Spreadsheet vs Portal: the ultimate smackdown

[Kenny@MyAccountantFriend]

As a number have mentioned already most accountancy firms offering an online solution will include this within their prices/monthly fees.

If you wanted to keep the spreadsheet while using an online portal you could and then make a decision from there come your year end.

What I would say though is that your spreadsheet is one per year, the portal would keep all of the previous year’s transactions visible for you in the one place as opposed to opening multiple spreadsheets when looking back over previous years.

[northernladuk]

Freeagent sounds attractive. I guess (sorry NLUK!) it becomes an added cost however. Eg. an accountancy firm might offer £95 p/m for basic accounts, but when you add the £30 p/m for the software it is less of a bargain.

(sigh) again with the 'might' and assumptions that are wrong. Not all do.

[Maslins]

while I really like freeagent, and recommend it - it is not without some limitations compared to spreadsheets

it's hard to batch expenses - there's no easy way (that I've found) at the end of a month to import 20 train tickets all the same price/same description but different dates - this is easy on a spreadsheet

it's hard to project forward (again - prepared to be corrected) - expenses and invoices are only taken into consideration from the date they are for, which is fine and good for "up to date" accounts put you cant, for example, proejct the next 3 months of invoices and expenses and press a "pretend it's christmas 2015" button to see what cashflow position you'll be in, again, easy on a spreadsheet - the only way I've found to do this is to register (& pay) for another addon software for projections

My suggestion would be just pay on the company debit card. That way the dates and amounts can automatically be pulled through from a statement download/upload of live feed, and you just need to explain as "travel". Indeed if the narrative on the bank looks the same, FreeAgent will even automatically explain future purchases that look the same as "travel".

Alternatively if you want to pay privately and reclaim, you could enter one figure, (say) £200 for train tickets in month August. Provided somewhere you have the detail that that's actually made up of 20 £10 tickets or whatever.

Float (possibly what you're talking about as additional app) might help you do that. Alternatively you can easily enough put in future dated invoices (marking as sent) together with expenses, then when looking at your P&L, change it from "year to date" to "2015/16 year" or whatever, which means it'll include months that are still in the future but in your accounting year.

Freeagent sounds attractive. I guess (sorry NLUK!) it becomes an added cost however. Eg. an accountancy firm might offer £95 p/m for basic accounts, but when you add the £30 p/m for the software it is less of a bargain.

I am coming round to online packages, if they offer full visibility and reporting, so I can download the entirety of my accounts any time. It would be great to find a package/company that does that.

SJD page here puffing their spreadsheet and being a bit sniffy about online packages: . I have used their spreadsheet and it's not bad, despite being a bit buggy and having no version control.

As others have now said, many FreeAgent friendly practices will include the cost of FreeAgent in their fee.

Re SJD, their stance has seemingly changed quite a bit. A few years ago they were banging the drum that it's all gimmicky fluff and the spreadsheet is all you need. This was technically correct, but in reality a lot of contractors like the gimmicky fluff, so started leaving SJD for firms which did use FreeAgent. SJD do now support FreeAgent users.

[pr1]

My suggestion would be just pay on the company debit card. That way the dates and amounts can automatically be pulled through from a statement download/upload of live feed, and you just need to explain as "travel". Indeed if the narrative on the bank looks the same, FreeAgent will even automatically explain future purchases that look the same as "travel".

Alternatively if you want to pay privately and reclaim, you could enter one figure, (say) £200 for train tickets in month August. Provided somewhere you have the detail that that's actually made up of 20 £10 tickets or whatever.

agree but my bank (cater allen) limits me to 30 transactions per month before they start charging (70p per transaction) which is why I still do travel on personal card and claim it back - I could enter 1 figure but the minor OCD in me likes everything to align (date on ticket = date claimed, etc) so batching several into one claim would make my palms sticky

Float (possibly what you're talking about as additional app) might help you do that. Alternatively you can easily enough put in future dated invoices (marking as sent) together with expenses, then when looking at your P&L, change it from "year to date" to "2015/16 year" or whatever, which means it'll include months that are still in the future but in your accounting year.

aha - perfect - thanks!

[unixman]

(sigh) again with the 'might' and assumptions that are wrong. Not all do.

"Hello, Police ?"
"Yes".
"unixman used the word "guess" and "might" in a forum discussion, and then he assumed something"
"Expect arrests."

[unixman]

Re SJD, their stance has seemingly changed quite a bit. A few years ago they were banging the drum that it's all gimmicky fluff and the spreadsheet is all you need. This was technically correct, but in reality a lot of contractors like the gimmicky fluff, so started leaving SJD for firms which did use FreeAgent. SJD do now support FreeAgent users.

The push towards portals comes from the accountants, not contractors, according to what I have seen so far. Online toys are fine, but don't f**k with my books!

Calm down everybody that was not serious.

[TheFaQQer]

I've only used the InTouch portal, but you can download all your transactions through that and play with them to your heart's content

[dingdong]

I use Crunch and find their portal great. I can easily review transactions from years ago, and can download transactions anytime I want to excel.
I can also run a trial version of my annual accounts at any point during the year.

I really don't see why anyone should have concerns about using the market leading portals like Crunch etc.

[unixman]

Is Crunch a bespoke platform? Intouch is, so it NW (Vantage).

I like the idea of using a standard tool like Freeagent. The big accountancy companies prefer their own bespoke written stuff. Allows them to capture that income I suppose.

[northernladuk]

Is Crunch a bespoke platform? Intouch is, so it NW (Vantage).

I like the idea of using a standard tool like Freeagent. The big accountancy companies prefer their own bespoke written stuff. Allows them to capture that income I suppose.

I give up........