FreeAgent Reviews

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.

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).

Alternatives Considered

Xero

Reasons for Switching to FreeAgent

At the time FreeAgent was the better option because of the free accounting advice, although not offered anymore but I no longer require it as I know how to explain most of my transactions now. I also picked FreeAgent because it was cheaper and offered a lot more of a friendly user interface.

Pros

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.

Cons

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.

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

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.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Time and Xero

Reasons for Switching to FreeAgent

It was recommended by my accountant, and I've really enjoyed using it.

Pros

It basically does all the required accounting without having to pay for an accountant to do it for you. The biggest benefit when it comes to tracking business tax and completing a tax return as it pretty much does it all for you.

Cons

Sometimes it's tricky to work out how something works and you have to go and get help from customer support, but this may be more user incompetence than anything wrong with the software!

Alternatives Considered

Xero

Reasons for Choosing FreeAgent

I was getting to the point of needing to pay for some of the options (I honestly can't remember the name of the software used previously and don't want to put the wrong one in!)

Reasons for Switching to FreeAgent

NatWest provided the service free and it appeared to have everything needed.

Pros

Easy to use. Easy to find what I want. Brilliant support

Cons

There must be a downside but thankfully I have not found it yet

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.

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

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

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.

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.

Pros

I use freeagent everyday for my business and it's like the best so far. Helps to generate invoices and estimates for client, it gives an overview of your account in the first page which you can easily see at first glance. I recommend freeagent anyday anytime.

Cons

Freeagent generates number for each of the invoice or estimates which can be confusing sometimes especially if you have to delete that invoice or estimates but nevertheless it's a stress free software, it does all the work.

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

FreeAgent is great in January when I can file my tax return directly to HMRC. The form is also filled with data I've entered throughout the year so self assessment time is pretty hassle free, which s unusual for a freelancer. I've just started using the mobile app and find that this is really is good too. I can take care of all the day-to-day stuff, like explaining bank transactions and entering mileage, when I'm out and about on business to stop it mounting up.

Cons

The mobile app is really great, but doesn't yet have the same in-depth functionality as the desktop app.

Pros

The software has all the features I need to run my business. It has helped me save so much time preparing self assessment filings.

Cons

The support documentation does contain some out of date screenshots and instructions.

Pros

It allows me to keep on top of the financial position of my company allowing me to make decisions with up to date knowledge. Compared to my peers who don't use the software I am saving time and money doing my accounting.

Cons

The mobile app is not as feature rich and some of the functionality that it does have does not share the same options as the web version e.g. split transactions

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.

Pros

Overall, I really like freeagent. It's a great way to manage your finances and keep track of your invoices and expenses. The interface is user-friendly and easy to navigate. I also like the fact that it integrates with other online services. This makes it a very versatile tool.

Cons

I'd like to see more integrations with other banks as some of my banks cannot be integrated within the system.

Pros

Syncing with your bank accounts allows you to keep track of expenses, income and bills really easily. There is good help in the support section and it is good to be able to get some automated analysis of the figures too.

Cons

The time tracking feature is not very flexible and has caused me issues, I am using a different software to track time now. The design also is quite accountant-oriented