Reply to: QQ for thems on FreeAgent

[ladymuck]

Thanks LM. FreeAgent for me. Starting again from scratch after about a five year overseas gap, the Nat West bank offer + FreeAgent is too good to pass up.

That's fair enough. Never been one for bundled stuff, even though I'm sure it costs me more!

I think Craig in an earlier post described the FA process so it's worth having a tinker following his notes.

I should ask a mod to update the thread title to include Xero...

[Fred Bloggs]

I haven't played with it in FA yet as I think Xero is more to my liking. Must be all those years in accounts leaving me hankering for something a bit less noddy

In Xero, you would need to buy their Projects module add-on, can't remember how much that is but I don't think it's expensive.

You then create a project - and you can either create a fixed price project, or set it up based on effort and expenses. Then you can raise one or more invoices against the project and see the value of your invoicing against it.

Annoyingly, Xero will only set hours not days against a project if you go the effort route, but then I found I could easily ignore the 'hours' bit and just read it as 'units' in my head and it worked out just fine*. Setting up the project in terms of effort is good because it clearly shows what you've invoiced out of what you've set up which is more useful to me. If you do have a PO that includes an allowance for expenses then this feature is handy as you can set your expenses budget and allocate spend against it. Then, when you're ready to invoice, you just select 'invoice all effort to date' (or words to that effect) and it's all done for you.

I'd recommend you getting a trial of Xero (they will call you up to discuss!) and having a play.


* EDIT - it's possible this could be configurable somewhere and I'm going to join one of their live Q&A webinars to dig into this a bit more as they have an expert fielding questions and doing live demos every week - available to trial users as well as paying customers

Thanks LM. FreeAgent for me. Starting again from scratch after about a five year overseas gap, the Nat West bank offer + FreeAgent is too good to pass up.

[ladymuck]

Thanks LM, this might be very important soon for me. So - I get a PO for work, PO number 123456. I do work each month for six months. I want to invoice monthly against PO 123456 on six occaisions. So, I create projects 123456-1, to 123456-6? Until the work is done and the PO closed out with six invoices against it? Cheers.

I haven't played with it in FA yet as I think Xero is more to my liking. Must be all those years in accounts leaving me hankering for something a bit less noddy

In Xero, you would need to buy their Projects module add-on, can't remember how much that is but I don't think it's expensive.

You then create a project - and you can either create a fixed price project, or set it up based on effort and expenses. Then you can raise one or more invoices against the project and see the value of your invoicing against it.

Annoyingly, Xero will only set hours not days against a project if you go the effort route, but then I found I could easily ignore the 'hours' bit and just read it as 'units' in my head and it worked out just fine*. Setting up the project in terms of effort is good because it clearly shows what you've invoiced out of what you've set up which is more useful to me. If you do have a PO that includes an allowance for expenses then this feature is handy as you can set your expenses budget and allocate spend against it. Then, when you're ready to invoice, you just select 'invoice all effort to date' (or words to that effect) and it's all done for you.

I'd recommend you getting a trial of Xero (they will call you up to discuss!) and having a play.


* EDIT - it's possible this could be configurable somewhere and I'm going to join one of their live Q&A webinars to dig into this a bit more as they have an expert fielding questions and doing live demos every week - available to trial users as well as paying customers

[Fred Bloggs]

In my investigations, it seems some systems deal with ISSUING purchase orders (or not, as is the case with FA and Sage) but none manage RECEIPT of them.

For received POs it looks like you have to use clunky workarounds with quotes or projects, which isn't ideal.

It would be great if: when a PO is created you tick a box to say if it's being issued or received and then you select the supplier / customer as applicable and, in time, associate one or more purchase / sales invoices to it. A simple report of total value, invoiced value, and value remaining could then be created.

Really struggling to see why it's so hard!

Thanks LM, this might be very important soon for me. So - I get a PO for work, PO number 123456. I do work each month for six months. I want to invoice monthly against PO 123456 on six occaisions. So, I create projects 123456-1, to 123456-6? Until the work is done and the PO closed out with six invoices against it? Cheers.

[ladymuck]

In my investigations, it seems some systems deal with ISSUING purchase orders (or not, as is the case with FA and Sage) but none manage RECEIPT of them.

For received POs it looks like you have to use clunky workarounds with quotes or projects, which isn't ideal.

It would be great if: when a PO is created you tick a box to say if it's being issued or received and then you select the supplier / customer as applicable and, in time, associate one or more purchase / sales invoices to it. A simple report of total value, invoiced value, and value remaining could then be created.

Really struggling to see why it's so hard!

[Craig@Clarity]

I have recently raised this query with FreeAgent to find out if they plan to develop PO addition any time soon and I was advised the below:

FreeAgent doesn't support purchase orders and there's no plans at the moment to implement this functionality in the system at present.

As far as a workaround goes, can I suggest you use a separate package like MS Excel or Word to create your purchase orders, and when you create bills or explain payments in FreeAgent relating to these purchase orders, place the purchase order number in the description and / or attach a copy of the purchase order to your bill / transaction.

