Emily's dashboard

Hello Simon,

No problem at all. Please don't hesitate to ask if you get stuck with anything else.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Simon,

May I translate the accountantese into plain English for you!

When you enter, for example, a bank payment in FreeAgent, you pull up a list of categories and choose which one your payment belongs in. For example if it's a book of stamps, you'd put it into postage.

That category for postage is what accountants call a "nominal ledger account" for postage.

The answer to your accountant's question is that you can't create new nominal ledger accounts in FreeAgent! We've set up what we hope are all the categories you'll need.

But there is always room for improvement so, to save you having to play piggy in the middle between two accountants, your accountant is very welcome to post on here too, or to contact me direct by e-mail on emily[at]freeagentcentral[dot]com, and let me know which accounts he/she feels are needed.

Thanks very much!

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Simon,

No problem at all. If you have any further queries, please don't hesitate to come back to us.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Simon,

No, it shouldn't make any difference other than on this screen if you leave the dates how they are.

If your accountant has any queries when he/she checks your records, then do please feel free to put him/her on to us.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Simon,

What I would do to avoid this view is to re-date your expenses as 8th May 2008 (your company start date). Then you should see them showing as owed to you rather than showing as negative and then 0.

Does that help, please?

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Simon,

I'm FreeAgent's in-house accountant - may I help (and it won't even cost you a mince pie and a sherry :-) ).

What you need to do is to take out the expense liability balance, because it sounds like you've put this in under Users?

To take this out, click Users, click on your name and change the Expenses figure to 0.

Your trial balance should then balance.

Could you let me know how that goes, please?

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Adam,

Yes it does indeed.

Kind regards,

Emily – Emily, on December 17, 2009 17:12

Hello Mikkel,

We would certainly consider this and I have added it to our to-do list. I can't promise it'll happen soon as we're currently working hard on other areas (such as foreign currency) but I do think it's a great idea.

Thanks for suggesting it - please do keep the feedback coming.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Paul,

OK, that's fair enough and I think it's a wise move, because there are a lot of transactions you couldn't put in yet.

Have you already signed up and paid, or are you still in a free trial? If you've paid then I will ask my colleague David to mark your account as free until May so that you're not paying for software you're not using.

Could you please let me know your FreeAgent URL if that is the case (feel free to e-mail it to emily[at]freeagentcentral[dot]com if you prefer, to keep it private).

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Jacob,

The short answer is, no they're not!

The accounts in FreeAgent are intended for management accounting and as a starting point for your year-end accounts, but they're not in the format required by Companies House - either for an LLP or a Ltd company.

You'd need to ask your accountant (if you have one) to put them into the statutory format - or else use a separate package such as VT to do it yourself. But we do advocate using an accountant in conjunction with FreeAgent, particularly for incorporated businesses like yours.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Celine,

No problem at all. If you get stuck with anything else then please don't hesitate to ask.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Celine,

OK, there are a few issues here.

Firstly, just for your information, you can in fact enter pre-registration bills that you can claim the VAT for into FreeAgent as a normal bill - so long as they are within the time limit as set by HM Revenue and you put VAT on them, FreeAgent will pick them up.

Secondly, what HM Revenue expect you to do if you get a VAT return wrong is not to correct and re-do that VAT return - it's to correct the mistake on the next return (unless it's over £10,000 worth of VAT in which case you have to write to them separately).

But I can understand why you did it that way, in order to make your credit card reconcile. And so long as you can explain it to a VAT inspector if you get a visit, then you should be fine.

What I would do now, then, is to manually adjust the figures on the next VAT return you do, so that this return and your last return "net off".

So for example:

Your return to 30 Nov 09, when you initially prepared it on FreeAgent, showed a refund due of £1,000.

You submitted that to HM Revenue and they have paid you £1,000.

But then you edited your FreeAgent VAT return and it now shows that you were actually due £1,250.

When you prepare your next VAT return, once you've got the figures from FreeAgent, you'd need to add £250 to the figure in box 4 (and therefore the figure in box 5 would also be different).

So let's say that FreeAgent, for the quarter to the end of February 2010, showed that you should be paying £600.

You take those figures and edit them outside of FreeAgent (don't try and change the February return in FreeAgent). Once you've taken the £250 off, you're left showing that you should pay £350 - so you pay £350.

These two returns would then "net off" like this:

Filed return to 30 Nov 09 shows (£1,000) refund
Filed return to 28 Feb 10 shows £350 payable
Net amount (£650) refund

FreeAgent return to 30 Nov 09 shows (£1,250) refund
FreeAgent return to 28 Feb 10 shows £600 payable
Net amount (£650) refund

So the two amounts net off and at the end of February everything is square.

Does that help, please?

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello,

Our answers crossed in the post there!

Don't worry, you're not an idiot at all and, as you say, your question may well help other newbies who aren't sure how to do this.

If you get stuck with anything else please don't hesitate to ask.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello,

Don't worry, there is a simple way to do this.

Click on Banking, and on the menu under the graph, click on the account that has a gold star next to its name (this is the primary bank account).

You'll see on this screen your bank details - and a tick box saying "Show these details on invoices".

Untick this box and save your changes.

Your draft and future invoices will then not show your bank details.

Does that help please?

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello,

Stuart is quite right - if the laptop was in the accounts as a capital asset (which from your second point, Wolf, it sounds like it was) then you do need to show the proceeds from the insurer as disposal of that asset.

If it were treated as an expense then you could either show the proceeds as a credit to insurance, or as a credit to the "Computer Equipment" or "Computer Hardware" account.

Thanks for jogging us along about the problems you've been having, Wolf - we are aware that there are issues we need to straighten out with the tax computation and capital assets pages, and will get those done for you as soon as we can.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Wolf,

Different accountants would answer this question in different ways!

Personally I'd be quite happy to see it as a credit in your insurance transactions, but your own accountant (you're one of Stuart's clients, am I right?) may disagree.

So I'd probably suggest you check with Stuart and see what he thinks.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Kevin,

Another thought - if you should have historically charged VAT on postage then strictly speaking you're liable to pay that VAT over to HM Revenue even if you didn't charge it to your customers...

Sorry to be such a harbinger of doom :-(

Kind regards,

Emily

And further to my message yesterday, we're glad to say that FreeAgent has now been updated to be ready for the change.

Kind regards,

Emily

And further to my message yesterday, we're glad to say that FreeAgent has now been updated to be ready for the change.

Kind regards,

Emily

Hello Kevin,

I know - VAT is a minefield! The number of little rules and loopholes just beggars belief.

If you have any further queries please don't hesitate to ask.

Kind regards,

Emily