Tax Smart

Landing Page
My Profile
Tax Analytics
Inputting income statements
Virtual Assistant (Voiceflow)
Tax Reminder Calendar
Logo
UGC Creator Page (Sunlife Sunshine Incentive)

Inspiration

With existing tax softwares, personal calendar and reminder applications, and emerging social media platforms filled with cool trends for Gen Z and Gen Alpha, we aimed to bring all three forces together with the goal of educating teenagers and young adults with adequate financial literacy, cultivating a healthy mindset with tax filings and maintaining financial goals, and providing a new stream of income to maintain a strong social presence for both the users and Sun Life Financial.

What it does

TaxSmart provides five different services all in one web app, ranging from tax analytics (with custom financial algorithm), virtual assistant powered by Voiceflow, a safe place to store personal information (in a visual of the back of a credit card), a tax deadline reminder calendar where enables users to sign into their Google accounts to add their own tax reminders depending on the specific type of tax document, and a AI-powered content creation studio for users with a variety of incentives, all as part of the Sun Life initiatives.

How we built it

Our designs bring 5 different services into one dynamic and scalable web app. With a front-end written in Typescript using the NextJS frame and a back-end built with Ruby on Rails alongside SQLite, the process of its development involved many deployment runs, debugging sessions, and creating alternative solutions while maintaining the same designs. In the front-end, we engineered unique Figma UX design for every page of the web app, utilized Google Cloud APIs for creating a tax reminder calendar, and implemented Voiceflow AI chatbot integration for a pop-up assistance to help users with their taxes. In the back-end, we utilized API controllers that communicate with our front-end to analyze data from the user before either storing important user data in the backend database or returning the stored data back to the user if they are requesting it. In addition to the development, we deployed our back-end server using AWS EC2 and front-end website using Vercel to make sure that our product is more than just a prototype that can only be demonstrated on local machines. Overall, despite this being our first time utilizing Ruby on Rails, especially with such a big project under tight time constraints, we managed to deploy a version for you to try out.

Challenges we ran into

With the scale of the project, we had deployment issues connecting the AWS EC2 server with our Ruby on Rails web app. In addition, it was tricky to implement OAuth2 into the tax filing reminder that allows users to sign into their Google Account to add tax reminders while being in our web app with a calendar view display while maintaining a simple, clear UI design.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are most proud of our deployed web app, every feature of the project, in addition to the smooth combination of the AWS server with Ruby on Rails framework.

What we learned

Through this amazing experience, not only did we practice creating feasible web app with Ruby on Rails for data analytics, specifically for tax filing and creating a free version of financial tools for younger generations.

What's next for Tax Smart

We hope to expand our content creation centre to include more forms of videos with texts to educate younger generations with trends emerging from current social media sources.