In the end we decided to use http://www.QuickFile.co.uk as their bookkeeping system is essentially free and we have found it to match FA on features and reliability!

The best thing about it is that you can set up recurring invoices and invoices for future dates which email out to clients automatically – no more needing to make sure you are in the office on the first of the month to get your invoices out.

The email reminders are also very useful and you can personalise all of it so you don’t lose that personal touch – in fact some of our customers have mentioned that they feel like its customer service when we are chasing invoices!

Before Freeagent Central accountancy software we used Sage Instant Accounts, which I found very complicated and time consuming for a small company like ours. I can honestly say Freeagent Central have quartered the time we spend doing the books whilst also making our accounts process more effective.

There is an iPhone app too, which I was very excited about. However you can’t raise invoices on it, only bill time and expenses to projects, and track your mileage etc.

As with the guys above, you can receive a 10% discount on your monthly subscription if you use this referral link: http://fre.ag/396w913i
I will get 10% off my subscription too if you use it, so if you have found my review helpful, please use this link.

A great App!

If you’re thinking of signing up you can get 10% off by using this code at sign up: 3a3wzifh

or by clicking this link : http://www.freeagentcentral.com/?referrer=3a3wzifh

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.

@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.

Too bad, it looks like a really nice app.

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.

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.