FreeAgent is an online accounting application, created by a UK company, FreeAgent Central, located in Edinburgh. As you can read in its FAQ section:
“FreeAgent is an online money management and accounting tool intended for small, service businesses of 1-3 employees. This will include most kinds of freelancers, contractors and consultants. Whether you are just getting started, or are already in business as a sole trader or limited company, VAT registered or not, FreeAgent can save you time.”
There is quite a large number of professionals that fall into the category of its potential clients worldwide, and for them FreeAgent Central aims to offer a simple yet, more or less, complete solution.
Key features
- Accounting: You can do double entry accounting but accountants will find it cumbersome, as you have to break down a double entry into two single entries. For the rest it will be plainly meaningless.Most entries though are going straight into accounting from where they are initially entered: bill or expenses, projects, assets etc. Accounting is serving a purpose though: to keep track of your financial as time goes by. FreeAgent offers something helpful here: you can track the result of your operations by viewing a P&L and BS anytime within the fiscal year.
- Banks: Like Pocketsmith you can import statements from your bank in QIX, QIF or CSV format. On top you can upload Credit Card Statement in similar formats, or you Paypal account in CSV. Of course you can do all this manually too.
- Fixed Assets: You can track your fixed assets and calculate depreciation that will hit your books as expenditure based on the useful life of each asset. As soon as you enter the useful life, the system creates an entry with the years depreciation.
- Projects: Most freelancers work on T&M or fixed price projects. FreeAgent allows to create projects per contact (=client. This is a bit confusing, as a supplier can be a contact too). Once a project created, tasks and time slips can be added to it and invoices generated against it.
- Bills & Expenses: Bills are expenses that can be paid at a date later than the issuance of the relevant invoice or bill while expenses are whatever is paid immediately.
- Invoicing: Can be completely manual or semiautomated. Allows per client invoice sequence setting or per project.
- Tax: User defined sales tax types (VAT, GST etc) with user defined tax percentages.
- FreeAgent provides also an API, which is aimed for those who want to build tools on top of the basic service. It does not allow though interference with its main engine rules that would allow customization of the service to cater for the specific needs of another country.
Data import and export:
1. Export: in Microsoft Excel
2. Import: not provided for accounts and expenses. One has to rely on just setting starting balances. Contacts can be imported from
1. Microsoft Outlook
2. GoogleMail / Gmail
3. Mac Mail
4. Freshbooks
5. Any other email client which can export contacts in vCard format
3. Syncs with http://www.timepost2.com/ for time and project tracking
Pricing of the service
20$ per month but once you recruit another client, their referral scheme allows you to get a 10% discount. Recruiting 10 clients mean a free ride.
Conclusion: FreeAgent is simple yet robust. If the price tag does not prohibit its use, you will find it quite useful, provided you keep your boks in a similar fashion. Tackling accounting practice differences around the globe is not trivial though. And if FreeAgent Central wants to target other countries with differing accounting practices, they should provide the means for internationalizing the service.Or do the hard work themselves.
FreeAgent Central is privately held and it is just one year out of beta. Therefore we cannot assess its viability. Although the price tag is not trivial for freelancers (who could buy a desktop package with a few hundred bucks), the referral scheme can make it appealing.
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