Ed Molyneux's dashboard

Ed Molyneux replied on November 03, 2009 09:49 to the question "profit and loss so far overview chart" in FreeAgent Central:

Tony,

Sorry for the confusion - yes this was a change introduced recently when we 'upgraded' our accounting engine.

But we've got a lot of feedback like yours that we need to have an option that shows the current 'year-to-date' period like we used to. We're working on a further change which reinstates this option and we'll be testing and then rolling this out in the coming days.

Hope you can bear with us...

Ed Molyneux replied on November 02, 2009 11:14 to the problem "Bank Accounts Summary chart shows -ve balance" in FreeAgent Central:

Iammac,

Hmmm, yes - we've had this reported to us from elsewhere this morning too.

Sorry for the inconvenience - we're taking a look right now.

Ed Molyneux replied on October 30, 2009 11:19 to the question "How can I adjust my bank balance without affecting my accounts?" in FreeAgent Central:

Ben,

We now relate all the bank balances to your FreeAgent start date. So you just need to get the appropriate statement to find out what that amount was.

Or if you opened the account after you started using FreeAgent, the number will be zero.

Ed Molyneux replied on October 30, 2009 09:52 to the question "Add repair/service/maintenance expense category" in FreeAgent Central:

Olly,

Wow, sorry this has taken too long to answer.

Yes, it's a good idea and we'll aim to add that in for our next release.

Ed Molyneux replied on October 25, 2009 21:20 to the idea "Development/Feature Request Voting" in FreeAgent Central:

Jason,

You're right: we've been pretty bad at expectation management so far (and I'm the guiltiest of all of us, I'm afraid).

The problem is that a published, democratic roadmap is not the answer. Our priorities are constantly shifting, seemingly unconnected features can sometimes have significant dependencies, and even with a 4-6 week release cycle we still can't develop as fast as we would like.

We are certainly influenced in our prioritisation by the feedback of our existing and potential users. We hear loud and clear that for many people our lack of multi-currency accounting is a showstopper. But user feedback is only one of many, many factors which determine the next feature we choose to develop, and it's actually only just after each release that we finalise the features of the following one.

From a user point of view - when you have a pet feature requirement in mind - we know that can be frustrating. I regret that. But from a business point of view it's important that we can 'turn on a dime' sometimes.

Publishing a roadmap which has been democratically arrived at, with promised delivery dates, would be a significant inhibitor to our business. I'm sure you wouldn't want that, and it's no coincidence that none of our competitors offer this either ;->

We really are working very hard to make FreeAgent better all the time. And we will get round to everything important in the end.

Ed Molyneux replied on October 20, 2009 19:24 to the question "Overtime line on payslip" in FreeAgent Central:

Emz,

Sorry, in a further update (now that I've _actually_ consulted the team ;-<) it's going to be Sunday or Monday night for the next release.

But it'll be worth it!

Ed Molyneux replied on October 20, 2009 16:53 to the question "Overtime line on payslip" in FreeAgent Central:

Emz,

Our next release has been slightly delayed for some additional testing - sorry about that.

It should happen in the next couple of days now - I hope you can bear with us - we are keen to make sure the new functionality is robust...

Ed Molyneux replied on October 15, 2009 15:11 to the question "Invoice item, item quantity type?" in FreeAgent Central:

djwhisky,

Sorry, it's not something we've got round to yet, as you've noticed. One complexity is the fact that different templates use different column widths, so it's not totally straightforward.

Anyway I can see how it would look much neater without that extra column, we'll certainly bear it in mind.

Ed Molyneux replied on October 15, 2009 15:05 to the question "PAYE payroll HMRC online filling" in FreeAgent Central:

Gavin,

You can of course use the HMRC's own online service to file even in advance of FreeAgent having that capability.

Yes, it would be much easier to file direct from FreeAgent and that's certainly where we're heading...

Ed Molyneux replied on October 12, 2009 09:14 to the question "VAT not showing up in VAT report for a bill that is paid off in instalments" in FreeAgent Central:

Gareth,

Just following on from what Emily said:

We're rolling out some improvements to the accounting engine later on this week (or early next week at the latest), one of which is that pre-registration transactions are indeed included properly in that first VAT return.

