Improved Timesheet Reporting

A popular request on our Customer Website Get Satisfaction has been to improve our timesheet reporting by providing more flexible reports as well as PDF export functionality, just like we currently do with invoices.

We now provide four reports which you'll see in the sidebar: By Week, By Month, By Task and By User.

Simply select the report you'd like in the sidebar, fill in the report details and click Generate Report:

The reports now contain your company logo (if you've uploaded one) and your company details, as well as information about the time period, Client and Project. There's also a handy Save as PDF link above the report so you can save it as a high-quality, printable PDF.

Project Contact Name

Another popular request on Get Satisfaction recently has been the ability to invoice different people at a client organisation, depending on the project.

You can now do this in FreeAgent by entering the name of the contact in the Client Contact Name field on the New/Edit Project page:

We've tucked this option away in the new Advanced Options section of the page and also moved the lesser-used Starting Date, Ending Date and IR35 (only visible to UK users) fields into this section as well.

Weekly Timesheet Tweak

After hearing your feedback on our new inline Weekly Timesheet, we've tweaked the form so that the default hours for the timesheet update automatically when you select a different project. It's the little things…

Inline Weekly Timesheets

You can now enter up to 7 days of timeslips directly on the timesheet page itself, rather than being taken to a separate page, using our new Weekly Timesheet drawer.

Just click on the Add a Weekly Timesheet tab and the form will scroll into view.

Monthly Profit & Loss

You can now view a monthly breakdown of your Profit & Loss, for an entire financial year or just for the previous 6, 9 or 12 months.

As with the Yearly Profit and Loss view, you can click on any data row see the transactions which make up that particular category.

To see this new view, visit Accounting > Monthly Profit & Loss

Updated VAT Fuel Scale Charges

We've added support for the latest VAT Fuel Scale Charges which came into force on 1st May 2008.

If you're having trouble sleeping, we recommend you download the HMRC report for a little bedtime reading.

Survey iPod Touch Winner!

Thanks to everyone who completed our recent survey. The findings have been enlightening and we'll be sure to take them all on board.

One thing we discovered was that 100% of you would recommend us and 85% already have!

The lucky recipient of the iPod was Michael Cunningham of Misean Ltd. Congratulations, Michael!

Bugs Squished

• Invoice Item ordering is now correct when there are 10 or more items.
• We relaxed the over-enthusiastic validation of Mileage Expenses for Universal accounts.
• Fixed an issue which caused an error when explaining bank transactions in a browser with Javascript turned off.

Ciao for now,

To be valid it needs to show:

• The supplier's name, address and VAT registration number
• The name and address of the person to whom the goods are supplied
• A unique identification number (see below for new rules)
• Date of issue
• Time of supply of the goods or services (this may be the same as the date of issue)
• A description of the goods or services supplied
• Rate of any discount available
• Total amount of VAT charged
• The total amount payable for the whole invoice excluding VAT

For each description of goods or services:

• The unit price (see below for exceptions)
• The rate of VAT charged
• The amount payable excluding VAT

There are two relatively recent changes to the VAT invoice rules you should check for your own business:

Unit price

Since 2004 a VAT invoice must include the unit price of any 'countable' goods or services. So if you charge by the hour you need to show your hourly rate.

However, if it is not the usual practice in your business sector to show this information you don't have to, as long as your customer doesn't demand it.

Unique Identification Number

From October 2007 each of your VAT invoices must have a unique and sequential number.

If you restart your invoice numbering each year this could lead to identically numbered invoices in different years.

You can use separate invoice sequences for different customers as long as each sequence of invoices is separate and unique.

You can also use customer prefixes on the invoices, as long as no two customers have the same prefix.

FreeAgent Notes

FreeAgent automatically ensures you have all the right information displayed, and that your invoice numbers are unique.

It doesn't enforce strictly sequential numbers, though - that's up to you.

Chris Thomas, One Accounting Ltd