FreeAgent Reviews

Unlocking the Potential of FreeAgent

Comments: Overall, I would highly recommend FreeAgent to any company looking for a comprehensive, user-friendly solution for managing their finances and accounting needs. With its versatile feature set and user-friendly interface, it has been a great asset for our business.

Pros:

As a user of FreeAgent in my company, I have found this software to be a versatile and robust solution for managing our finances and accounting needs. One of the biggest pros of FreeAgent is its user-friendly interface. The dashboard is well organized and easy to navigate, making it simple to stay on top of our financials and track expenses. Another advantage of FreeAgent is its robust feature set. The software includes invoicing, expense tracking, project management, and financial reporting capabilities, all in one package. This has greatly streamlined our financial management processes, reducing the need for multiple software solutions and saving us time and money.

Cons:

One of the few cons of FreeAgent is that the software can be a bit slow at times, especially when navigating through complex financial data. Additionally, while the software includes a comprehensive set of financial reporting capabilities, it may not be as robust as some other accounting software solutions on the market.

Easy To Use Cloud Accounting Software

Comments: Nice and easy to use, makes dreaded bookkeeping a breeze. Highly recommend for small businesses or sole traders - it would save you a lot of accountancy fee.

Pros:

Having switched from Xero, which I used for a decade, I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to use FreeAgent. I would say the user interface and functionality are more intuitive than Xero. The best thing is, the software is free if you have a business account with NatWest or Mettle.

Cons:

It isn't able to split the actual income and fees when reconciling Stripe transactions. I use the DoubleAgent plug-in as a workaround.

it is an excellent software for accounting and books of accounts

Comments: It helps me manage day-to-day administration: from expenses and time tracking to estimates and invoices.

Pros:

This online software is relatively simple to install (settings, configuration, customization, etc.) and should not require the use of an integrator.

Cons:

a bit difficult to use but it's a better software

Painful to use, Clunky and not great

Comments: Using the software was very awkward and restrictive. I lost confidence in it very early on.
My experience has been years of utter frustration.
Regular promises of fixes and upgrades never materialised over the last 3 years and despite sticking with it, and getting the software for free, I ended up having to opt for better software.
Customer services are quick to respond but they tend to misinterpret your issue. Their idea of helping is sending you a link to a long drawn out document that frustrates you even more than the original issue. Most of the issues can't be resolved by sympathetic customer support reps because they are hard-coded into the software as basic incapabilities.

Pros:

It's a Scottish company, albeit taken over by an anti-Scottish UK bank. Customer services are relatively quick to respond but don't often understand or resolve your issue. They do send you a Monday motivator which is useful. It's now free if you bank with RBS/Nat West, but I'd rather not bank with either and even at £0 it's not worth it. I'd rather pay for a decent software and save the cost of hours of inefficiency and extra accountancy fees later.

Cons:

It is very clunky and awkward to use. It is very expensive for what it is and definitely not even worth using for free. Several essential basic functions are missing and it is very restrictive/prescriptive forcing you to work their way or not at all. Customer services regularly have to fudge "workarounds" to fill the gaps in FreeAgent's basic functionality and often these "workarounds" make more mess than doing nothing, leaving you with more to pay your accountant to fix it. FreeAgent does several things in very unusual ways and then doesn't allow you to fix them. Payroll does post journals into your ledgers but even the best accountants can't make any sense of them. This software tries to be all things to small businesses giving tools that quite frankly are dangerous to unqualified accountants. It allows you to do your own VAT, Corporation Tax and Self Assessment wrongly, without any tax planning advice which could cost you tens of thousands of pounds in VAT/tax that isn't due, not to mention HMRC penalties etc. I know of several clients who have overpaid an absolute fortune and had seriously damaging run-ins with HMRC as a direct result of trying to DIY using this software. Buyer BEWARE!!!

Fantastic bookkeeping software online, quick and easy tax filing

Comments: My overall experience with FreeAgent is very good, as I've used it for almost 6 years now and it is saving me a lot of time with my accounting and tax filing. It has been a real lifesaver in moments where I either had no time to file my taxes or did not know what to do, so I am very glad to be a long-term user of FreeAgent.

