About Housing Allowance Helper

Who I am

I'm Nick Winnard. I've served as a bivocational Baptist pastor for fifteen years, in a role focused on administration and worship — which means I've spent a lot of that time on the practical, unglamorous side of church life: budgets, records, and making sure things are done carefully. Alongside ministry I run two small creative-services businesses, so keeping clean books across different kinds of work is a normal part of my week.

Why I built this

The housing allowance is one of the most valuable parts of how a church provides for its pastor. It's also one of the most poorly organized. Most of us handle it as a once-a-year scramble: a pile of receipts, a spreadsheet that got abandoned in the spring, and a fair rental value figure we'd struggle to explain if anyone asked.

I wanted to treat this resource the way it deserves to be treated — as something worth stewarding well, not reconstructing in a panic every April.

So I built a tool that does two plain things: keeps the record as the year goes, and writes down the reasoning behind the fair rental value while it's fresh. It's the tool I wanted for my own situation, made carefully enough to hand to someone else.

What it is, and what it isn't

Housing Allowance Helper is an organizing and recordkeeping tool. It helps you track housing expenses, document a fair rental value estimate, and export a clean report.

It is not tax, legal, or financial advice. It doesn't tell you what to claim, and it doesn't file anything. It's meant to make your own records better and your conversation with a CPA, EA, or treasurer shorter. Anywhere the app uses AI — reading receipts, drafting the fair rental value write-up — you review and edit the draft before it's saved.

How I think about your data and your money

Your data is yours. You can export all of it as a file, or delete your account, at any time. It's stored with Google Firebase, encrypted in transit and at rest, and it isn't sold or shared for marketing.

I charge once a year rather than monthly. I'd rather you forget you're subscribed because it's quietly useful than have to win you back every month. And because it's a one-person project, I read the fair rental value methodology and the AI prompts myself — they're not a black box I bought.

Get in touch

Questions, problems, or ideas: info@housingallowancehelper.com. It comes to me.