FreeAgent Update - Release Côte de Beaune

What and Why?

It's been a hive of activity here at FreeAgent Central Towers. Here's why:

Beta Developers' API

We're finally exposing the first part of our beta Application Programming Interface with this release. If you don't know what that means, relax. It's just that a multitude of keen geeks are just about to make your life even easier with cool new ways of getting to your FreeAgent data.

If you happen to number among the keen geeks, like us, you'll be interested in the documentation on our API Developers page.

We're just getting started with this stuff, so we have some authenticated, RESTful, CRUD access to Users, Clients, Projects, Tasks, Time and Invoices. You'll also be able to access XML versions of our Invoice and (UK only) Tax timelines.

Next up (once the dust has settled from this lot) we'll be looking at Bank Accounts and associated Bank Account Entries and Transactions, plus more Tax and Payroll support.

We'll talk more about some cool ways of using the API later this week.

Main Tabs Changes

We've moved all that messy Accounting stuff into its own tab finally, and taken the opportunity to reorder the others a little. Sorry if this throws you a little for a few days, but we think it makes more sense now.

Guessing Explanations

FreeAgent now only attempts to guess explanations for the most recently uploaded bank transactions, rather than guessing all unexplained ones as it used to.

That should make things more predictable if you normally leave a few items unexplained here and there.

UK Accounts: Balance Sheet

We're moving ever forward on the industrial-strength accounting engine which is at the heart of FreeAgent (yes, even inside that curvy VW Beetle exterior!).

We've replaced the previous informal balance sheet with a 'proper' Balance Sheet generated from the accounts. Not as pretty to look at right now, and we're needing to improve the speed next (there's a lot of numbers a-crunching under there) but the real thing nevertheless.

For the Balance sheet to 'balance', the various company opening balances (Settings > Opening Balances as well as those for Users and Bank Accounts) need to balance to start with. You may well need your accountant to give you these, and also do get in touch if we need to broaden the scope of our opening balances to get things working for you.

Export Trial Balance Transactions

Your accountant can now export a CSV file of all the transactions that make up the Trial Balance (Accounting > Trial Balance > Export Transactions). The 'key' to the nominal codes is also downloadable as a CSV file from the same page, so they should have no problem mapping our codes to whatever system they're using.

That's it for now. 'Til next week, keep it real,

Ed & the Team at FreeAgent Central.