FreeAgent

Avantages

FreeAgent est un logiciel de comptabilité simplifiée, facile à utiliser et très efficace avec des fonctionnalités très avancées.

Inconvénients

C'est un logiciel parfait qui répond aux besoins à tout moment

Avantages

Je dirais simplement que ce logiciel c'est du Génie, c'est du grand!

Inconvénients

Que je n'puis le toucher une fois vu que c'est un logiciel

Avantages

I love this tool because it is easier to create and invoice and manage invoices

Inconvénients

Cost of free agent tool is higher compared to it's competitors

Avantages

The best thing about FreeAgent is the dashboard view. From here I can see at a glance how my business is running, with clear visuals giving trends over time for cashflow, invoicing timeline, bank balances, expenses, bills, profit and loss and tax.

Inconvénients

When entering an expense (not using smart capture) it is really easy to put the wrong date in.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à FreeAgent

Avantages

FreeAgent is super easy to use and manages my entire business finances from invoices, bills, VAT and personal finance. I like that it also syncs with my banking accounts.

Inconvénients

I do not feel like there are any real negatives with FreeAgent.

Avantages

Ease of use. It is a user friendly software.

Inconvénients

The report quality could have been better. The format used in reports could be improved.

Avantages

Easy to learn: I could start from recording basic expenses to manage my bills and invoices.

Inconvénients

Not sure. I found harder to understand reports and some initial set-ups because I don't have a background in accounting, but it all made sense whith the help of customer support and later my accountant.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi choisir FreeAgent 

Pourquoi passer à FreeAgent

Avantages

I think FreeAgent does its job well. I've never run into technical faults or found anything I needed to do that it couldn't do. My favorite thing about FreeAgent is that my accountant can access the platform and see everything I can. That makes getting information to my accountants or asking questions incredibly slick.

Inconvénients

I moved to FreeAgent from Xero because it's what my accountant knew how to use. I think Xero has slightly better tech and integrations so I would say I don't find FreeAgent as engaging to use. It's hard to criticize for that though because although it's nice to integrate with other systems, I haven't had any major issues getting information into FreeAgent as required.

Avantages

Freeagent has a great invoice design. I like the fact that for a small business - you can get this software and an online bank account at a very reasonable price. I've used the accounts filing option - and it worked. I was delighted and it has saved me so much time!

Inconvénients

Sometimes, I just think its a bit clunky and could be smoother. It does things I don't like e.g. when a sum is received in and is paying 2 invoices - I don't like the way it split payments. I think the chart of accounts could just be a little bit more user friendly, but for a sole trader, if your books are simple - it does the job nicely.

Avantages

Freeagent covers all my needs. I'm no accountant or don't have a big business so maybe it's missing some features, but for me it's great. (For transparency I get it for free as I'm with Natwest). Being able to use this on my phone or desktop is great. It picks up all of my Natwest transactions and automatically categorises them into different types of expenses or income (ie advertising, Web hosting, office equipment...) and applies standard VAT and adds a description. You just have to go through the list and approve them to make sure its filled in properly (which most are correct).

Inconvénients

Again for me it does meet all of my needs. I suppose one thing I didn't quite understand as it uses many accounting terminologies, however they do have a breakdown of what certain things mean, it just means having to read up on it.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à FreeAgent

Avantages

I've used FreeAgent for years and always found it to be a solid and reliable accounting product. It handles everything, from sending invoices to clients, to reconciling payments, to helping with taxes.

Inconvénients

It could be better at reconciling bank transactions and uploading the same receipts every month could be easier. It's a lot of manual labour.

Alternatives envisagées 

Pourquoi passer à FreeAgent

Avantages

I really found this software useful when setting up my first business

Inconvénients

It was limited with regard managing jobs and scheduling

Avantages

I like how easy to use the site is. I mainly use it on web and I'm not sure if there's an app but coming in to work, having never used this before, it was easy to find my way around it and get on with work without training.

Inconvénients

I miss the ability of exporting data into Spreadsheet and trailing trough pages of invoices to highlight and copy so I can paste into Spreadsheet is tiresome. I would love for this to be changed.

Avantages

I enjoy the simplicity in creating new invoices and the VAT breakdown being provided so it is clear to the client. It is easy to either download the invoice as a PDF and email it manually or do so via FreeAgent itself.

Inconvénients

As a new user I have found it difficult to change the status of an invoice ('paid' status in particular).

Avantages

It's very intuitive and has amazing support and training for us and our clients. We use this software for our smaller sole traders who find it really easy to use. We do most of the setup and they basically just invoice their clients using the mobile app :)

Inconvénients

Integrations are pretty non existent for a lot of apps. For example merging eBay or most till sales with FreeAgent can be quite difficult however this is overcome by using Zapier

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

It looks like it has a lot of features but it doesn't work in a logical way.
The tech support used to be available almost 24/7 but the quality and availability have shrunk down significantly.

Inconvénients

This is the most frustrating of all of the accounting software that we reviewed. Everything (even mistakes) gets locked in and can't be edited or amended. There are so many basic functions that just don't work and all customer services do is give you complicated workarounds, most of which don't actually achieve the required outcome. The bank feeds often don't work and you have to log in daily to manually update them. The price is way to high and not good value. The software is not easy to use and what used to be great customer service is now a waste of your time and call tariff. To add insult to injury, they have just been bought over by a bank that has a terrible reputation for so many reasons and will tarnish the reputation of FreeAgent. I'd steer well clear of this software.

Avantages

FreeAgent is more advanced than my previous service provider, Freshbooks. It allows me to handle the split between personal/business bank accounts and their expenses better and even submits my tax return to HMRC for me. The few times I've contacted their support, they have responded quickly, actually understood what I've asked and provided a detailed response, specific to my issue.

Inconvénients

As a sole trader working on various contracts for 7.5 hours per day, I need to be able to track my time and bill my clients based on it. This is the only area where I found Freshbooks to have the edge—it provided a daily timeline where I could click on my start time, enter the duration, client and project and track my time visually. This meant that I could tell at a glance where there were gaps in my day and correct them accordingly.

FreeAgent allows me to add Timeslip entries, however it can get confusing quite quickly as there is no start time and no visual timeline. I have to rely on the running total of hours shown per day and try to work out the amount of hours to submit per task. So the interface isn't as intuitive as I would like, but the wealth of other extra features I have access to with FreeAgent does go some way to making up for it.

FreeAgent does also work out at around double the monthly subscription price of Freshbooks, which isn't ideal in my circumstances, but I do feel I am getting a better all-round product for the money.

Avantages

I hate taxes and book keeping work. Using just common sense, you can immediately do 90% of tasks within FreeAgent, quickly and easily. FreeAgent staff are on standby to help you with the other 10%. It's fantastic.

Inconvénients

Some of the features are not intuitive, and take a bit of practice to get right. The one time I have had to use a work around is the system does not have a function allowing you to remove partner drawings directly from a foreign currency PayPal account. Hardly a deal-breaker.

Avantages

We use it where I work as a way to track work hours. Usage is pretty simple and the features are sufficient. If you need to track time precisely, there's a nice start/stop function, and if you don't, there are means to insert a whole week in a row. If you're a developer, you'll appreciate the APIs that allow building customized reports for accounting.

Inconvénients

If you don't need precise time tracking, but need to split hours on different activities, data entering becomes pretty slow. You can generate monthly reports to check what to expect from the paycheck, but checking if you made mistakes in the data entry is as difficult as it is entering it.

Avantages

Great customer support- all from trained accountants in the UK that are able to walk you through any problems you might encounter when doing you tax and vat returns

Inconvénients

None- inpeciable and consistent service at all times.

Avantages

Pros: ability to photograph receipts and store them within expenses
All the main categories of expenses are there
Links to your business bank account

Inconvénients

Con: One major drawback is that you can't print out a consolidated tax return before or after filing. For sole traders a tax return is often the only way to prove income when applying for loans, etc, and HMRC doesn't offer this service either.

Avantages

Integrates with my bank accounts and PayPal.
Does bookkeeping without me having to know how to do bookkeeping.
Great referral program!
Good support when I've needed it.

Inconvénients

Reports and accounts set up is skewed to the UK market (my American CPA is used to seeing certain things set out differently).
Bank feeds can be slow to update.

Avantages

FreeAgent has enabled me to free up so much of my time because i can schedule and manage invoices individually or on repeat. Also helps when preparing tax and vat returns.

Inconvénients

The function to connect credit card accounts does not always work that well but i think we have cracked it.

Avantages

A great product which is very easy to use. I like the fact that it learns from previous accounting entry explanations to offer good suggestions.

Inconvénients

I wish I could use it with more than one business to lower the cost of paying twice.