Charles's dashboard

Ed Molyneux replied on June 13, 2008 12:14 to the question "VAT Flat rate scheme" in FreeAgent Central:

@richallum,

Yes, indeed it does - the VAT section of My Settings allows you to select what Flat Rate Scheme you're on (if any) when you first set up VAT on FreeAgent (and which is used to create any current and historical VAT returns).

(note that you'll need to select 'Registered' as your VAT status to see this field).

For each VAT return in FreeAgent, you can edit the FRS settings (choose Edit Details on the VAT Return page itself). When a new VAT period starts, a new return will be created using the same settings at the most recent one.

richallum replied on June 13, 2008 11:49 to the question "VAT Flat rate scheme" in FreeAgent Central:

Can I just check - does FAC support the flat rate scheme as I can't see any reference to it in the VAT section of My Settings.

Roan replied on April 02, 2008 09:14 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Just to give everyone a heads up. We're introducing our new invoice gallery with this week's release. This means you can now choose, and even swap on the fly, from a gallery of new invoice designs.

You can set a default template for all your future and draft invoices or change it on an invoice by invoice basis. It's a very flexible system.

We're really proud of this new feature, and we hope you like it too. We will be adding to the number of available templates in the coming weeks, and remember you can always create your own with our Invoice Devkit.

Have fun!

MarkF replied on March 15, 2008 15:01 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Roan - yes that's what I mean!

Thanks I'll give that a try.

Regards
Mark :)

Roan replied on March 15, 2008 09:40 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Mark,

Thanks for trying out the devkit.

Are you talking about the space between the invoice amount table and the Payment Details/Other Invoice blocks below that?

You should just be able to add margins to the bottom of the invoice table to push the content below down.

Try something like this is your CSS:

#invoice-amount{margin-bottom:30px}

MarkF replied on March 15, 2008 00:34 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi,

just saw that the DevKit has been released!

One thing, how do we get a decent space between the last invoice line and the other details at the bottom of the invoice so that it isn't all bunched up on the page?

Whew it gets printed or PDF'd, all the space is at the bottom of the page?

Thanks
Mark :)

Olga replied on March 03, 2008 23:30 to the question "I need to allocate 2 invoices to 1 payment" in FreeAgent Central:

Thank you, everything worked this time.
I will have to remember it next time...

Ed Molyneux replied on March 03, 2008 08:50 to the question "I need to allocate 2 invoices to 1 payment" in FreeAgent Central:

Olga,

Only Sent invoices (not Draft, and not Paid) are shown in this list. If there are no Sent invoices to shown, we don't display the Invoice Receipt option.

I agree that this is confusing, and what we should do is display the Invoice Receipt option, but display a message showing why it's not possible to create an explanation of that type. We'll get on the case...

Once you have some invoices of that type, you can follow the procedure above to allocate the payment - a series of explanations each of the appropriate invoice amount.

Olga replied on March 02, 2008 23:14 to the question "I need to allocate 2 invoices to 1 payment" in FreeAgent Central:

I have a similar problem. I often receive a single payment for several invoices.

When I select an unexplained payment and click question mark to select a payment explanation, in the drop-down list for 'Set Type' I do not have an option: 'Invoice receipt'.

I can see in the credit section the following options:
Refund; Money Received from User, Transfer from another Account, Disposal of Capital Asset, Other Money in.

Which one should I choose, and why do I not have an option 'Invoice receipt?
I find this part very confusing, having spent half an hour trying to figure it out.

Could you please explain how to easily assign 1 payment to 4 invoices, possibly with different dates?

Thank you in advance

Roan replied on March 02, 2008 12:24 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi MarkF,

Some sort of customisation is definitely just around the corner.

Last week we sent out an "invoice devkit" to a small number of users, mainly web designers and developers. This will allow them to create new invoice templates, which we'll use as the basis for an invoice gallery within FreeAgent.

This means you'll have the option of choosing from a range of well designed invoice templates. It'll be fairly small at first, but we hope to expand this over time.

In the long run we'll be looking at ways that will allow you to further customise chosen templates, but at the minute our priority is the invoice gallery. We should have this available in the next couple of weeks.

