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We sell products as well as services, how would I manage that in FreeAgent?
I don't really want to mark this down as an expense as it isn't a cost incurred while working for a client, but a physical product they can purchase (e.g. a server).
I’m looking forward to an answer!
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In your bank accounts, the products you buy for resale to your client would be explained as 'Cost of Goods Sold'.
You could still rebill these to your projects (so that you actually remember to rebill them, for example) but you would just need to change each invoice item type to 'Products' rather than 'Expenses' once the 'expenses' had been added.
We could probably automatically do this if your expense was categorised as a 'Cost of Goods Sold' rather than some kind of admin expense, and now that you mention it we may just go ahead and do that.
Thanks for the great idea!
(We don't yet allow a markup to be automatically added, but presumably would you like to be able to do that?)
I’m hoping you found your answer...
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this answers the question
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Inappropriate?In your bank accounts, the products you buy for resale to your client would be explained as 'Cost of Goods Sold'.
You could still rebill these to your projects (so that you actually remember to rebill them, for example) but you would just need to change each invoice item type to 'Products' rather than 'Expenses' once the 'expenses' had been added.
We could probably automatically do this if your expense was categorised as a 'Cost of Goods Sold' rather than some kind of admin expense, and now that you mention it we may just go ahead and do that.
Thanks for the great idea!
(We don't yet allow a markup to be automatically added, but presumably would you like to be able to do that?)
I’m hoping you found your answer...
The company says
this answers the question
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Inappropriate?Wow.. the quickest response I think I've ever received to a product query! Thanks!
I think I get what you mean... I'll have a go and see if that fits my requirements. Adding a markup is a nice idea, as is automatically marking the expense as a product, if "expensing" your product is currently the way you do it... although it doesn't feel quite right for some reason.
As with quite a few of my initial experiences of using FreeAgent, it does what you need, but comes at it from a slightly different (often more logical) angle, you just have to unlearn the way that other system would do it.
Having said that, in this particular case, having a list of products that isn't tied to a particular project that I could add to invoices would be really useful though...
I’m impressed by the speedy response!
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Inappropriate?Hi Sid,
Don't forget that you can automatically rebill expenses directly to projects. This feature really comes in handy when working for clients on a "Time and Materials" basis.
Cheers,
Mike -
Inappropriate?I see, so I could go into an existing expense and just select to rebill that expense to another project without having to create an expense from scratch?
I'm starting to add in our records at the moment, so I'm guessing these points will become clearer once I've used it in anger. -
Inappropriate?Yes. That would have a similar effect to adding a line of type "product" to your invoice manually. It saves only a few seconds of your time, but it's a useful feature nonetheless.
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Inappropriate?From an accounting perspective - if I buy stuff to sell, shouldn't this appear on my balance sheet as an asset (not a capital asset)?
If I buy to order, then it probably won't hang about long enough to matter, but if I hold stock for sale to future (unknown) clients.....
I have this situation with a software house I am an agent for - part of the agency contract is that I commit to purchasing an initial stock. -
Inappropriate?As a start - can we have an Assets account set up? - at least that way, I could do a manual journal.
As far as I can tell - there isn't one at present (at least not in the pick list on the journal screen). -
Inappropriate?Actually, to be accurate - you have 'Assets' (in the sense that there's a balance-sheet heading) - so I suppose we actually need a 'Stock' account, which appears under the 'Assets' section of the Balance Sheet.
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This answers the question
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Charles - hmmm, there's a good reason we've not done this yet, and it's to do with how we account for when that stock is actually sold. We'd need to link a given invoice item to a particular cost value of stock.
This is pretty clearly outside our stated focus of service-based micro-businesses, but as I say we'll include a Stock category for you to journal to/from if that's enough for you... -
Inappropriate?OK - and I understand you need to keep focussed.
A 'stock' account would certainly help - In my specific case, I've got about £8K worth of stock, which will skew my end of year accounts if I cant recognise this as an asset.
Hopefully, this won't be a regular thing, so I won't need to muck about with journals too much.
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