Free Agent Accounts Software

Does anyone use Free Agent online software for their accounts? I have a customer thinking of using it and would like to know of any experiences good or otherwise that other people might have had.

Thanks

We've got a ton of people using, and loving it.

It's mainly suitable for those selling their time/services for money.  Wouldn't really be appropriate for someone running a shop for example.

They've got a month's free trial, so why not get your customer to give them a go?

Thanks Chris. We've signed up for the free trial so he can see what it's like to use  - so glad to hear all your customers love it :-) Also interested to know what the reliability is like - e.g. customer support response, issues with down-time due to server problems etc.

I'd say excellent on all those points.

Occasionally they do updates when the software goes down, but these are typically done in the early hours of the morning (UK time).  Outside of that, I think uptime is >99.9%.

Support response also pretty quick.  Auto acknowledgement, typically hear something from a real person within a couple of hours, if it's simple, solved then and there...but as with trialling the software, trial the support, sure you won't be disappointed.

Chris,

Are your clients who are using it getting it direct or are you offering it to them   via Openbooks?

For the vast majority...neither.  NB rest of post probably of no interest to 99% of readers!

We joined FreeAgent before they teamed up with Iris, so before Openbooks existed.  We don't use Iris, and therefore we're effectively a reseller of FreeAgent in its original form.  We get it at a fairly hefty discount over the RRP, so more often than not, we pay for the account, and include the cost in our fee to the client...PS FreeAgent only let us do this where we provide add on services, so no we can't simply sell FreeAgent on its own at a lower cost than the RRP.

We have a handful of clients who don't do it this way.  Mainly because:

• They've got loads of referrals so are paying a negligible amount for it themselves,
• They get it through something else (eg Barclays MyBusinessWorks bank deal), or
• A small number prefer to have the account independently of us, for fear that if we fell out, we could somehow stop them using their data (at any point they can ask FreeAgent to put the account back into private ownership...so this one isn't really rational).

Anne, have a look at Xero online accounting.

www.xero.com

Hi Anne, as Chris says FreeAgent is excellent, I've used it for sometime and have no negative feedback, top notch.

HI I use FreeAgent, and my bookkeeper has access as well so it makes doing the quarterly returns for VAT really simple.    I also in the process of linking a company credit card to the account so my expenses are automatically recorded which makes data entry a dream

Angus

Nice affiliate linkage