I hope this is sufficient for you. Get in touch with me at roan[at]freeagentcentral[dot]com if you'd like to learn more about our devkit.

MarkF replied on March 01, 2008 22:36 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

HI guys,

any progress on this?
Sorry to hassle, but my trial is ending soon and it would be good to know that customisation (in some form) is just around the corner!

Regards
Mark :)

Ed Molyneux replied on March 01, 2008 21:18 to the idea "Automatic calculation of commission to referrers" in FreeAgent Central:

Charles - I think we're increasingly needing an 'advanced options' area for projects, and this could well form part of that.

We'll let you know how thinking progresses on this, especially if others are interested.

Ed Molyneux replied on February 29, 2008 11:07 to the question "I need to allocate 2 invoices to 1 payment" in FreeAgent Central:

Charles,

Yes, it sounds like we're not explaining it very well.

When you get a free moment could you drop me an email: ed at freeagentcentral dot com? It would be great if I could talk you through it and work out exactly which step is causing the problem.

Charles started following the question "I need to allocate 2 invoices to 1 payment" in FreeAgent Central.

Charles replied on February 29, 2008 10:54 to the question "I need to allocate 2 invoices to 1 payment" in FreeAgent Central:

Hmmm - I've tried this about three times, and I'm still not sure it's working. (or at least not working like any other bookkeeping system I've seen).

I assume that 'create an explanation' means use the pencil icon to edit the credit transaction, but if I edit the 'credit value' amount, then it no longer reflects the value of the cheque. When I save the edited details, I don't see the 'original transaction' any more - just an altered version of the original.

Can I request some work on this area to make it more intuitive?

It would be nice to have a simple list of open invoices that I could tick to allocate against the credit (or enter an amount for a partial allocation).

Charles shared an idea in FreeAgent Central on February 29, 2008 10:39:

Automatic calculation of commission to referrers

Are there any plans for commssion/finders-fee payments to referrers?

Example: I receive a referral from a fellow freelancer, and we agree that I pay a percentage to him from fee income for that job..

I can do this manually, but being able to log this (probably at the project level) would be quite nice, so that I don't forget to pay the commission, and so I can take this into account with my own budgetting.

As a refinement - In some cases, we might agree an upper limit on the amount of commission paid, (i.e. I pay 10% commission up to a maximum of £2000)

Commission could also be a pre-agreed amount (again ideally recorded against the project)

Roan replied on February 21, 2008 12:39 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

I think in the first instance it'll just be the editing CSS. Letting users edit rails templates opens up a pandoras box that will send our developers into fits.

The HTML template should be well set up, with enough "CSS hooks" to allow you to be fairly flexible with layout and positioning. If it isn't then we can make adjustments at our end to suit.

This is early days stuff for us, so I imagine there will be a bit of to-ing and fro-ing to get the perfect solution for everyone, but hopefully you guys can get something out of it.

Tim replied on February 21, 2008 12:28 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Roan, this sounds really interesting, but can you confirm whether we'd be able to adjust the HTML as well, or just the CSS? We're quite familiar with Rails view templates, and having the ability to edit the HTML would give us much more control over the layout than we'd get with just ediiting the CSS.

Roan replied on February 21, 2008 12:19 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Ok, we've been having a bit of a chat about this amongst the team, so how about this for an offer:

We'll provide our existing HTML invoice template for any users interested in making their own bespoke CSS invoice templates, which will be integrated back into their respective accounts.

Additionally, if you're willing for the invoice template to be added to our upcoming invoice gallery, and the template meets our high standards, then we'll give you 2 months free FreeAgent use.

It'll be kind of like a CSS zen garden. Except for invoices.

Sound like a good idea?

Get in touch with me at: roan[at]freeagentcentral[dot]com if you're interested.

Tim replied on February 21, 2008 12:11 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Ultimately we'd like total control: being able to put what we like, where we like. But I understand that giving us that much flexibility will be really hard for you. Showing and hiding certain elements sounds like a halfway solution, and I think we'd prefer a really good set of non-customisable templates to the current one with the option of hiding certain parts.

We'd be happy to get our design guys to send you over an example template (in HTML, AI or PDF), if you were interested. If that would be helpful, just drop me an email.