Migrate Freeagent from accountant to self DIY

[jamesbrown]

Agree with others that ditching your accountant is a very real risk if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, I also think quite a lot of people here are under-reacting to the MSC risk given how well CK and Boox appear to have been chosen. Any success there and you can be pretty sure that a lot more mainstream contractor accountants will be targeted, successfully or otherwise (and, as you can see from the CK/Boox thread, being targeted is bad enough). There is a decent alternative, of course, which is to ditch your mainstream pay-monthly contractor accountant and have a local outfit do your year end returns only. That is much closer to zero risk, without much risk of failing in your statutory responsibilities.

[cojak]

Agree with others that ditching your accountant is a very real risk if you don’t know what you’re doing. However, I also think quite a lot of people here are under-reacting to the MSC risk given how well CK and Boox appear to have been chosen. Any success there and you can be pretty sure that a lot more mainstream contractor accountants will be targeted, successfully or otherwise (and, as you can see from the CK/Boox thread, being targeted is bad enough). There is a decent alternative, of course, which is to ditch your mainstream pay-monthly contractor accountant and have a local outfit do your year end returns only. That is much closer to zero risk, without much risk of failing in your statutory responsibilities.

And there really isn’t a problem with this approach. Contact the local accountant and ask them how they would work with you for once a year (or maybe twice a year, once midway through to check that there isn’t a problem), and how much they cost.

They’ll be happy to talk about potential new business.

[eek]

And there really isn’t a problem with this approach. Contact the local accountant and ask them how they would work with you for once a year (or maybe twice a year, once midway through to check that there isn’t a problem), and how much they cost.

They’ll be happy to talk about potential new business.

Only downside would be that the local accountant may not support Freeagent. Which is a shame as it's great for any business that doesn't deal with stock and free unlike Sage / Xero both of which also have bigger learning curves.

[jamesbrown]

I wouldn't worry too much about FA integration - it's easy to export from FA and quite a few FA accountants will elect to file the annual returns with other tools like Taxfiler because they support a bunch more edge cases (which is important for a practice that is bound to encounter a fair number of edge cases on aggregate) and you can import trial balances into these tools very easily from FA.

[d000hg]

Filing VAT returns from FA is straightforward. Filing your CT600 and SATR from FA is also straightforward unless you have more complex requirements (e.g., handling losses).

Interesting, I had always thought SATR and personal taxation facilities generally were quite limited - the reporting of my personal finances is not very good there but that might be that the accountant simply doesn't use it for that?

[jamesbrown]

Interesting, I had always thought SATR and personal taxation facilities generally were quite limited - the reporting of my personal finances is not very good there but that might be that the accountant simply doesn't use it for that?

It's good enough for a majority of cases, but the ability to file a SATR and CT600 in FA were both introduced much later by FA, so they are a work in progress. The facility should be good enough for 95%+ of contractors, but it may be used quite rarely by FA accountants (extrapolating from limited experience here) because all accountants will have a fair number of clients with edge cases, on aggregate, and there are quite a few limitations as FA notes itself. For example, see the Unsupported Scenarios here:

https://support.freeagent.com/hc/en-...ough-FreeAgent

[Maslins]

The facility should be good enough for 95%+ of contractors, but it may be used quite rarely by FA accountants (extrapolating from limited experience here) because all accountants will have a fair number of clients with edge cases, on aggregate, and there are quite a few limitations as FA notes itself.

This. Accountants are left with a few options here:
1) any time any client does something FreeAgent can't deal with, we resign from the client (not viable as would lose a lot of clients),
2) each client we consider whether their SA can be done on FA or not, those that can we do on FA, those that can't we do on separate software (still means paying for separate software, and having half clients on system A, half on system B, which is a pain)
3) we do all our client's SA returns on separate tax software that can cater to all cases, rather than FreeAgent.

Option 3 annoys FreeAgent, as means we're not providing much useful beta testing etc for them...but it's the most viable option for accounting firms. If/when FreeAgent can get to more like 99%+ of cases, rather than 80-90%, then option (1) becomes more viable. Firms save on cost of separate tax software, and hope that'll dwarf downside of losing a handful of clients FreeAgent can't cater to.

[vwdan]

Just thought I'd poke in to say I think I'm goign to go this route. My Ltd Co is basically 'dormant' (in the English sense, not the accountancy sense). I did drop my accountancy down to their lower fees, but they moaned because I chucked (literally) a few days worth of invoicing through.

I like the Ltd Co to be available because I have a few Plan B side projects rumbling, I still use MyCo's e-mail address etc, and I keep in with my previous consultancy clients. I only get a handful of work each year, but it's enough to justify keeping my insurance, tooling, subscription and all that sort of stuff going through the Ltd Co. But it's the accountancy fees which make it hard to justify at, what, £1200pcm or whatever.

So yeah, I think I'm gonna DIY it. VAT is easy, SATR is always correct tot he penny in FreeAgent (I always fill it in, even though my accountants don't use it) and my Mrs is ex-finance so she can help me with the year end bit

[Snooky]

But it's the accountancy fees which make it hard to justify at, what, £1200pcm or whatever.

Hopefully you really meant £1200pa?

[jamesbrown]

Just thought I'd poke in to say I think I'm goign to go this route. My Ltd Co is basically 'dormant' (in the English sense, not the accountancy sense). I did drop my accountancy down to their lower fees, but they moaned because I chucked (literally) a few days worth of invoicing through.

I like the Ltd Co to be available because I have a few Plan B side projects rumbling, I still use MyCo's e-mail address etc, and I keep in with my previous consultancy clients. I only get a handful of work each year, but it's enough to justify keeping my insurance, tooling, subscription and all that sort of stuff going through the Ltd Co. But it's the accountancy fees which make it hard to justify at, what, £1200pcm or whatever.

So yeah, I think I'm gonna DIY it. VAT is easy, SATR is always correct tot he penny in FreeAgent (I always fill it in, even though my accountants don't use it) and my Mrs is ex-finance so she can help me with the year end bit

Make sure you get set up with CH and HMRC for filing everything. You'll need a CH presenter account, for example.