FreeAgent

FreeAgent is a fully-featured accounting and invoicing web app that comes with a great little mobile app too.

It has a really clear and easy-to-use interface, making it easy to navigate and produce invoices, check your accounts for selected periods, track your time, manage projects... the list goes on. But for all the functionality, it never feels cluttered.

I've experienced great support whenever I've asked for it and it hasn't ever produced any unexpected errors or bugs. It just works.

I wanted to recommend this product to my wife for her business but it's just a little bit too expensive for a startup small sole trader company like hers. A reduced cost account type for single users would be great.

Very easy to onboard clients; Linking bank accounts through open banking is straightforward and facility works well; Simple user interface makes it easy for novices to use; Very good customer support; Can be had for free of you use and RBS group bank account including Mettle; On the go invoicing is nice for some business as well as the expense logger

Not as flexible as some accounting packages; a few of the facilities are still a work in progress and you need to do a workaround

It looks like it has a lot of features but it doesn't work in a logical way.
The tech support used to be available almost 24/7 but the quality and availability have shrunk down significantly.

This is the most frustrating of all of the accounting software that we reviewed. Everything (even mistakes) gets locked in and can't be edited or amended. There are so many basic functions that just don't work and all customer services do is give you complicated workarounds, most of which don't actually achieve the required outcome. The bank feeds often don't work and you have to log in daily to manually update them. The price is way to high and not good value. The software is not easy to use and what used to be great customer service is now a waste of your time and call tariff. To add insult to injury, they have just been bought over by a bank that has a terrible reputation for so many reasons and will tarnish the reputation of FreeAgent. I'd steer well clear of this software.

FreeAgent is more advanced than my previous service provider, Freshbooks. It allows me to handle the split between personal/business bank accounts and their expenses better and even submits my tax return to HMRC for me. The few times I've contacted their support, they have responded quickly, actually understood what I've asked and provided a detailed response, specific to my issue.

As a sole trader working on various contracts for 7.5 hours per day, I need to be able to track my time and bill my clients based on it. This is the only area where I found Freshbooks to have the edge—it provided a daily timeline where I could click on my start time, enter the duration, client and project and track my time visually. This meant that I could tell at a glance where there were gaps in my day and correct them accordingly.

FreeAgent allows me to add Timeslip entries, however it can get confusing quite quickly as there is no start time and no visual timeline. I have to rely on the running total of hours shown per day and try to work out the amount of hours to submit per task. So the interface isn't as intuitive as I would like, but the wealth of other extra features I have access to with FreeAgent does go some way to making up for it.

FreeAgent does also work out at around double the monthly subscription price of Freshbooks, which isn't ideal in my circumstances, but I do feel I am getting a better all-round product for the money.