FreeAgent

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.