FreeAgent

[Inception]

After struggling with a bespoke spreadsheet from my accountant the last time I contracted one of the main criteria upon setting up my new Ltd was that were using FreeAgent.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

FreeAgent introducing filing for Final Accounts and Corporation Tax

https://support.freeagent.com/hc/en-...unts_End-users

Also not mentioned in that post - it won’t be able to produce an accurate return if you have a small asset pool that was written off using the small pools allowance when it’s balance went below £1k as FreeAgent doesn’t support it and will maintain a small pools balance forever, adjusting for WDA every year.

[ladymuck]

FreeAgent introducing filing for Final Accounts and Corporation Tax

https://support.freeagent.com/hc/en-...unts_End-users

That's good. Hopefully Xero will follow suit soon

[Fred Bloggs]

FreeAgent introducing filing for Final Accounts and Corporation Tax

https://support.freeagent.com/hc/en-...unts_End-users

Thanks, it's long overdue and no use for me any more, but very welcome to see all the same.

[SimonMac]

FreeAgent introducing filing for Final Accounts and Corporation Tax

https://support.freeagent.com/hc/en-...unts_End-users

[SimonMac]

Hi all,

Can anyone confirm if FreeAgent can cope with the following accounting requirements?

Limited Company Contractor (although currently out of contract)
Additional income from Amazon and eBay business seller accounts
Occasional private customer invoicing, typically services and hardware (Would like to push this more, and back off the contracting)

I'm hoping the above is still considered Contractor / Small Business and doesn't present any challenges? I'm currently with Brookson but looking to move away from them as they only seem geared up for contractors with no additional revenue outside of their assignments. The only thing that has kept me with Brookson over the years is the realtime(ish) dashboard Connect. I'm hoping FreeAgent is as good or even better than the Connect dashboard?

It would also be nice to have an accounting platform that can generate custom quotes / invoices for my private work but perhaps FreeAgent won't be able to do the quote side which is fair enough.

If FreeAgent can handle what I need, then the next step is to find a new accountant !

FreeAgent you just link your bank account and you can do your business PayPal if using that for eBay, and then you just raise invoices for each transaction

[joeyb]

Hi all,

Can anyone confirm if FreeAgent can cope with the following accounting requirements?

Limited Company Contractor (although currently out of contract)
Additional income from Amazon and eBay business seller accounts
Occasional private customer invoicing, typically services and hardware (Would like to push this more, and back off the contracting)

I'm hoping the above is still considered Contractor / Small Business and doesn't present any challenges? I'm currently with Brookson but looking to move away from them as they only seem geared up for contractors with no additional revenue outside of their assignments. The only thing that has kept me with Brookson over the years is the realtime(ish) dashboard Connect. I'm hoping FreeAgent is as good or even better than the Connect dashboard?

It would also be nice to have an accounting platform that can generate custom quotes / invoices for my private work but perhaps FreeAgent won't be able to do the quote side which is fair enough.

If FreeAgent can handle what I need, then the next step is to find a new accountant !

[malvolio]

I needed to do exactly that last year, there is a (slightly clunky) workaround:

1. Go to Accounting > Reports > Show Transactions
2. Select the relevant period and account for mileage
3. Export to CSV
4. Parse in spreadsheet (Text to columns in Excel), using ( symbol and space as delimiters, and setting it to ignore the non-mileage result columns
5. Sum up the mileage column

HTH - not as elegant as a simple FA report of course though, they really should have one!

Then again, a more elegant one is to do it properly. Maintain a log of business mileage outside FA (which is what you are supposed to do to validate the claims to HMRC if challenged) and enter the claims monthly as expenses in FA, either as standalone entries or against specific POs...

It sounds a faff, but it's actually no harder than trying to do it all in FA.

And, of course, log your costs against "Motor Expenses" in FA and you can get a summary via the Accounts Reporting options.

[CatOnMat]

Does anyone know if it's possible to get a report out of FreeAgent so show the number of miles you have claimed this tax year?

I've pulled out the detailed transactions for 249 (Milage account) but it just shows the monetary values. I know I can dived this by .45 and it will give me the miles but I want an easier way once I hit 10,000 and the rate changes so there will be a mix of data.

From a pretty flawless system (open banking aside which I blame Aldermore for rather than FA) this seems to be a big feature gap

I needed to do exactly that last year, there is a (slightly clunky) workaround:

1. Go to Accounting > Reports > Show Transactions
2. Select the relevant period and account for mileage
3. Export to CSV
4. Parse in spreadsheet (Text to columns in Excel), using ( symbol and space as delimiters, and setting it to ignore the non-mileage result columns
5. Sum up the mileage column

HTH - not as elegant as a simple FA report of course though, they really should have one!

[Maslins]

Giving a company owner fuller oversight of their finances can only be a good thing, even if it's only an estimate.

I know FA gives a ballpark estimate of CT already, which I guess is why they're first with this initiative.

Yeah FA have done that for a while now. Again some niche scenarios it might be significantly out, but in most cases it'll be pennies out from the final CT liability (potentially after tweaks made to underlying FreeAgent data to match what accountant submitted).

It's a big step on from that to do all the tech work to enable submissions of compliant CT600s to HMRC. FreeAgent have decided it's worth the effort, and I imagine given they focus on the one person businesses (many of whom will be at the straight forward and perhaps also fee sensitive end of the business market) it's probably a good choice. I doubt the RBS/NatWest takeover has much to do with it, though I could be wrong.

They have dabbled with CT600 and year end statutory accounts production before, made some headway, but then decided for the time being they needed to focus their development efforts elsewhere. Things like the introduction of RTI "forced" them to suddenly devote lots of effort to that, and of course just maintaining their existing tax filing stuff requires effort, eg updating for new tax year rules/rates etc. Sometimes keeping the existing stuff going is a big enough effort on its own (as we can attest from just continuing to do the basics with Brexit/Covid-19/IR35 changes being thrown at us!).