with $2M funding". www.bizjournals.com. Retrieved 2023-03-09.
10. Reagan D. Lynch. "Simple, Non-cluttered, Accessible Bookkeeping". outright.com. Retrieved March 25, 2010.
11. "GoDaddy Acquires Outright, Establishes Mountain View Office". TechCrunch. July 18, 2012.
12. By Leena Rao, TechCrunch. “Outright Tracking More Than $1 Billion, Launches W-9 Management Service.” Retrieved March 29, 2010
13. "Small Business Web: Leverage and Cooperation". Inc.com. Archived from the original on 2021-07-25. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
14. "Outright Teams Up With PayPal & Expensify to Ease Your Bookkeeping Woes". webworkerdaily.com. Archived from the original on 2009-10-02. Retrieved 2025-07-25.
15. Outright News “Collect and Manage W-9 Forms Online; Free.” Retrieved June 04, 2010
16. By Kevin Reeth, Outright Blog. “One complete picture.” Retrieved August 11, 2011
17. By Vangie Beal, Ecommerce-Guide Essentials. “eBay Integrates Outright Bookkeeping Solution.” Retrieved March 29, 2010