FreeAgent vs the competition

[css_jay99]

Sage one Payroll & Sage cloud accounting are about £6 each per month which is not bad

I am currently using the payroll and its just a couple of clicks for the monthly run. So much easier that the silly Instant payroll with ever increasing yearly price which was far from instant when it came to completing the year end.

Admittedly I am still on the desktop version of Sage 50 Accounts which means I have to manually journal the payroll entries into the accounts.


I would not have minded giving FreeAgent a try ... but it over simplifies accounting (which is not a bad thing) but I prefer double entry book keeping since it is easier for me to track and trace transactions.

[TheCyclingProgrammer]

FreeAgent is built around double entry bookkeeping. Not sure where you got the idea it wasn’t.

[fatJock]

I use Kashflow because I was recommended. About a tenner a month and does everything I need. Keep accountant for annual returns, payroll, CT return and self assessment though I could add the payroll element to Kashflow if I wanted.

Happier with having a professional pick up the bits that need a more qualified view. Saves me time and money in the long run.

[malvolio]

I'd rather worry about getting the right accountant than the right software. Simon's spreadsheet is still going strong and the service I still get from SJD is excellent. I've heard of people getting unlucky with accountants in a couple of their offices but I've been with their Manchester office for years and always had good service and sound advice.

Uh... I didn't ditch them after 15 years because of their excellent service...

And I'm still getting emails from their masters

[simondolan]

Uh... I didn't ditch them after 15 years because of their excellent service...

And I'm still getting emails from their masters

Was it the spreadsheet....?

[Ascot]

I use Freeagent for my main business and like it but have a couple of sideline businesses that I have been using spreadsheets for (cos I dont want to pay three separate subs to Freeagent) and wondered if there was another product anyone on here could recommend that would support multiple businesses and include the project-based tracking that Freeagent incorporates?

[radish2008]

Happy to hear that, and glad to see my spreadsheet (c.1996) is still keeping people happy

it's not.

[ladymuck]

I use Sage One Accounting and Payroll, having been a Sage customer for yonks.

My only complaints are:
I don't like the presentation of some of the reports (especially Trial Balance);

There is no year end process that clears down the accounts to the P&L account. It's a manual journal I have to input myself (the Sage Instant desktop software used to do this). I raised this with them and they said there was no need to create a closing year end journal. I must be a bit old school as I like to close down all the operating accounts at the end of the year and see a (hopefully) healthy value in the P&L account.

EDIT: and it seems to use transaction reference and description interchangeably leading to very inconsistent data collection, depending on how you input a transaction.