Hello, and welcome to FreeAgent. Thanks very much for signing up with us!
Before you can start to use FreeAgent properly, there are a couple of things you must do. These will only take a few minutes and will help you get the most out of the software’s sophisticated accounting and sales tax features.
When you first log in to your new FreeAgent account after activating it, this is the screen you will see.
Click the blue “Get Started Now” button to start.
Step 1. Company Details
The first step is to confirm your FreeAgent account type and put in some basic information about your company. Fields marked with red asterisks must be filled in, the rest you can leave blank.
FreeAgent account type
The type could be either Universal, if your business is based outside the UK, or UK-based businesses have a choice of four account types: UK Sole Trader, UK Partnership, UK Limited Liability Partnership and UK Limited Company. Make sure you’ve chosen the one that matches your business.
This article is for Universal businesses. UK businesses start here.
Address
Fill in your business address details. These details will appear on the invoices you create in FreeAgent so make sure they’re correct.
Then click Save and Continue to go on to the next step. Or if you don’t have these details to hand, at any time in the Getting Started process you can click Go Back to return to the previous step.
Step 2. My Settings
At step 2, choose, from the drop-down list, which format you’d like to use to enter dates into FreeAgent when you date your transactions. If you keep the default “dd mmm yy”, your dates will show as, for example, “25 Dec 09”.
Choose your business’s main currency from the list. Set your time zone, and choose the default language for your business.
If you’re going to be tracking distance travelled, decide whether you want to do that in miles or kilometres.
Click Go Back or Save and Continue.
Step 3. Accounting Dates
Now it’s time to enter your accounting dates.
1. Company Start Date
The first, the ‘Company Start Date’ is the day the business officially started.
2. First Accounting Year End Date
The second 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.
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 third date is your FreeAgent start date, 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 sales tax period, 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. Or if your business is new, it may be the same as the company start date.
You shouldn’t enter any transactions dated before the FreeAgent start date, and all your opening balances will be as at that date too.
Then click Save and Continue, or Go Back.
Step 4. Sales Tax Settings
The next screen is where you fill in your sales tax information.
Not Registered
If your business isn’t registered for any sales taxes at all, choose “Not Registered” from the drop-down list.
Registered
And if your business is already registered for sales tax, choose “Registered” and fill in the details.
If you don't have the details to hand, choose "Not Registered" so that you can finish the Getting Started process, but remember to fill in your details before you issue any invoices.
FreeAgent can handle one or two different sales taxes.
Step 5. Bank Account
The final step is filling in your bank account information.
This is important, because in many ways banking lies at the heart of FreeAgent. It’s by analysing what goes in and out of your bank that FreeAgent builds you a true picture of your business’s accounts.
The only compulsory fields here are the account name, and the opening balance.
Account name
Give the account a name such as “Bank of America Current Account” so that it’s easy to identify this account later, if you put in more bank accounts.
Business and personal accounts
By default FreeAgent assumes that all bank accounts are business bank accounts. But if you haven’t yet opened a dedicated account for your business, you can tick the box to make this a personal account. Be careful that this doesn't make you fall foul of your country's tax regulations.
What’s the opening balance?
The opening balance is the balance as at the start of the day on your FreeAgent start date - which is the end of the previous day. So in this case, I would look at my bank statement as at 31st December 2008 and take the balance as at the end of that day, to put in here.
Sort code and account number
If you want to take advantage of FreeAgent’s quick and easy categorisation of your bank transactions by uploading your statements electronically from Online Banking, you’ll need to fill in your bank account’s sort code and account number. If you don’t want to do this, just leave these boxes blank.
Once you’re done, click Save and Finish to start using FreeAgent!
You’ll be taken to the Overview screen.
What should I do next?
Here are some suggestions:
- Click on Settings, click Company Logo and upload your logo, which FreeAgent will then automatically put on to your invoices.
- Choose a template for your invoices using our Theme Gallery.
- Import your contacts, that’s your customers and your suppliers, from Outlook, Gmail or Mac Mail.
- Browse our comprehensive knowledge base for lots of helpful articles to get you started, for example: