SaaS bookkeeping and accountancy recommendations.

[friday]

FreeAgent long-termer

I've been using FreeAgent without an accountant for a while now and I'm pretty happy with it.

It sits on a sweet spot on the cost/convenience scale between accountants and the DIY kits from HMRC.

The month to month work is actually a little less than an accountancy spreadsheet. The additional work comes from keeping your tax affairs in order. VAT is integrated with HMRC so once you've registered for online returns it's as simple as hitting a Submit button in FreeAgent. Tax returns are a bit more involved - Freeagent prepares the figures but you have to enter them into the online submission by hand.

Where it really shines is the banking integration, explaining every transaction keeps your account anchored in reality and flags any late payments.

I do miss being able to just phone someone up and ask a question (a PAYG accountacy Q&A site would be handy) but the FreeAgent support site and CUK usually have the answers I'm after.

If you're still after one this is my FreeAgent referral code:
Online Accounting Software: Small Business and Freelancers - FreeAgent

We both get a 10% discount when you use it.

Don't forget to annoy your fellow contractors with the douchey phrase 'My accountant's in the cloud'

[Clare@InTouch]

We have a few clients who use Freeagent, and it works well. The bookkeeping is done via Freeagent, and we then step in to prepare the statutory returns and offer help & advice along the way.

It depends on whether you want ongoing support, in which case a monthly fee/service would suit you well, or just someone to step in at year end. If you're happy to file your own VAT returns, PAYE returns and tax return, and don't require IR35 reviews etc then the latter would suit better.

[matzie]

...and if anyone would care to PM me a referral code for FreeAgent, that would be great :-) ....

[matzie]

I'm experiencing a bit of buyer's remorse over my choice of accountant - I didn't really do my research properly to be honest. I knew they had a web app for submitting transaction details, or accepted spreadsheets, so when the web app turned out to be pretty limited, I thought, fine, I'll roll-my-own and export to a csv or whatever... but they have a prescribed file format which is a nightmare of VBA macros and protected sheets so I can't do that. There are a couple of other bits and pieces that have upset me along the way - although they've always been courteous and polite.

Anyway, having looked around and discovered inniaccounts and FreeAgent, I'm now very keen on using a service like this. I'm trialling both of these and I'm especially impressed by FreeAgent's API - although it's a bit dearer than inni, it's still *much* less than I'm paying now. However, Inni have an option for monthly-fixed-fee accountancy at the £75 level which seems to be normal (and still a lot less than I'm paying), whereas FreeAgent don't.

I'm not looking for a great deal of accountancy advice but I'd feel a lot happier having some professional involvement especially at year ends - especially with iXBRL coming (see my other post today). It seems to me that my options are:

* Go with Inni at £75 a month - pretty good web app, presumably reasonable on-hand accountancy support
* Go with FreeAgent at £25 a month + another monthly fixed fee accountant, perhaps another £75 for that?
* Go with FreeAgent and pay traditional accountant for year-end stuff - no idea what that would cost
* something else...

I'm interested to hear of any other SaaS options, or any other advice from the community here.

TIA

Matt