FreeAgent Update - Release Mascarpone

Here's the latest update on what's new with FreeAgent.

Business and Staff Entertaining.

Apparently Christmas is a-coming. Clearly we'll be too busy fine-tuning our invoice layouts to celebrate, but some of you might be considering such things.

We've added Business Entertaining and Staff Entertaining to the categories. Although Business Entertaining is non-deductible for tax, we don't yet factor this in when we calculate the appropriate tax returns, so use caution initially. However the category is there so you can correctly identify all these transactions.

Staff Entertaining, on the other hand, can be deductible as an expense (and reclaimable for VAT), although you should read about the limits on what you can spend. Speak to your accountant, but as a guide £150 per head for a Christmas Party is allowed. Should just about cover the cost of taking the Company Secretary out to his favourite restaurant...

Paypal Accounts Handling

We've added support for Paypal Accounts, which you can now add from the Bank Accounts Summary page.

If you download the CSV statement from Paypal, you get the payment transactions stated after the Paypal fee has been taken off, and no separate transaction to indicate this fee. This makes it difficult to match the payments to invoices.

The fee charged is in fact described in that CSV file, so we now part-explain the transaction for you, with the fee added as a Bank/Finance Charges entry and the remainder (higher) amount being the true charged value.

New Profit and Loss Calculations

Building on recent changes to the way we build the company accounts (first seen in the new Trial Balance screen), we have reworked the Profit and Loss screen.

This is now much more accurate, and properly reflects the way a double-entry set of books would be put together. I know, you and I might not be that interested, but our accountant friends certainly are.

We've also tweaked again or Flat Rate Scheme VAT handling - turns out if you handle turnover as net and overheads as gross of VAT, you can calculate the FRS Surplus without subtracting unreclaimed VAT on expenses. Quite apart from anything else, it's not unreclaimed - you've declared the gross value as expensable. Duh.

Bank Account Changes

We've removed the annoying 'Bank Name' from the Company Details, and added a Bank Name to each Bank Account. It's optional, but if you include it on your primary account it will be displayed on your invoices as usual. The name you had already set up in Company Details has been automatically transferred to your primary account.

First VAT Return

We corrected the VAT calculations when the VAT Registration Effective Date did not coincide exactly with the start of the first VAT period. Previously, some pesky pre-registration invoices could have sneaked in there.

Invoice States

We now allow any Sent invoice to be 'rescinded' - that is, made draft again. If it has been paid or part-paid, you will need to remove those payments before you can rescind it.

If you do this, be careful to ensure you keep a proper sequence of invoice reference numbers in case the tax man comes calling. It's the Law.

We're working on adding some restrictions to what you can do with invoices, to make it easier to audit your finances later, but rest assured we'll make it as minimally annoying as we can.

Wee Bug-ettes

Sorry, but:

• If you created an invoice item of type 'Comment' and left the quantity or price fields empty, FreeAgent wouldn't stop you but it caused an error every time it tried to work out the invoice value. Now fixed - you can leave the fields blank and it just puts in zeroes.
• Partly written-off invoices were being completely omitted from the accounting calculations. Not any more.

Coming next week, if all goes well: Recurring Invoices!