Pros:

The greatest thing about FreeAgent is the ease of bookkeeping, being able to have any bank transactions and PayPal transactions automatically put into bookkeeping form and easily explain what each transaction is, whether it's a sale or stock purchases. It is online 24/7 so you can access it without having to worry about losing it and you can also back it up if you really want to. The support times are very quick during normal working hours.

Cons:

Some features of FreeAgent are still very buggy, such as the automation of transactions. For example it will either not detect some transactions or it will do too many, which means you have to check on a regular basis to compare the bookkeeping balance to your actual balances shown on PayPal and your bank, which I think almost defeats the purpose of having bookkeeping software. I really hope they manage to squash these bugs because something as important as tax should not be treated lightly. Early on in their existence they advertised that you would get free accounting advice but now they are very hesitant to do so (e.g: help with knowing how to explain transactions and so on).

So much better than other bookkeeping and accounting products

Comments: Very positive and reliable. It's reassuring to know the accounts are in order.

Pros:

It's straight forward, easy to set up and use. Everything you need to manage your accounts is in plain sight rather then you needing to know there is a completely different process somewhere else that actually needs to be completed. The processes are quick and easy to work out.

Cons:

Nothing much to be honest. It would be better if it was easier to link to other programs that you use but this can be overcome with a bit of thought.

Accounting Simple & Affordable

Comments: Great experience, would definitely recommend to small businesses and freelancers!

Pros:

It's very user friendly. It's great for freelancers or small businesses that do a lot of their own bookkeeping and accounting. It simplifies things in a way to make it easy.

Cons:

The simplified software is great for basic transactions, but sometimes it would be better to have more customisation. There are fixed categories of expenses, so you can't create a custom one.

Perfect for small businesses

Comments: Very good, makes sending invoices very easy. I do not use the bills section, so the budgeting and forecasting tools are not relevant to me, however this is no fault of freeagent

Pros:

Very easy to use as it is an intuitive userface. Does everything I need as a small business, and can easily send information to the accountant at the end of the year.

Cons:

The bank feed seems a bit tempermental at times.

Overall

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

A very good accounting software for small businesses

Pros:

The customer service is one of the best in the industry and a great user interface.

Cons:

Lack of features such as reports and 3rd party integrations

Great for small business that want their weekend back

Comments: 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.

Pros:

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.

Cons:

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.

Early review

Comments: Better than Quickbooks in terms of reconciling bank account, and bringing the feed in reliably, but this assumption against large numbers of individual customers is a deal breaker.

Pros:

Reconciles some invoice payments that only need approval, an improvement on Quickbooks.

Cons:

Very clunky for adding customers for invoicing. If you have lots of "retail" customers as I do, and send invoices to large numbers of customers, setting them up is a pain, the system seems to assume that you have a small number of commercial customers with multiple contacts at those companies. When making a new invoice you have to go through an alphabetical list of companies, you can't search, and for ease I made that entry an email address. This now means that of course not all people have an email address that is clearly them/their name. Irritating and enough to make me look elsewhere.

No longer fully trust Freeagent

Pros:

It's useful to be able to see the state of my business finances at a glance and it's great to be able to send professional invoices - but it's a lot of money for an invoice template.

Cons:

I no longer fully trust Freeagent, especially around banking, after I spotted that not all transactions are not being imported. When I raised it with customer services they basically just agreed that no, not all transactions are being imported, but couldn't give me a reason why or suggest how they would fix this, just said that I should check all transactions manually. What's the point of having an import feature if you then have to repeat everything manually? Meant I had to spend hours checking transactions and VAT returns to pick up transactions that Freeagent had missed. I certainly would no longer trust it with my tax return, so I have to employ an accountant as well. Also, when recognising transactions, Freeagent seems unable to recognise transfers between accounts, meaning they all have to be approved manually, despite the fact they happen time after time.

