I have a meeting on Friday with a potential new client who according to him currently has his accounts done for him through Free Agent. I have heard of this and had a quick look at their site http://www.freeagent.com/ but was wondering if anyone here has had any experience of using it and could tell me what it is actually like.
If he wants me to carry on using it I will have to include the monthly fee in my charge to him as this isn't product that I normally use.
I use it for a client. They pay the monthly fee themselves as they were already subscribed when I started working for them. It's good for professional offices such as architects, website creators etc. Now I've used it more I really like it
This may be one that we need to get used to as apparently from a post the other day (I think it was from Saturday) Barclays are now giving a choice of either Free Agent or Sage (I assume Sage One) to new businesses as a condition of getting the two years free banking.
In response I'm offering my clients half an hours free training on using the basics of VT Cashbook to make sure that they know that they have options.
There's an old adage.
You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
Similarly, you can give clients free software but you can't make them use it.
That said, I was quite immpressed with the Free agent site and would be interested to hear peoples views on the software in use.
Shaun.
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Shaun
Responses are not meant as a substitute for professional advice. Answers are intended as outline only the advice of a qualified professional with access to all relevant information should be sought before acting on any response given.
I remember a few years ago when I worked in practise Barclays did a similar thing but just with Sage Accounts (don't know what version) on disc, one of the clients of the business already had Sage on their computer and had started to do quite a bit of work on it when he installed the copy of Sage from the bank and it promptly screwed up his data. So the horse may have to be careful when he starts drinking the water as well.
Great idea of yours to give the free training.
I liked the Free Agent site as well, it wasn't one of those that you go to and think 'Oh no, what am I going to be dealing with', but just interested to know how it works in reality
I love that it's so easy to reconcile the bank. You upload the statements in about 3 clicks and then if a single invoice is entered and being paid it finds it and pays it off in a few clicks of the mouse. You raise sales invoices in it and it will email them to customers. You set the payment terms and it automatically emails when there are overdue items - we've found clients do pay faster. It's easy to edit mistakes. Downside is its a nightmare to clear credit notes against invoices - or if it isn't I haven't found it yet ! It's fairly basic, reports are quite good. You can set up your own nominal codes. I personally don't think the vat reporting is good enough as there isn't an exempt/not vat rated option. It's 0 or nothing. Happy to answer more specific questions so just ask
