The FreeAgent Blog

Last week, we talked about how to make your business more efficient, so this week we’re carrying the efficiency theme through to an area you might not have considered - the brain. Here’s some of our favourite mind hacks to help you work more efficiently.

What are your favourite brain hacks? Hit us up on Twitter or leave a comment with any that we’ve missed. And have an awesome weekend!

It may seem like a lifetime ago, but it’s actually just been a week since the Self Assessment deadline passed.

Were you one of those people who left their tax return until the last minute, meaning you had a mad dash to get it filed with HMRC before the deadline or potentially had to pay a fine to the taxman? Or were you one of those incredibly organised folks who followed our Chief Accountant Emily’s Self Assessment checklist and completed everything well in advance of January 31st?

It’s estimated that more than 10 million people in the UK fill out a tax return every year during Self Assessment season, including legions of small business owners, freelancers, sole traders and directors of Limited companies. But despite this high number, we rarely see any reports showing how people who file Self Assessment returns - and, in particular, those who run very small businesses - actually feel about the whole process.

That’s why we decided this year to do some research of our own to find out what small business owners really think about Self Assessment. We got in touch with polling experts YouGov and asked them to work their magic for us, and they quizzed 500+ owners of businesses that have five or fewer members of staff with questions about Self Assessment.

When the results came back, we found that:

• 21% of people said that they were anxious about completing their tax return, while 5% said they were terrified. In contrast, just 35% said that they felt confident about going through Self Assessment.
• 52% of people surveyed admit that they would either pay a professional bookkeeper or accountant to complete their tax return for them, and 4% said they would ask a friend or family member for help.
• Many people often leave submission as late as January, with 46% estimating they’d complete their returns within the month before the deadline and 16% within the final week. A further 2% even admitted that they’d miss the deadline completely.

It’s interesting to see how the results show Self Assessment remains a stressful experience for many small business owners. The process is meant to be quick and easy to complete, but it’s clear that many people still don’t feel confident about filling out their tax return themselves and have to rely on help to complete their Self Assessment.

On the one hand, this could highlight that the Government needs to do more to simplify the tax system and make the Self Assessment journey even easier for the UK’s millions of small business owners. But we think it also suggests that many people would find it more beneficial to use an online accounting system to manage their business finances, as this could make filing their tax return much easier.

As more small businesses and freelancers embrace cloud accounting in the coming years, we hope to see them becoming less anxious about their Self Assessment - while also feeling empowered about completing their tax return and filing it to HMRC on time. As far as we’re concerned, tax season should be a far less stressful and worrying time than it currently appears to be.

All figures, unless otherwise stated, are from YouGov Plc. Total sample size was 529 owners or partners in micro businesses. Fieldwork was undertaken between 18th - 31st December 2012. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted based on FreeAgent Figures to be representative of microbusinesses in GB.

The survey deliberately focused on microbusinesses, and spoke to business owners or partners of companies with 5 members of staff or fewer.

Managing your books just got a whole lot easier with the automatic import of bank transactions into your FreeAgent account.

Sometime back in the late Cretaceous period we announced that development had started on Bank Feeds. Since then, tectonic plates have shifted, civilisations have risen and fallen, and all the while, work has continued inexorably on Bank Feeds.

The year is now 2013 and the great news is the coming of Bank Feeds is now upon us. But is it such a big deal?

Yes, this is a big deal!!!*

Bank Feeds automate the process of importing bank transactions from your bank into FreeAgent. Instead of downloading and uploading electronic statements, just connect FreeAgent to your online bank account and we'll automatically import your transactions every day. It's a truly massive time saver, and one that removes a huge source of friction when managing your accounts.

We've actually had a link with Barclays Bank for some time, and the feedback we've had from people using this has been amazing.

To enable a wider wave of bank feeds we’ve partnered with Yodlee, one of the leading global providers of online banking solutions, who enable us to provide feeds for many different banks at a stroke.

Getting started

From your Bank Account page just click the Enable Bank Feed button.

When you set up a new feed you will need to enter your online banking login details. FreeAgent doesn’t store these but Yodlee will securely store them in order to regularly import your transactions. It's important to note that this is all Yodlee are able to do with the credentials - there's no access to any other online banking functions.

Depending on the bank you might be asked some security questions (like your cat's maiden name), and that's pretty much it. The setup procedure can take a while - up to 5 minutes - so there's time to watch the finale of Dirty Dancing again. Treat yourself.

Once that's done, you'll be notified that the feed has been enabled and you should start seeing transactions, going forward from today, imported into your account within 48 hours. You'll see a notification of the current status of the Bank Feed in the right hand column.

Which Banks are supported?

For the initial release we’ll be supporting about 40 UK and US banks:

More will be added over time so if yours isn't listed then don't panic.

And now the bad news - if your online bank uses one of those password gizmos (called multi-factor authentication in the trade) then we won't be supporting these for the time being. This includes HSBC, but we're working on this.

Any questions?

Of course you do - that's only healthy, which is why we've put together a bunch of Knowledge Base articles describing how to set up Bank Feeds, and details about what is actually happening behind the scenes.

Take a good look through before you set up your feed.

Is this thing turned on?

If you can't see the option to enable Bank Feeds then don't worry. We'll be rolling this out gradually over the next few weeks, just to make sure everything is humming along nicely. So if you can’t see it today then it will be coming soon, as we add more people and new feeds.

Until next time, Roan and the team at FreeAgent

* And I’ll use exclamation marks with reckless abandon to prove it.

Being efficient is one of the most important things a business can strive for, so this week, we’re looking at some great ideas to improve efficiency that are still in the works, but could have a big impact on small businesses in the coming years.

Think we’ve missed out some amazing new technology that’s going to help the world be more efficient? Hit us up in the comments or on Twitter. And have a great weekend!