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Since stepping into the unknown world of running a business; it quickly become apparent the enormous challenge that would become of managing that business. It seemed all too easy setting up the company with a little form filling, a quick £40 payment and that was it - all done; but not quite!

After browsing the web for a simple solution to online accounting and invoice management, I was introduced to FreeAgent. FreeAgent is an online accountancy application that takes the stress out of managing your books, estimate and invoice writing and tracking your time spent on projects. In short, FreeAgent helps you run your business and gives you time to spend on what matters to you; in our case - developing websites!

Save time

Possibly the best thing I love about FreeAgent is the simplicity behind sending invoices and drawing up estimates. You can easily brand and design custom templates through their easy to use template system and you can even send the invoice/estimate directly from FreeAgent using your email address, thus, saving time in the way of downloading the PDF and writing the email. You can also choose to template your emails by using taglines replacing certain chunks of code e.g. [project_name], [total_value] etc so you don't have to type the email out each time, therefore, you can spend time getting your email template right and let FreeAgent take care of it going forwards.

Keep your books up to date

Another great feature that I'm particularly fond of in FreeAgent is the ability to upload your bank statements. Simply download a bank statement from your online bank and upload to FreeAgent. Once your statement has been uploaded, simply choose what each payment relates too e.g. Internet Hosting, Accountancy Fees and then the magic really starts to happen; FreeAgent automatically generates a number of accountancy information ranging from Profit & Loss forecasts, Balance sheets, Dividend vouchers and much more. No more time spending in Excel drawing up your reports and figures, FreeAgent does it all for you on the fly - you can even share this information with your Accountant online! You can find out more about banking, accounting and other great features by viewing the tour section of the FreeAgent website.

Taking a salary out of your business?

When I came to set up my payroll ready to take a salary from the business, I assumed I'd need to look for another web app or word template to create payslips. How wrong was I!? Of course, FreeAgent already have payroll and salary setup and it's as simple as setting your tax code and when you were taking a salary from. FreeAgent create your yearly payslips and detail how much tax, NI and Employers NI you have to pay and this matched perfectly with my accountants salary forecast! Holding these details on FreeAgent means you get handy overviews of how much tax you're due to pay to HMRC and it links in with the above step on the banking side.

There are so many great tools that FreeAgent have to offer, we highly recommend that anyone looking to setup a new business or simplify the running of their business to sign up to FreeAgent and take their free trail. By using our referral code, if you decide you cannot live with FreeAgent (as we couldn't!) both parties get 10% off your subscription.

So go on! Try FreeAgent today, if it helps you as much as it's helped us you'll never look back!