I feel compelled to write something about www.FreeAgent.com as it has transformed my relationship with money in my company. I have been, let us be polite and say absolutely unbelievably rubbish with managing the finances of my company, in terms of cash flow, regular invoicing, tax returns etc. However this little beauty has changed the way I think about it all and made it accessible by clearing away the nonsense accountancy speak which is pretty unnecessary for the small business person.
When I started Waxwing several years ago there was only one choice given me by my accountants and that was to use Sage, which I dutifully bought, tried to use and (despite having a masters in Physics) was unable to fathom. I tried, and tried but it defied logic and all things to do with sanity, as well as good programming practice (while viewing a report it would sit idly doing nothing but use 100% of my CPU). I caved and called in a variety of book keepers to do it for me. This was not cheap, and on top of paying my accountants was getting extortionate considering the size of the company. There had to be a way...
After reading the review from PC Pro and seeing how one user had got rid of their book keeper and was able to do their monthly books in a few hours I was intrigued to say the least. I also had to do my annual tax return and thus had more than a year of accounts to put in and process. It took me around two days to do a year and a half of book keeping, including adding all of my customers. I was blown away, and so I think have been my accountants. They can access the information instantly, online. They can import into their accountancy system easily and because I am keeping up to date with it all they can process my accounts much earlier than normal (I have been fined a number of times for late filing). I know well in advance what my tax liabilities are, I can budget for corporation tax, customers are automatically emailed when an invoice is overdue, it makes coffee and gives you a cuddle. I love it.
FreeAgent has been very liberating for me, shown me the future and realised my dream of easily managing my own books which I have always wanted to be able to do but software has always got in the way. Viva la revolution!
