FreeAgent Reviews

Pros

Saves loads of time and is easy to use for a business owner without the need for a book keeper or accounting person. Love the bank imports and ease of reconciliations. RTI and VAT submissions submit to HMRC straight from the software. I could go on and on here, but having had business since 1999, the importance of having great finance management as a small business can't be understated!

Cons

At the moment you can scan/photograph expenses and it can complete the data entry using AI. I can't wait until this can happen for bills too!

Alternatives Considered

Switched From

Pros

I always know my financial and tax situation. I'm never in the dark. You put in the info as you generate it and you'll never be in any doubt about your financial health.

Cons

I know Xero has lots of bells and whistles but Freeagent is simple to use, predictable and the support is from UK or US based specialists who really know what they're talking about.

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!!!

Pros

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).

Cons

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 Considered

Reasons for Switching to FreeAgent

Pros

The billing and invoicing functionality is a key feature of the product and works very well. They send a Monday motivator email summarising your agenda for the week on Monday mornings. This includes items such as unbilled hours logged, payments to approve and bills to chase or pay. MFA is supported for increased security.

Cons

There are few things that I don't like to be honest, the only one that can be annoying is the bank feeds can sometimes be a little slow to show items. A manual refresh option for bank feed data would be useful.

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing FreeAgent

Switched From

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.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Choosing FreeAgent

Switched From

Reasons for Switching to FreeAgent

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

The best thing about FreeAgent is that you can get it for free if you use their offer to set up and use "Mettle" bank account. Also, their menu is perfectly minimalistic to make it fully functioning for our purposes and not making it overwhelming to use.

Cons

Bank reconciliation lacks automation. There is "guess" rules function but you can't modify how it works and it often makes mistakes.

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to FreeAgent

Pros

We receive free access to FreeAgent as part of our bank account package. It makes accounting for our club so much easier than the previous excel sheets

Cons

It’s not quite as good as Xero, but it’sa fraction of the price. For a non-profit it’s a winner

Alternatives Considered

Reasons for Switching to FreeAgent

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

The software is easy to use, and once you understand it very powerful. It makes submitting your tax return very, very easy. I like how it can take you from being self-employed to being a LTD company. The way that it recognises some transactions and automatically categories them is great too.

Cons

There are two things I don't like about the software. There isn't an easy way to record simplified expenses. You have to add them manually, which isn't ideal for how it should work. The second is that if someone pays by card, it doesn't carry all the info from FreeAgent to Stripe. For example, email address so they get a card receipt instantly.

Pros

Live bank feeds, easy to use, perfect for invoicing, accounting for small businesses, keeping the accountant and bank manager happy with the efficiency! It does everything (for me and my business needs) apart from making me coffee :-) Always a pleasure using freeagent, it's really fun to use!

Cons

Ive been using it for nearly two years....
Can't fault it!

Not sure if I could add a further business to the platform, for example: using same login details but be able to switch between businesses?? That would be really good.

Pros

Perfect for freelancers and small teams, FreeAgent includes all the aspects needed to control accounts, create / send invoices and keep an eye on projects. Highly recommended for any solo practitioners.

Cons

If you plan to grow and scale your team, it can be a bit limiting, however it is still a great tool for smaller teams and individuals.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

Pros

Exceptionally easy to use and easy to learn. I keep the tab open every day. It's easy to "undo" if you make a mistake in an invoice. There's basically nothing that can't be undone by reverting to draft. The recurring invoices tool is really helpful. I don't use the feature where it'll email invoices/reminders. I prefer to do that myself and it's really easy — nothing to really keep track of since I invoice all clients on the same day each month. They make it easy to label bank transactions so as long as I remember to do that once a month or so, all my accounting reports are always current. I don't have to spend too much time on accounting and I don't really have any complaints. The customer service is always fantastic.

Cons

I wish the time tracking feature were just a little slicker. I use Toggl for time tracking, and then I import hours for each client each month. Not a big deal, but one of those little things that would put it over the top.

Pros

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

Cons

None- inpeciable and consistent service at all times.

Pros

the mobile app is great for tracking time or updating expenses while on the road
Like the time reporting features to report by contact or project
Tax Timeline also really helpful for getting a quick understand of what's owed

Cons

It's difficult to make corrections on invoices, especially if an expense or time item is labeled wrong, requires deleting/creating a new invoice rather than being able to unlock the items associated with it and fix them.
Layout options for invoices are very limiting unless you create your own CSS file.
Can't change account type without contacting admin - ie I mistakenly set up as a sole trader instead of private ltd company and says I have to contact customer service to change it.

Pros

FreeAgent is a fantastic product. I have only needed to use support a couple of times and they were more unusual questions.

As a freelancer, keeping an eye on income and expenditure, billing and chasing invoices and recording expenses with my phone is really important. Add to that the easy submission of my tax return and it really is a great piece of software.

Cons

I am a little disappointed that I could not receive any of the discounts offered to new customers. (e.g. 6 months half price).

Pros

FreeAgent is one of those programs that integrates all sorts of difficult tasks into one single multi-use product. We specifically use it for payroll, invoicing and accountancy and find the integrated approach saves time and helps us quickly track accountancy errors and oversights.

Cons

The live link to the bank account statements is often glitchy and can cause a headache for those trying to account for every transaction.

Pros

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.

Cons

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

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.

Alternatives Considered

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.

Pros

The bank reconciling makes marking off transactions and paid invoices so easy. The ability to resend email reminders and show whether an email has been received by a customer is great.

Cons

More template options would be good and the ability to put terms and conditions into the back of a invoice.