FreeAgent Update - Pouilly-Fume, Ask an Expert, Going Solo Leeds

By Ed Molyneux on Friday 22 August 2008. Comments (0)

Here's what's new from FreeAgent Central this week:

'Ask an Expert' - in conjunction with Quay Accounting

We're really pleased to be launching our 'Ask an Expert' service, hosted on our existing customer service site GetSatisfaction, but backed up by the knowledge and experience of our friends at Quay Accounting.

As the name suggests, you can dive in and ask accounting-related questions of our Experts, and they'll endeavour to provide clear, concise advice.

And it's open and free to everyone, not just FreeAgent subscribers.

Naturally it's not always possible to deal with your specific situation publicly, but if it needs to be taken elsewhere we will endeavour to respond online with general advice as well.

So - got a nagging accounting question that you've always wanted resolved?

Go ahead and Ask an Expert!

Going Solo Leeds - 30% off

We're sponsoring this year's Going Solo conference in Leeds on 12 Sep 08.

It's organized by the irrepressible Stephanie Booth and promises to offer a wealth of information about setting up and managing your freelance business.

The day's programme includes talks on marketing yourself, tax and finance, setting and negotiating rates and staying organised.

We reckon it's invaluable stuff for any freelancer, and we're able to offer a 30% discount on the normal rate of £220 to the first five of you who get in touch.

You can also stop by and chat to us about FreeAgent while you're there...

Invoice Traffic Lights

With the latest release - 'Pouilly-Fumé' - we now display little traffic lights on the invoice lists, so you can get an at-a-glance view of their status.

• Draft (grey)
• Open (amber)
• Overdue (red)
• Paid (green)

More Email Macros

We've also added support for more invoice email 'macros' - little bits of text that get converted into the real thing when the email is sent.

In addition to the existing [paypal_payment_link] macro you can now use [reference], [invoice_date], [due_date] and [amount_due] in your emails to represent those bits of invoice info.

Each of those items is formatted according to your normal currency and date settings.

It means you'll spend less time changing the wording of your invoice emails, and you don't need to stick with generic text if you use automatically-emailed invoices.

Coming Soon...

We are nearly finished with two larger improvements, which you should see in the next release 'Anjou' at the beginning of September

• Uploading Expense Receipts - so you can upload a scanned copy of your receipts to FreeAgent
• UK VAT Period Locking - much requested by our accountant friends, to help you ensure your VAT Returns stay consistent once you've sent them.

The Little Stuff

• UK Accounts: We added 'Childcare Vouchers' as a new expense or explanation category.
• We improved our handling of Alliance and Leicester bank uploads.
• We fixed an issue with client names not appearing on invoices.
• General speed improvements, by improving the efficiency of accessing our database.

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Posted in: Announcements,

Tax Tips 4: Dealing with Changed Personal Allowances

By Chris Thomas on Friday 22 August 2008. Comments (0)

The announcement by the Chancellor Alistair Darling about the changes to the personal allowance and the basic rate tax band for 2008/09 took HMRC by surprise as much as everyone else. It has taken a few months to work out how to tweak the PAYE system so everyone pays the right amount of tax in 2008/09.

HMRC have now decided not to reissue every single PAYE code. Instead employers will have to add 60 to every PAYE code that has an L suffix. This means code 543L will become 603L. For all other letter suffixes you must wait for a new PAYE code to be issued. L is the most frequently used suffix, so you as an employer are effectively doing HMRC's work, and picking up the costs incurred by the Chancellor's change of mind.

The new codes should be applied from the first payday on or after 7 Sep 2008. Monthly paid employees, who are on the basic rate of tax will receive a tax reduction through the payroll of around £60 over the remainder of the tax year. This will normally reduce the employee's total tax deductions for the month, but in rare cases it will create a refund for the employee of tax he has paid earlier in the tax year.

FreeAgent Notes

FreeAgent will support updating tax codes and recalculating payslips in release 'Anjou' on the 4th Sep 08. Once that's done, we'll explain how to update your payslips here on The Central.

Chris Thomas, One Accounting Ltd

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Posted in: Tax,

AccountingWeb review FreeAgent

By Roan Lavery on Saturday 16 August 2008. Comments (1)

Our focus at FreeAgent has been very much on delivering the easiest solution for our end users: freelancers, contractors and consultants, but we've not forgotten about our accountant friends either, so it was nice to read the recent AccountingWeb review of FreeAgent and see what they made of us from a professional standpoint.

The review is very comprehensive and I think they've pretty much nailed the value we can offer to both freelancers and their accounting advisors:

FreeAgent looks good, is pretty straightforward to use, and offers an unrivalled range of features for its target market. Firms with a significant number of IT contractors and one-man consultancies should certainly be looking at FreeAgent as at least one of their online offerings.

So, an overall glowing report then.

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Posted in: Press Buzz,