Here's a brief update on what's new with FreeAgent this week...

Handling Partner Discounts

We're really excited to have our two initial partners on board - the Professional Contractors' Group and Quay Accounting. We've added the facility to enter Partner referral codes when you sign up, to take advantage of the discounts these guys have arranged with us. Of course, you've already signed up, but if you're a PCG member or a Quay client, just let us know and we'll make the appropriate adjustments.

Trial Balance Export

By popular demand from our accountant friends, you can now view and export a 'Trial Balance'. If you don't know what that is, consider yourself lucky: it's just a way to get FreeAgent data into grown-up accounting packages like real accountants use. We currently support a Digita Accounts Pro CSV format, but if you or your accountant get in touch we can build whatever is needed pretty quickly.

Support for HBOS CSV Statements

We now support the CSV statement files you can download if you have an HBOS business account.

Accounting for the Flat Rate Scheme

Another tweak to your accounts when you're using the VAT Flat Rate Scheme. Non-technically speaking, the accounts are now more accurate. Technically speaking, we're now showing turnover as net of VAT, which, since we are calculating a Flat Rate Surplus as a form of income, is more correct than the more usual subtraction of the FRS liability from the gross value. We're assured this treatment is correct, and it has the bonus of showing you how much income being on the FRS is making you each year.

Bugs and Tweaks

Sorry about these, but:

• We squished a bug in the display of client accounts - overdue invoices were not being added correctly to the account balance
• Displaying Dividends paid when you have only one accounting year would, for some users, display the wrong year. Fixed.
• Timeslip Reports would sometimes omit timeslips from the first couple of days in the month, although when invoices were generated they showed up OK. Fixed.
• Bank Names with &-signs (ampersands) in them would cause invoice pdf generation to fail. Bad luck for all you Alliance & Leicester customers, but it's now fixed.

Subscribe Early, Subscribe Often

What can I say - we're really pleased to see all of you on board, but our children would really like it even more if you showed your support by subscribing - if nothing else it will mean they get some Christmas presents this year.

Remember, even if your free trial is not over, you won't lose out by subscribing early: the second subs payment will still occur one month after your free trial would have ended. The more subscribers we have, the faster we can make FreeAgent even better!