Accounting dates

As part of the Getting Started process, you'll be asked to enter three dates: the Company Start Date, First Accounting Year End Date, and FreeAgent Start Date.

Here's a bit more information about each of these dates.

1. Company Start Date

The ‘Company Start Date’ is the day the business officially started.

For sole trades and partnerships, this will be the day it began trading, as notified to HMRC.

For limited companies, it’ll be the incorporation date as shown on the certificate of incorporation, which is issued by Companies House.

2. First Accounting Year End Date

The ‘First Accounting Year End Date’ will be used by FreeAgent to set the year end for future years too.

So if your first accounting year finished on 31st December 2009, FreeAgent will work out your accounts to 31st December 2010, 31st December 2011, etc. and produce reports ending on your first accounting year end date and for each year after that.

For most (but not all) sole trades and partnerships, the year end date will be 5th April, to coincide with the tax year, so unless you know differently, use this date.

For limited companies, this will be a year from the end of the month in which you started the company.  So if your company start date was 5th March 2010, your first accounting year end date would be 31st March 2011.  This applies unless you've filed a form with Companies House to change your accounting date.

If you're not sure what your year end date should be, then ask your accountant.  Don't worry, you can change the date later.

3. FreeAgent Start Date

The ‘FreeAgent Start Date’, is the date from which you’re going to start keeping your books on FreeAgent.  It might be today's date, or you might decide to start keeping your books on FreeAgent as from a new VAT quarter, or (perhaps the easiest because you'd be able to easily collect opening balances from your accountant), the start of a new accounting year for your business.

You shouldn’t enter any transactions dated before the FreeAgent start date, with the exception of capital assets, and all your opening balances will be as at that date too.

For more information about the FreeAgent start date, new businesses start here or start here if your business has been trading for a while using a different bookkeeping system and you've only now decided to put it on to FreeAgent.  (Good choice!)

That's a bit more about the three dates you're asked to put in as part of the FreeAgent Getting Started process.

If you're not sure what any of these dates should be, then speak to your accountant, or contact us by e-mailing support@freeagent.com