FreeAgent

[vwdan]

Holy hell - I've always been a huge fan of the SJD Spreadsheet, but I'm loving FreeAgent! Can't believe I've been without it for so long.

[northernladuk]

Yup. Same

[Gomez]

It's awesome. My brother has a business partnership and he was telling me earlier today about how he uses spreadsheets and reminders in Outlook to help him with VAT and bills. I had to laugh. I'm going to recommend he try the 30 day FA trial.

[Louisa@AardvarkAccounting]

Yep. I couldn't agree more. FreeAgent is absolutely brilliant, makes life so much easier for both a contractor and an accountant! Hence why I will be recommending it to everyone and using it daily [emoji12]

[Darren at Fox-Bartfield]

Freeagent

Most definitely, although we support Xero, Sageone and others as well, Freeagent is the preferred software of choice with many of us providing it as part of the package as it helps both client and accountant as Louisa says.

[EinsteinTax]

FreeAgent is definitely the best accounting software I've used for contractors and very small businesses IMHO.

For bigger businesses with more complicated accounting needs, sometimes Xero is a better fit, but FreeAgent is generally a great option for contractors.

[VectraMan]

I took the trial a few weeks back, and it does look good. I didn't set up the bank connection which is something I wanted to try (it involved phoning Barclays and I CBA'd), and I could never quite establish whether it would do the things I was looking into for a potential plan B.

I guess if you're paying an accountant and they offer it for free then it's a no-brainer. But personally for a one-invoice per month contractor business I'd stick with the old (free) spreadsheet and save the £30pm.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

I took the trial a few weeks back, and it does look good. I didn't set up the bank connection which is something I wanted to try (it involved phoning Barclays and I CBA'd), and I could never quite establish whether it would do the things I was looking into for a potential plan B.

I guess if you're paying an accountant and they offer it for free then it's a no-brainer. But personally for a one-invoice per month contractor business I'd stick with the old (free) spreadsheet and save the £30pm.

Personally I think the £30pm would pay for itself* especially if you can negotiate a slightly lower rate with your accountant and take responsibility for updating your books, submitting your payroll and VAT returns (which FreeAgent makes easy).

Highlighted bit - what things were you looking for?

*I guess its easy for me to say as I haven't had to pay for FreeAgent for about 7 years, in fact I get paid to use it

[VectraMan]

Highlighted bit - what things were you looking for?

Basically sell something on a website using Paypal. My own site generates the invoices, and Paypal collects the money, common enough thing to do.

The question is how to get that into FreeAgent. FreeAgent integrates with Paypal, but all the guides I could find said you had to create an invoice in FreeAgent and then your customer could pay with Paypal, but that would mean doing it all manually. There's a FreeAgent API that allows you to create invoices programmatically, but I read a few complaints from people doing similar things that the API doesn't allow you to set the payment method, and because of that it doesn't tally up.

It'd be great if it worked. Put your feet up whilst your website, FreeAgent and Paypal all get on with running your business. But I wasn't sure if it would.

Doesn't seem likely the plan will come off now, but it was interesting thinking about it all.

[Maslins]

Basically sell something on a website using Paypal. My own site generates the invoices, and Paypal collects the money, common enough thing to do.

The question is how to get that into FreeAgent. FreeAgent integrates with Paypal, but all the guides I could find said you had to create an invoice in FreeAgent and then your customer could pay with Paypal, but that would mean doing it all manually. There's a FreeAgent API that allows you to create invoices programmatically, but I read a few complaints from people doing similar things that the API doesn't allow you to set the payment method, and because of that it doesn't tally up.

It'd be great if it worked. Put your feet up whilst your website, FreeAgent and Paypal all get on with running your business. But I wasn't sure if it would.

Doesn't seem likely the plan will come off now, but it was interesting thinking about it all.

We'd suggest just not bothering with the "invoice" on FreeAgent. Explain the receipt into the bank just as sales. This does mean FreeAgent won't know how much you're owed from those customers, or if one doesn't pay, but presumably if they don't pay they don't get the item and nobody gets credit terms, so not an issue?