FreeAgent

Commentaires: I've gone from from a struggle one man band that worked all day and did the paperwork each evening, to having time to spend with the family, and being able to see what I ned to pay to HMRC and when, and I can now see that sending out my invoices in good time, means that the customers are paying me, so the stress levels have gone down so much.

Avantages: I no longer have to nominate which computer is the one that the accounts is on.
I can open a web browser on the PC in my home office and enter my hours, mileage, upload photos of receipts, automatially let it reconcile the bank and credit card statements, and let it get on with doing the calcuations.
I no longer have to set aside a weekend each month for doing invoices and expenses.
or the last weekend of each quarter for doing the VAT return
or various days of the last month of each financial year for doing the annual return.

Inconvénients: Now that the company has made enough money to be able to purchase three cars, it would be nice if the mileage drop down had options for company owned vehicles and the AFR mileage rates, but it only has AMAP rates for personally owned bike, motorcycle or car.

Avantages: We've been using Freeagent for over 5 years. In that time frame my company has grown from being a sole-trader to an incorporated limited company with employees. To say that Freeagent has helped facilitate that growth would be an understatement. We now use Freeagent for our VAT submission (saving us £200pq accountants fees), Payroll (saving us £10pm per employee), Sending out client estimates/invoices, and what we originally bought it for... Book keeping and accounting. We have Freeagent connected to our bank feeds, meaning we are only ever 24hrs out of date with our live bank accounts. This is now a common practice with similar software, but for us it came just at the right time. Their team of inhouse accountancy experts is also an incredible resource that we use around once a quarter, or whenever something new crops up that we might need some help with. We still use the skill of an account for filing our end of year accounts, but we could even do this with free agent.

Inconvénients: The one thing that has been a niggle like a tiny pebble in your shoe, or scratch on the roof of your mouth, is that you cannot send a remittance! Many people have requested this functionality but it has largely been ignored by the freeagent team. I have no idea whether it is a technical or philosophical reason they've just not engaged with it... If they did implement this functionality it would pretty much make it perfect for my companies needs.

Avantages: Overall experience is good. It allows to better organised both my bookeeping but as well my employee work due to its usability. Love as well the API integration that allow me to create custom analysis.

Inconvénients: Too much focus on UK client. We are an Italian company and some of the functionality available for UK are really complex to achieve for us and required workaround.
Billing only in 1 currency is crazy, why do you have invoice in multiple currency but billing cannot be done? It should be a simple addition to make but it has been year that people asked for this and still not implementation.
Country specific payroll. Although I am aware it will be impossible to enable payroll for every country out of the box why don't allow customer to customized the payroll functionality to meet payroll requirements or add important deadline for taxing purpose.
Even the export functionality can be improve and should be added to every areas from timesheet to bill, from invoice to expense with filter that allow you to specify the data you want to export.
VAT calculation for Intrastat - due to the internationalisation of business should be easier to export only bill and invoice that are related to country outside your normal business area.
What about language package? Again if not possibile provide an LDK that allow client to customize the interface.

Commentaires: Saves me a whole lot of time, and helps me keep clear records for my accountant.

Avantages: At the moment it's free through my business banking account - I tried it because of this but it would definitely be worth paying for. I am relatively new to running a business and the software is very intuitive for a novice. My accountant is pretty happy with it too, so that's a big thumbs up! It makes invoicing and payment of exenses very easy, and is great for keeping track of money coming in/out and keeping an eye on invoices due for payment. Payroll is incorporated (you can file it with HMRC through FreeAgent or let your accountant do it separately). I also like the fact that it reminds me when my corporation tax and annual accounts are due. In a few clicks I can see my profit & loss account and my trial balance as well as spend in the different (customisable) categories. Really helps me keep on top of everything. The Android app is also great for reconciling payments and recording expenses on the move. The help files are fantastic, and the clear accounting descriptions and explanations make them a great resource for a small business even if you don't use the software.

Inconvénients: Exporting information is a bit tricky in some areas - you can get a pdf out quite easily but an xls or csv would be more useful (you can export the entire company dataset as a csv, but not filtered individual elements such as unpaid expenses or balances within individual accounts). In some cases you can get round this by cutting and pasting, but it's a bit fiddly. Exporting all company data does not export attachments - so you need to keep a separate copy of scanned receipts etc outside FreeAgent. It is one of the more expensive cloud accounting software packages out there, but I have looked at a whole range and you can't beat the functionality, so that's what you are paying for I guess!

Avantages: I got access to this software FREE of charge through banking with RBS. Having previously used Xero for our book-keeping, I found it had the same great functionality but a much slicker design. It's simplicity and ease of use is the best thing going for it.

Inconvénients: Had some issues at the beginning with connecting our bank feeds but this was sorted out quickly by the team at FreeAgent - can't think of any real faults with the software.