Essential tool for managing finance

Pros:

* Auto integration with banking API feeds * Intelligent learning for your regular banking transactions * Templates for sending invoices etc * VAT & SA form integration with HMRC

Cons:

* Slightly clunky UI for viewing recent expenses * Inability to remove user's who have left the business

Fantastic - makes my business life so much easier

Pros:

Love the user interface, which is easily customisable and visually it is really appealing. Makes accounting fun! Easy to use, once you know how to access some of the features. I have a straightforward business in private medical practice and this software takes care of my invoicing, accounting and expenses all in one, with automatic updating of all the relevant information at your fingertips. Both my secretary and I can access the software from anywhere, so it makes for easy team-work. One of the best features for me is the projects section, where I can keep track of the numerous expert reports that I have on my books at any one time.

Cons:

Sometimes working out how to find something, or to alter a document isn't intuitive, and I have had to refer to the website for help, which has always been useful (so far). (NB I think the user who didn't like being referred to My Business Works is being unnecessarily unfair to this software because they had to go through a Barclays intermediary - Barclays are known for their poor service, but this is not FreeAgent...)

Takes the pain out of keeping accounts

Pros:

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

Cons:

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.

Simple Accounting for UK Businesses

Comments: As a business owner with minimal accounting experience I was introduced to FreeAgent about three years ago. It has transformed our business from cumbersome spreadsheet accounts and Word invoices to a really convenient and efficient system.

Pros:

Automated invoicing and accounts overview that highlight things before they become an issue. Fantastic UK based support team.

Cons:

A little more expensive than some of the competitors.

Keeping Track Of My Finances

Pros:

It is really easy to use and the data is displayed in a useful format

Cons:

The one downside is that it doesn't pull in the USD transactions from Paypal and this has to be done manually.

I'd be lost without it!

Pros:

I've been using FreeAgent for approximately 5 years, I think, and I would be lost without it. The app is really user-friendly, and I love how easy it is to submit my accounts to HMRC at the end of the year. On the few occasions that I've needed assistance, I've had an almost immediate response with helpful information. Highly recommended.

Cons:

It felt a little expensive at first as a solo trader, but I think it proved its worth in ease of use so quickly this isn't really a con. Plus they have a great affiliate scheme so you can bring the overall cost down by recommending others.

Make life easier

Pros:

It makes my life easier. I was spending at least half a day totting up time spent and billing clients but Freeagent does it all for me at the touch of a button. That has been the absolute stand out time saving feature for me. Plus it's not complicated, easy to use and displays everything clearly.

Cons:

Every month I have to re-input the tasks for clients. I wish it would hold onto those so that I could re-use them for my ongoing clients.

Freeagent comments

Comments: Freeagent has provided my new company with a free, user-friendly and generally effective business accounting system

Pros:

It came free linked to my sign-up to my online business banking account. Customer support is quick and comprehensive. It's reasonably user-friendly for the non-accountant to use.

Cons:

It can sometimes confuse as to where administration input linked to an expense transaction should be applied - through the bank account app or Freeagent

The perfect accounting software for freelancers

Pros:

It's an incredibly easy to use all-in-one accounting solution that's built for freelancers, all the way up to large businesses. Creating and managing invoices is very easy and you can even sync it up to your bank account. Whilst many of the more advanced accounting features go unused by myself I can clearly see the value in them for others.

Cons:

It's not the cheapest solution if you're just creating a few invoices each month but for any typical independent professional it's a great solution. I can't think of any real cons to this product.

Brilliant tool that I rely on daily

Pros:

It just works. The software looks good on desktop and connects to the mobile app well. From invoicing, to time tracking, to payroll, tax returns ... so much functionality and pretty much error free. Unlike other financial software, you don't need to pay more for features like payroll and multi-currency. Win.

Cons:

It would be useful to have a few more multi-currency features (e.g. multi-currency bills and expenses).

Fantastically simple accounting software for small businesses

Pros:

Incredibly easy to learn how to use even if you've never managed a business before. Perfect for freelancers as well as small-businesses. Nice design both for the website as well as the PDFs created.

Cons:

Large businesses and more experienced accountants are likely to find the functionality a bit limiting.

Very convenient and easy to use/implement

Pros:

Ease to use, easy to input data and access to overview info. quote feature is SO convenient. Gives you the professional looks we wanted to transmit to our customers. Convenient database to keep track on projects

Cons:

Reports adjustments and correcting info is a bit complicated. You gotta go around several times in order to have the chance to modify data that was missplaced.