There is also a third party integration called Appcrual which supports purchase orders and integrates with FreeAgent.

Is this response related to purchase orders issued by the user of Freeagent to it's client or purchase orders issued by the client and received by the user of Freeagent? May have misread it, but it sounds like they're referring to the former?

[Chart Accountancy]

FreeAgent doesn't support Purchase Orders

I have recently raised this query with FreeAgent to find out if they plan to develop PO addition any time soon and I was advised the below:

FreeAgent doesn't support purchase orders and there's no plans at the moment to implement this functionality in the system at present.

As far as a workaround goes, can I suggest you use a separate package like MS Excel or Word to create your purchase orders, and when you create bills or explain payments in FreeAgent relating to these purchase orders, place the purchase order number in the description and / or attach a copy of the purchase order to your bill / transaction.

There is also a third party integration called Appcrual which supports purchase orders and integrates with FreeAgent.

[Craig@Clarity]

Thanks Craig! I've long suspected Sage were lagging behind FA and Xero. I'll have a further play with Xero while I have the trial and see how to do that.

Give me a shout if you're stuck

[Craig@Clarity]

View or edit a project – FreeAgent

[ladymuck]

In FA, you can create a Project called Purchase Order (or whatever you want) then set the purchase order amount in the "Budget" part of the "Project". Then when you're raising part invoices toward the purchase order, you can allocate that sales invoice against that specific Project/Purchase Order.

What you'll then see in the Project section of FA is:

Name Contact Dates Invoiced (Net) To be Invoiced Budget
Consultancy ABC Ltd £10,000.00 £50,000 Edit X



Xero does the same thing although it looks a lot slicker. You would have to purchase the bolt on for Projects in Xero. Then go into Project, create a "Quote" which would be your purchase order. Go through the steps to mark it as and accepted quote by the client. Then in the Projects>Quotes & Invoices section, you can create your part invoices. Here you can also see the Quote/Purchase order amount at the top followed by the invoices issued below. Along the top of the screen will tell you the total of Invoiced Amount.

Thanks Craig! I've long suspected Sage were lagging behind FA and Xero. I'll have a further play with Xero while I have the trial and see how to do that.

[Craig@Clarity]

Essentially, I want to keep a tally of invoices against a purchase order so I know how much is left on it without keeping track in a separate spreadsheet.

Will using Projects do that? I don't care about tracking profitability.

Can Estimates allow me to send out invoices of a smaller value than the quote - so I can 'draw down' on the quote and see what's left to be invoiced?

In FA, you can create a Project called Purchase Order (or whatever you want) then set the purchase order amount in the "Budget" part of the "Project". Then when you're raising part invoices toward the purchase order, you can allocate that sales invoice against that specific Project/Purchase Order.

What you'll then see in the Project section of FA is:

Name Contact Dates Invoiced (Net) To be Invoiced Budget
Consultancy ABC Ltd £10,000.00 £50,000 Edit X



Xero does the same thing although it looks a lot slicker. You would have to purchase the bolt on for Projects in Xero. Then go into Project, create a "Quote" which would be your purchase order. Go through the steps to mark it as and accepted quote by the client. Then in the Projects>Quotes & Invoices section, you can create your part invoices. Here you can also see the Quote/Purchase order amount at the top followed by the invoices issued below. Along the top of the screen will tell you the total of Invoiced Amount.

[ladymuck]

Or you raise both estimates and staged invoices against the project budget...?

Not being a user of FA, will that give me the view that I'm looking for?

Why would I need to raise an estimate and an invoice against the budget?

[spoons]

Essentially, I want to keep a tally of invoices against a purchase order so I know how much is left on it without keeping track in a separate spreadsheet.

Will using Projects do that? I don't care about tracking profitability.

Can Estimates allow me to send out invoices of a smaller value than the quote - so I can 'draw down' on the quote and see what's left to be invoiced?

That's what I do, you can select the project when creating an invoice.

Only issue I have been unable to solve is to create one invoice for multiple projects, not a biggy though.

[malvolio]

I think the effect of that will be one huge invoice created that I can't send to the client, so I'd have to create client acceptable invoices in another system and track those separately.

Or you raise both estimates and staged invoices against the project budget...?

[ladymuck]

Having had a play with a Xero demo company, they don't do a purchase order in the way I want it to work either.

Essentially, their PO's are for MyCo issuing a PO against which I expect to receive a bill.

Need to dig around a bit more to see if any accounting package will allow me to manage Purchase Orders issued by my customers against which I will invoice. Seems like a gap in the market...

It looks like Xero will allow multiple invoices against a single Quote (something SageOne can't do) but I need to see if I can overwrite the Quote reference with the Client's PO reference. I could probably type it in somewhere as I raise the invoice but the whole point of automation is to avoid that kind of nonsense!

EDIT: Nope, no good. Xero doesn't deduct the value of the invoice from the balance remaining on the Quote so you still have to keep a tally of how much is left.

How hard can this be?