Free Agent Central review
FreeAgent Central
Like FreshBooks, FreeAgent Central is a great looking application. Nice and clean navigation & very easy to use. The FreeAgent part of the name hints at the target market for this application – Freelancers.
It’s very project driven – to the extent that you can’t create an invoice until you’ve first created a project. I imagine that you could just create a single ‘umbrella’ project and ignore this little quirk but it did put me off a little bit.
On the Invoices page – when there’s nothing configured in the account – you see this rather foreboding message which dissuaded me from going much further:
No Contacts or Projects Yet
You need to add a Project to be able to create invoices.
You can’t create Projects without at least one Contact to assign them to.
I liked the easy import and export options available. There’s a simple Excel spreadsheet export button and a flexible import for contacts from Outlook & Gmail – even FreshBooks.
It also has full bank account management – which I liked the look of, and expense tracking which seemed easy to use.
One outstanding feature of FreeAgent Central is it’s invoice gallery where you can customise the layout of the invoice. If that doesn’t offer enough flexibility, there’s even an invoice development kit so you can design your own templates and use them within FreeAgent Central – very classy.
The FreeAgent Central API is in Beta mode but it looked comprehensive and well-documented to me.
But – the only credit card processing I could see inside the account was via PayPal – and even then I’m not sure if it’s really integrated as a payment gateway. Either way, it won’t work for us so .. another one bites the dust.
Conclusions
FreeAgent Central feels a lot like FreshBooks – it has a lot of nice features, is easy to navigate and use and it inspires confidence in the application. If only there were a European payment processor built-in.
Next Step: A review of FreshBooks
19. February 2009 at 11:02 pm :
Thanks for your feedback – we’ll be removing the requirement to create a project before you invoice within the next month…
Do check out our recently-launched redesign, too. Even cleaner and easier on the eye!
20. February 2009 at 11:13 am :
Thanks Ed, I did take another look at FreeAgent Central recently because we were having trouble with the reporting in KashFlow. I think removing the ‘project’ requirement will help a lot – it was the big show-stopper for us.
17. March 2009 at 1:18 pm :
From FreeAgent today:
You asked – we pretended we didn’t hear anything. You asked again – we listened. You asked yet again – we finally did something about it! This week’s release sees the massively anticipated feature of being able to create invoices without needing a project.
Invoicing without a project
Yes it’s true. It’s now possible to create invoices without adding a project first. Simply go to your Invoices page and select Add an Invoice. You will need to select an existing Contact name, or add a new one here, and you can optionally associate it with a project.
Voilà! Your new invoice has been created and not a project in sight. Lots of people have been requesting this feature so do let us know what you think.
I’ll definitely be checking this out – it was the biggest problem (from my point of view) with FreeAgent
24. March 2009 at 5:12 pm :
Yep, it works. All you need to create an invoice with Free Agent now is a contact name or a company. The revamped look and feel makes the application feel very clean and simple.
21. April 2009 at 6:09 am :
I like FreeAgent but find the pricing too expensive. Highly recommend http://www.clearbooks.co.uk
29. July 2009 at 3:20 pm :
The main problem with FreeAgent is the inability to reconcile one bank account transaction across multiple invoices. This limitation is forcing me to hack the bank account view, which makes me worry what my accountant will say once I finally pass the exported CSV to him.
Other than that – great app. But this is a really big problem. Xero can do the split transactions, and I almost went over to that, but there are other features I like in FreeAgent that led me to keep hacking away. The reminders, the corporation tax calculation, and the obvious care which has gone into the app.
Care which is lacking from Clearbooks – it looks like they just haven’t got the resources to file down the many rough edges on that site. That might sound superficial but with this kind of site you have to be able to trust that they are able to keep up with changes with tax rates and so on. Impeccable maintenance of the site’s design and implementation gives this confidence. Xero has this quality in spades, FreeAgent is up there as well, while Clearbooks has tried hard but doesn’t make it, and Kashcow lol.
29. July 2009 at 6:06 pm :
Apologies – it turns out that such multiple reconciliations are possible, but they are not very intuitive to create.
You just have to state a figure less than the amount you’re reconciling – it then figures out not to mark the bank’s figure as fully reconciled, leaving it in red ink.
I’m pretty happy with this app now.
24. August 2009 at 6:25 pm :
Ah, another quick look at FreeAgent to see it it would work for another company – but alas, no multiple currency capability at the moment.
Too bad, it looks like a really nice app.
28. September 2009 at 9:07 pm :
Good to see this debate going strong.
@DA: As you found out, you can reconcile multiple payments in a single transaction but it could be much more obvious and we are going to overhaul this significantly. In the mean time:
http://www.freeagentcentral.com/support/knowledge-base/reconciling-multiple-invoices-in-one-payment
@NMQB: Mutli-currency is probably our number 1 requested feature after late payment reminders, which we’re releasing next, so it’s hopefully not too far off. We’ll keep you posted.
10. October 2009 at 2:25 pm :
I’ve been using Free Agent Central for a year now and would thoroughly recommend it. Even though it’s £15 a month, the amount of money it’s saved me in missing or mis-paid invoices and accountancy fees more than makes up for it. It also saves me time because so much is automated.
My old system involved creating an invoice PDF, manually calculating the VAT and expenses, sending it and entering into a spreadsheet, then watching my bank statements to for payment. This used to take time and was prone to inaccuracies.
23. May 2010 at 9:02 pm :
Just recently started using FreeAgent for all my accounting and have to say it’s brilliant, it does everything that I need it to very well and it’s all very intuitive – really recommend it (also you can get 10% off by clicking this link! – http://www.freeagentcentral.com/?referrer=362gj3oe)