One of my ex-colleagues at Stink Digital put me onto Free Agent Central, a nifty web service for managing your business online with  estimates, billings, earnings et al.

The Free Agent service makes it ‘super easy’ to run your business, or at least appears to, which is why it is handy they provide a 30 day FREE trial to test your woes.  It didn’t take me long to get signed up and set up, that’s for sure, but then this is where the fun begins.  Cutting to the chase:

Great Service for UK Business

Commerce no longer readily respects national boundaries, though Free Agent seems to steadfastly pinned to the outline of of the British Isles.  The service is very clearly and squarely aimed at freelancers who work in the UK and who perform 100% of their business functions within UK borders. To their target audience, usability aside, Free Agent Central performs a flawless service, but the greater the percentage of your revenue that comes in from overseas, the more annoyed you will become with Free Agent.

The lack of a blanket coverage of support for multiple currencies really sucks.  You can easily estimate and invoice in 2 or more currencies, tying in the costings and billings to the XE.com data taking the pain out of having to track the FOREX market rates yourself, but that’s pretty much where it stops. Importing data form your bank accounts or Paypal, gets butchered.  All transactions return as UK points at an exchange of 1 to 1, despite the currency being included int he files, and when filling in your own expenses, whether for foreign trips or purchasing software online in another currency, you have to convert it yourself which either means using the present day exchange or waiting for the transaction to hit your statement.

Things To Watch Out For

The major hurdle of multiple currency flaws aside, there are a few other annoying things I didn’t like so much about the service:

• Non-Taxable Income – If as a freelancer you end up working for your previous employer.  They are legally obliged, as I understand it, to deduct tax as source, given that moving from permanent to freelance could be seen as a “tax avoidance” scheme.  To this end, your corporation tax will end up getting totally miscalculated in the system.
• Invoice Themes – There is a mismatch between the HTML versions of the invoice and the PDF that gets generated, and there this no way to create your own styled themes for them.  No doubt any designer would be annoyed by this, though I suppose it is not the end of the world.  A properly and legally formatted invoice is of course ultimately key.
• Site Search & Reporting – It would be super handy to have company wide search for all kinds of resources and the ability to build some custom reports from them.  Of course you can export data out of the system and use something like Crystal Reports or Excel to do the same, but it obviously adds complexity.
• Help Systems – In system help is rather sucky, and Free Agent are using Get Satisfaction for ticket track et al, which is fine to a degree, but I wish the basic and first line of support was a lot more effective.  That being said the are definitely responsive and don’t ride rough shod over security and privacy for it – plus points to Free Agent!

Otherwise Great

I understand that any service has its shortcomings, and the reality is that Free Agent Central is the perfect solution for a UK-based business and the prospects for its future look rosy and great. I would definitely recommend it to anyone steadfastly set in the UK, but beyond that, it has to sort out major flaws for those wishing to use it as a 100% of their accounting solution.

I suppose the added advantage of their focus on the UK market is that they really know their UK Tax and Accountancy inside out.  This  means they can provide extensive and useful information and tools to that end.  The Free Agent blog provides a dearth of information for newbies and old timers alike.  Allowing you to keep abreast of what is going on from budget-to-budget.

My Wish-list for Free Agent Central

Having used the service for almost a month now, the following are a few of the items I would love to see in Free Agent Central.  No doubt they will be coming, now that the company has received a round of funding, but I will write them down anyhow:

• Multiple Currencies – First and foremost is for the system to be able to handle multiple currency for every kind of resource in their system, from estimates, to bills, to bank accounts etc.  According to a support specialist I spoke to, this functionality is in the pipeline, but they are not able to disclose any road map.
• Email Alerts – The system makes it easy for you to auto-email your clients, something I loathe, as I run a personalised business, not a monolithic corporation.   On the flip-side, however, I would also like to be alerted when recurrent invoices and other events occur in the system and re-act accordingly, rather than being forced to log-in to do so.
• Flexible Invoices - It would be nice to be able to configure invoicing payment details and other things by territory, and to be able to enable and disable elements for different contacts.  US payment details for US clients and the same for UK clients, makes sense.

So there you have it.  Draw your own conclusions and feel free to ask any questions you have about my own experiences, or go sign up here!