FreeAgent Review & Discount
For a couple of months now, I’ve been using FreeAgent to take care of my invoicing and book-keeping needs.
I had been using Freshbooks for years — their invoicing system still works very well, and I saw no real reason to leave… That is until, one evening in the pub, a friend mentioned that they’d just started using FreeAgent for their business’ book-keeping. Initially I wasn’t interested, figuring it’d be just another money managing web app no different than dozens of others.
How wrong I was. Let me explain…
Firstly, it takes an amazingly short amount of time to get to grips with FreeAgent (I’m using the Sole Trader level), and to get it all set up for your business.
Once you have, upon logging in, you’re presented with a beautifully designed interface, clearly indicated the monthly takings and owed amounts, a timeline of your bank balance, overdue invoices, tax timeline and more. Very helpful for getting an overview of your business finances at a glance.
Past the homepage, I’ll explain what I think is the number one feature that’s caused me to switch over from Freshbooks…
Bank Statement Integration
This feature is huge! In the past, my book-keeping consisted of and end-of-month comparing of a poorly laid out spreadsheet against my online bank statements. Lots of to-and-fro, and inevitably headaches as I forget what a particular payment was for.
FreeAgent allows you to take a bank statement (downloaded from your internet banking site) and upload it, adding explanations to each transaction — incoming transfers can be marked off against Invoices, and outgoings can be marked off against Bills and Expenses.
Also, additional bank accounts (including PayPal) can be added, so you can (for example) keep track of money going in and out of savings accounts, allowing you to always know the total amount of money that you have at any one time.
It’s all such a quick and painless process that I now actually look forward to updating my account each Friday morning, so I can see straight away where I am with my finances.
Invoicing
This is the area where FreshBooks shone for me – clients being able to log in to view invoices meant that I always knew if they’d seen an invoice or not.
Unfortunately, FreeAgent doesn’t currently support client logins — instead, it creates a PDF file which you can either download and email to a client, or opt to have FreeAgent send the email straight from the site. If you choose this latter option, you have the option to automatically send reminder emails when an invoice is overdue, and a thank you email when it’s paid. You can also set up an invoice to recur at regular intervals.
And talking about paid invoices, when you’re explaining your bank transactions, if an incoming amount matches an invoice amount, FreeAgent will automatically suggest that the two be paired up. Very intuitive stuff.
The invoices are simple to compose, and are easy customised to make them look attractive.
While it’s a shame to lose the client login, all the rest of the features that I’d want for invoicing are here.
Taxes & Accounting
While these aren’t features I’ve really used yet, as I started with FreeAgent after the Self-Assessment deadline, I think they’re worth a mention.
At any point, you can open the Taxes section of the site, and you’ll be told how much tax you owe, so there shouldn’t be any nasty surprises come January.
If you need a detailed breakdown, you can open to Accounting section, which gives an overall breakdown of your finances into incoming and outgoing categories and balance sheet.
You can also create a login for your accountant, allowing them to access the relevant sections of your account, so you don’t even need to export your data for them to deal with it.
Other Features
There’s a whole host of other features which I’ve not even touched yet, but which I’m sure, over time, will become invaluable. These include Estimates, Project/Task Management and Time Tracking.
All in all, it’s a fantastic product, and one that saves me a ton of time and has me looking forward to using it each week — not many things are effective at getting me excited about managing finances!
Thinking about joining?
FreeAgent do offer a 30 day trial, which is more than enough time to allow you to get your data entered in and to get to grips with the app.
Once you’re past the trial period, the cost for FreeAgent is very reasonable — for example, for sole traders, it’s currently £15/month + VAT (there are a few levels, from sole trader to limited company).
On top of that, if you sign up for your trial through my referral link, you will get a permanent 10% off your monthly or yearly cost (and so will I, so it’s win-win!).
You can then refer others, getting cumulative 10% discounts, so you can potentially take the FreeAgent name at face value and pay nothing to use it!
