By Ed Molyneux on Wednesday 24 December 2008.
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About 2008, the Future, and what's new in Release 'Eggnog'...
2008, 2009, Onwards and Upwards
We just wanted to make sure we didn't let 2008 pass by without thanking all of our subscribers, partners and investors for helping us make FreeAgent what it is. Thanks.
It's been a really exciting year and we know 2009 is going to be even more so! We've got lots of really great ideas (many of them from you originally!) for making FreeAgent better, faster, more useful and yet also easier to use.
We're also really focussed on building tools to help you understand where your money is going, as well as where it went - essential information to keep you on top in these difficult times. Stay tuned.
UK Sole Trader Accounts: Tax Return Numbers
As a special Xmas gift to our Sole Trader subscribers (!), FreeAgent now presents the numbers you need to fill in the Self Employment section of the Self-Assessed Income Tax form much more easily: you can just copy them across.
The Total and Disallowable expense categories use the same names as the expense boxes in the HMRC Self Employment (SA103) supplementary pages, and are generated by adding together one or more of the existing FreeAgent expense types.
You can hover your mouse over the HMRC categories to find out which FreeAgent categories have gone into it.
FreeAgent, as before, also calculates your Capital Allowances, if any.
You can click the 'Show Full Accounts' to visit the Profit and Loss page for that tax year and view the original breakdown expenses by category.
Stocking Fillers
This week we've also:
- Made some changes to the accounting engine to prevent opening balances becoming skewed in some instances.
- UK Limited Company Accounts: Updated the 2009 Corporation Tax rate to reflect the recent Pre-Budget Report.
- Ensured our new Company Address is correctly displayed on FreeAgent account subscription invoices.
- Fixed a problem where manually-specified Sales Tax (VAT) amounts on bank account entries and out-of-pocket expenses could result in strange values.
Cheers...
Ed & The Team at FreeAgent Central.
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By Ed Molyneux on Wednesday 17 December 2008.
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More Friendliness
C and S Finance is a Guildford-based specialist accountancy practice for freelancers and contractors.
They're accredited by the Professional Contractors Group (PCG) and they pride themselves on the friendly and helpful service that they give to their clients. If you're interested in competitive, comprehensive fixed price service (with a discount to FreeAgent users, of course!) drop Martyn Currid an email, or call 0800 135 7157.
(And conversely, if you're an accountant thinking of becoming FreeAgent-Friendly, then feel free to get in touch).
Accessing Locked Bills and Bank Account Entries
FreeAgent locks Out-of-Pocket Expenses, Bank Account Entries or Bills if they have been rebilled or (in the UK) if they appear on a locked VAT Return.
Last month we made some changes to allow the changing of certain parts of the Out-of-Pocket Expenses even if they were locked, and also to view and edit any attachments you've added.
In release 'Malbec' you can now do the same with Bills and Bank Account Entries.
In all three cases now, the value and VAT (or Sales Tax) on these items is fixed, as is the Rebill-to-Project selection if the item has already been rebilled. With Bank Account Entries the overall type is fixed, but you can still change payments between admin expense categories.
Using Existing Entries as Explanations
When you're explaining a bank transaction, you can now select from a list of existing manual entries if any such exist on or around the date of the transaction.
This is particularly useful for assigning manually-entered invoice receipts to transactions, or tying up the ends of bank account transfers.
Bank Transfers
You can now see the date that a transfer was initiated or completed on the statement page at each end of the transfer.
Other Changes
This week we've also:
- Added support for creating Capital Assets from Bills.
- Updated the Project list screen to the new flexible format.
- Tweaked the appearance of the 'Undo Upload' screen to make it more like the statement screens.
- Added your own company country to invoices where you are sending to a client in another country.
- Fixed a problem whereby bank transfers, which normally exist as one bank entry at each of the transfer, could be created as single-ended 'orphan' entries. Existing entries like this are now flagged in the statement screen and can be safely deleted.
- UK Accounts: Corrected our handling of Subscription Income under the VAT Flat Rate Scheme.
- UK Accounts: Added mileage fuel advisory rates that come into effect on 1 Jan 08.
TTFN...
Ed & The Team at FreeAgent Central.
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By Ed Molyneux on Monday 01 December 2008.
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What's New?
In 'Pouilly-Fuissé' we've updated FreeAgent to handle the recent UK VAT rate changes which are effective as of today, and made some improvements to Invoice Emailing.
UK Accounts: VAT Rate Changes
As announced in last week's Pre-Budget Report, the standard rate of VAT has been reduced from 17.5% to 15% as of today.
FreeAgent will now:
- Allow you to select both the new 15% rate as well as the old 17.5% rate throughout so you can continue to manage previous expenses, bank account entries and bills.
- Use 15% as the standard rate when selecting 'Auto' VAT for normally VAT-able categories for expenses, bills and bank account entries dated on or after 1 Dec 08 (but still use 17.5% for older items)
- Automatically use the revised Flat Rate Scheme percentages according to the invoice date.
- Automatically use the new VAT rate on Fuel Scale Charge calculations.
- Appropriately adjust future recurring invoices and expenses which use the standard rate of VAT to reflect the lower price (NOTE: this assumes that you and your suppliers lower the charged prices on the basis of reduced VAT).
You might need to check any invoices, bills or expenses that are in FreeAgent which you created in advance and have the incorrect VAT rate set on them: we haven't assumed these should be updated.
You'll also need to check that your invoicing for November and December correctly reflects when services were actually provided. A full guide to all the implications - very worthwhile bed-time reading indeed - can be found here.
Finally, if we're charging you UK VAT for your FreeAgent subscription (because you're based in the UK) we have of course updated your payments to reflect the lower rate.
Emailing Invoices
You can now enter multiple email addresses in the 'To' field to send the invoice to several people at once.
You can now also write [contact_first_name] and [contact_last_name] in the email message text - they'll be replaced with the appropriate names when the email is sent.
Other Changes
We've:
- Fixed a problem whereby a newly-created expenses would start out locked (if the most recent expense had already been rebilled).
- Tweaked the auto-complete on Expenses and Bank Account Entry descriptions to show unique matches only.
- Fixed a problem which occurred when explaining a bill payment transaction and also explaining matching similar transactions.
- Fixed a problem where unbilled time was displayed incorrectly in certain circumstances.
- Ensured the correct months are selectable on the Bank Statement pages even if you've entered future transactions.
- UK Accounts: Corrected the display of National Insurance on payslips.
Cheers until next time...
Ed & The Team at FreeAgent Central.
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