Comparing Accountants

[ladymuck]

FA is rapidly gaining traction in the industry and is getting much closer to being the default option for contractor's book keeping. This has huge advantages when/if you want to change accountants. Changing from one FA accountant to another is simple. On top of that, FA is by far the best and easiest way yet for a contractor to see in real time the company finances and liabilities. It does stacks of clever stuff, you need to look at it. You can get a fully functioning trial account if you wish, for 28 days at no cost to try it out.

Well, yes and no. I have used Sage Instant Accounts for years. All I do is take a data file back up at the end of the year and email it to my accountant. He loads it up and does the CT bits and bobs. If I changed accountants, all I have to do is email that file to a different person. The latest Sage version has some online malarkey element whereby it backs up "to the cloud" and your accountant can log in and access the files.

[RonBW]

I was with InTouch. They have their own portal and it is ok, but is nowhere near as advanced as free agent. Moving from them to a free agent accountant saved me around an hr of time per month . For me they were also a bit inflexible when moving away and their service seemed to go downhill the last two yrs I was with them.

Free agent really is your best bet

How long does it take you now each month? I spend about 20 minutes a month on my accounts with InTouch, maybe half an hour.

[youngguy]

How long does it take you now each month? I spend about 20 minutes a month on my accounts with InTouch, maybe half an hour.

Well I found after the portal changes it was taking much longer.

I had to do all the invoices (with free agent you can duplicate an existing one)
I had to download a bank Csv then import it and then categorise each item (with free agent you set up a feed once and it learns the regular stuff so pre categorises)
Similar stuff on expenses and mileage - much quicker with FA.

The biggest thing I found post portal changes were constantly having to scroll right as the portal didn't autosize on my laptop and I had a lot on unnecessary clicking as you couldn't tab through rows etc

With FA it takes about 5 mins to do invoices (duplicate and change date), 5 to do bank stuff and maybe 5 to do expenses and mileage.

[RonBW]

Well I found after the portal changes it was taking much longer.

I had to do all the invoices (with free agent you can duplicate an existing one)
I had to download a bank Csv then import it and then categorise each item (with free agent you set up a feed once and it learns the regular stuff so pre categorises)
Similar stuff on expenses and mileage - much quicker with FA.

The biggest thing I found post portal changes were constantly having to scroll right as the portal didn't autosize on my laptop and I had a lot on unnecessary clicking as you couldn't tab through rows etc

With FA it takes about 5 mins to do invoices (duplicate and change date), 5 to do bank stuff and maybe 5 to do expenses and mileage.

Ta - I don't see it making much difference to me. My bank account automatically feeds into InTouch and I don't have enough transacations to make it a problem to categorise (and I'd still want to check it was doing everything correctly anyway). Savings account doesn't have an automatic feed that I'm aware of so I'd have to look at what freeagent does for a manual feed.

I can't remember the last month where I could just copy the invoice exactly from one month to the next - even some fixed price work that I had wasn't the same because it was fixed price plus expenses. I can't use anything to generate an invoice because the client OCR is so flaky it has to be exact or it gets rejected without telling anyone that it's been rejected.

If I was moving accountant then I'd look at it more closely, but I don't see any need to change at the moment - I'm happy where I am and InTouch have saved me a significant amount of money.

It's good to know first (second?) hand what people see as the big differences are though so thanks

[youngguy]

Ta - I don't see it making much difference to me. My bank account automatically feeds into InTouch and I don't have enough transacations to make it a problem to categorise (and I'd still want to check it was doing everything correctly anyway). Savings account doesn't have an automatic feed that I'm aware of so I'd have to look at what freeagent does for a manual feed.

I can't remember the last month where I could just copy the invoice exactly from one month to the next - even some fixed price work that I had wasn't the same because it was fixed price plus expenses. I can't use anything to generate an invoice because the client OCR is so flaky it has to be exact or it gets rejected without telling anyone that it's been rejected.

If I was moving accountant then I'd look at it more closely, but I don't see any need to change at the moment - I'm happy where I am and InTouch have saved me a significant amount of money.

It's good to know first (second?) hand what people see as the big differences are though so thanks

Happy to help. Sounds like InTouch have made improvements if there are now bank feeds. (FA does allow Csv bank uploads for those who don't want the feed).

I just realised I forgot a couple of things: FA automatically does dividend vouchers and you can create invoices in the portal so that saved me creating a couple of standalone xls and doc as well.

There is some short term pain with moving accountants so if you are happy and it meets your needs then there probably is not a reason to move.