If that's too late for you then, yes, I'm afraid an adjustment may be required. Either way, we're really happy to help out directly if you're OK with giving Emily access to your account by adding her as an accountant user...she could check things through...

Ed Molyneux replied on October 07, 2009 21:24 to the idea "20% tax deduction on labour - subcontracting" in FreeAgent Central:

Tom,

I think if you have employees already, you'll be registered to pay PAYE/NI/CIS together right?

In that case just explain the balance of the payment as a refund of PAYE/NI for now (so two explanations which add up to the total amount you paid the subbie - the invoice paid in full and the refund of PAYE).

Then when you pay the HMRC you'll add that deduction into your payment and the PAYE account will balance out.

Give this a go, and we'll get our heads together once our cool new Tame Accountant Emily is back from her hols next week and validate that it's correct.

Ed Molyneux replied on October 07, 2009 14:28 to the question "Cost of sale items not affecting taxable income figure" in FreeAgent Central:

Ed,

Sorry, we've just checked this out and you're right - when we added Equipment Hire as a new category we forgot to map it to an equivalent Self-Assessment category (they're different).

We'll get that fixed in time for our next release (next week hopefully) and sorry for the confusion in the meantime.

Ed Molyneux replied on October 06, 2009 20:00 to the question "Adding Capital Assets" in FreeAgent Central:

Toby,

Sorry, we don't. It's probably a fairly unusual situation but we'll bear it in mind as we improve our accounting engine...

(and Phil we really haven't forgotten you - it's best to create a new 'bank account' to represent that HP account and purchase the item from there, making the repayments as transfers from your business account...soon we'll support real Loan and HP accounts...)

Ed Molyneux replied on October 05, 2009 12:54 to the question "Invoicing between 2 dates." in FreeAgent Central:

Tim,

FreeAgent only includes time and expenses which have not yet been invoiced and which are dated on or before the invoice date.

If you need only to consider items prior to the invoice date, create the invoice (selecting to include time and expenses) for that earlier date, then go back and change the date to the real one (but don't add in any more time or expenses).

Hope that helps...

Ed Molyneux replied on September 30, 2009 10:03 to the question "How to adjust corporation tax computation for tax free online filing incentive" in FreeAgent Central:

Luke,

Thanks for the bump.

We'll take a closer look at what we'd need to change to make this work right (normally it'll be something small but critical, but there are a lot of tasks like that in our to-do list!) and aim to get this changed in the next-but-one release...

Ed Molyneux replied on September 28, 2009 12:01 to the question "Overtime line on payslip" in FreeAgent Central:

Emz,

Yes, will be before the 20th.

Ed Molyneux replied on September 28, 2009 11:48 to the question "Overtime line on payslip" in FreeAgent Central:

Emz,

In our next release (in a couple of weeks' time) you will be able to edit payslips to show an Overtime line.

You won't yet be able to recalculate the tax/NI due taking that into account just yet I'm afraid - manually editing payslips (to add the Overtime amount) means you're bringing in calculations from some other system - but we're aiming to make the payroll system more comprehensive in the future.

Does that work?

Ed Molyneux replied on September 28, 2009 11:22 to the question "vat interval change" in FreeAgent Central:

Steve,

We have a release going out in 2 weeks or so. The ability to manually adjust the VAT period dates will be in the one following that, so some 4-5 weeks later.

Thanks for bearing with us...

Ed Molyneux replied on September 24, 2009 19:29 to the problem "Opening balances wrong in "Accounting" section." in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Colin,

FreeAgent stores totals for the accounting section to make the pages load faster. Normally these are invalidated (and recalculated) when things change, but it looks like that didn't happen in this case for some strange reason.

We've now cleared out the stored numbers so all should be present and correct. Can you let me know that it looks right from your end, too?

In fact, we're revising the way we handle these accounting calculations in FreeAgent for our next release (in a fortnight's time or so), so this should not recur after that.

But sorry for the inconvenience and confusion in the meantime.

Ed Molyneux replied on September 24, 2009 12:08 to the question "How do I print a payslip (salary advice)?" in FreeAgent Central:

kamster,

Not at all - just add extra users as 'employees' and you'll be able to select them from the drop-down list of employees on the payroll screen.

Does that work for you?