FreeAgent

[bathingape]

Unless your acct is locked into another system, and won't contemplate anything else, then worst case you give them a section of printouts from FA. Any accountant worth their salts could pick up from there. Certainly don't get dragged into two sets of books, one for them, one for you.

Really whether your accountant is a FA accountant is irrelevant - you pick your software, you pick your accountant - they shouldn't clash, but, if they do, then you choose...

thanks, yeah I don't really do any 'official' accounts for my accountant. He is happy to take my receipts and invoices and do the rest from there. The only reason I use the SJD sheet is for my own benefit.

[Morland]

Unless your acct is locked into another system, and won't contemplate anything else, then worst case you give them a section of printouts from FA. Any accountant worth their salts could pick up from there. Certainly don't get dragged into two sets of books, one for them, one for you.

My accountant doesn't use FreeAgent, (they prefer Xero which I found unintuitive), but are happy to work from the "File dump" option in FreeAgent which lists all my expenses, invoices etc.

[morf]

Another maslins / free agent customer here, very happy with it all

[Mojito]

Maslins / Freeagent

Another maslins / free agent customer here, very happy with it all

Ditto - tried using the spreadsheet & box of receipts approach previously and did not get on with it. Getting a pretty accurate view of you business & personal tax liabilities in real-time, coupled with an accountant that can see the exact same data and advise is well worth it.

[Dan@OrangeGenie]

We love it here and so do our clients!

[bathingape]

Just managed to input this accounting years records into FA. Looking good so far however one thing I can't seem to see is if there's any facility to show estimated dividend remaining for the current month?

The SJD sheet gives this calculation which can come in handy.

[Maslins]

Just managed to input this accounting years records into FA. Looking good so far however one thing I can't seem to see is if there's any facility to show estimated dividend remaining for the current month?

The SJD sheet gives this calculation which can come in handy.

By that do you mean a running total of the retained profit? If so, it's the "Carried forward/distributable" figure in the very bottom right of the overview page (why that's demoted way below the useless cash flow graph is beyond me).

Hopefully this is relevant and useful enough to not be considered spammy/sales, but I wrote a blog article to help FreeAgent users decide how much dividend to take here.

PS cheers for kind words from some of our clients above

[7specialgems]

I'd like to see accountancy firms move away from trying to brew their own in house accountancy app.

They're all lacking in one way or another and they are all silos of information which need to be migrated should the client wish to change supplier.

The client data is better hosted in a neutral multi-tenanted environment, controlled by the client who can authorise accountant access via an accountant portal which interacts with the same dataset.

It's less headache for clients if they want to change supplier and tools like this have greater mind share, so are more responsive to changes in legislation and allowances.

I would sooner instruct an accountant, bookkeeper or payroll agent who advertises themselves as using the Xero/Kashflow/FreeAgent platform.

[Jessica@WhiteFieldTax]

I'd like to see accountancy firms move away from trying to brew their own in house accountancy app.

They're all lacking in one way or another and they are all silos of information which need to be migrated should the client wish to change supplier.

The client data is better hosted in a neutral multi-tenanted environment, controlled by the client who can authorise accountant access via an accountant portal which interacts with the same dataset.

It's less headache for clients if they want to change supplier and tools like this have greater mind share, so are more responsive to changes in legislation and allowances.

I would sooner instruct an accountant, bookkeeper or payroll agent who advertises themselves as using the Xero/Kashflow/FreeAgent platform.

Very much agree - portability of data and practical ownership is a potential minefield with bespoke systems. Far better for the client/user to select what suits them, maybe with advice from accountant.

[youngguy]

I moved to an online accountant a few yrs ago and have been very happy with my decision, however recent changes and price increases got me looking around for comparisons. The time I spend using their portal each month seems to have increased and I'm looking to reduce that.

I signed up for a trial to Freeagent and so far it looks pretty good! The automatic bank transaction upload, 'guessing' the transaction types, invoice creation and automatic dividend vouchers feel like they could save me a lot of time each month.

The expenses seem to be a bit of a pain however,especially for things like daily mileage and I personally would rather have these day by day rather than group then weekly /monthly.

A few Qs for those contractors and accountants who use FA:
- Do people upload receipts or just bung them all in a shoebox and worry about linking them should HMRC come knocking?
- How do people manage the risk of a complete data loss? Do Accountants have some kind of backup or if FA dies do both contractor and accountant find themselves in a bind?
- How much do FA accountants do? I'm used to just doing my monthly invoice, expenses and mileage and all other elements (rti setup, payroll, tax and vat calcs etc) are done by my Accountant and I get email reminders. I can see you could do all that yourself via FA but I don't want to! For those with an Accountant who uses FA, what is the general working model?