Ed Molyneux's dashboard

Charles,

We're certainly planning to get round to it, but it's probably a nice-to-have from an accounting point of view. Four years of accounts produced by my former accountant (who shall not be named ;0) never once included such a thing so I assume their other 8,999 clients' accounts didn't either.

BUT - we want to do better than that, and we do have the data to do it, so...

Your point about a 'don't rebill' flag on timeslips is noted and that's the way we'll probably go (plus a 'don't rebill outstanding' action).

Profit reports for jobs? Yes! But you guys will keep on suggesting things that are more important (reminders, bills, multi-currency)...

Point taken!

Thanks, Ed.

If you create 'unbillable' tasks - then you again run the risk of losing information entered on the timeslip if you have to change the task.

USE CASE: I do some work, intending to bill, but something transpires (dispute with the client, or something) that then means it cannot be billed. So. the timeslip would not have been marked as an unbillable task on initial creation. I'd hate to lose the task information against that timeslip, as it again impacts the record I have of the cost of the job, and makes it harder to review the job history at a later date.

My own preference would be a new property for the timeslip, rather than altering the behaviour of an exisiting property.

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I'm not sure why writing-off one timeslip should automatically cause all subsequent timeslips to be flagged as written off.

If I was closing the job, then I would agree, but there could be any number of reasons why one part of the job could fail, while others continue to progress.

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On a more general note - this all suggests to me that FAC doesn't have a concept of a Work In Progress Ledger. Unbilled time is outside the accounts part of the system, more or less as a set of memorandum records until they are billed. (or am I wrong?)

This also means that WIP doesn't appear on the Balance Sheet - again a deliberate decision on your part, I'm sure, but it could be argued that my accounts are skewed if WIP is not reported at year end.

By the way - I just noted that a conversation on accounting for WIP has already happened here ....

http://getsatisfaction.com/freeagentc...

Did anything happen off the back of that?

If you do start assigning a value to unbilled WIP (which is what we're all talking about), then the process of write-off is basically a process of settign that value to zero....

We could also then use this data to do things like warn when the overall job billing (Biling to date + predicted WIP bill-value + recoverable expenses) exceeds the budget figure for the job.

AND THEN...

We can start to talk about assigning a COST value to the timeslip, as well as a SALES value, and generating profit reports for jobs!

Thanks for the info. I will be using the Payroll page.

After a few days wih your system we have decided to use it exclusively for our new partnership.

With the exception of 'Bills' (which I understand is coming soon), FAC has everything that we need!

No it won't, but it won't reflect the correct VAT treatment either unless your cash accounting for VAT. Real Bills handling is coming soon! – Ed Molyneux, on August 29, 2008 08:03

Jim P,

Thanks for making contact. Development for our multi-currency invoicing is well underway but we don't expect to be handling multi-currency banking for a while. It's significantly harder and we need to do some more research into the most usable way of doing it.

Sorry if that's not the answer you wanted to hear just now.

Stuart,

Caution: Accounting Jargon:
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Those journal entries are exactly what are automated by our payslips (and we have salary accounts for each user which should be used instead of Trade Creditors, so that when payments are made they correctly reflect the amounts owed). And yes, our payslips are dealt with in the more accurate way as far as the P&L is concerned - the entries are posted on the payslip date not when the salary/PAYE leaves the bank account.
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Accounting Jargon Ends

It's much easier to create 12 payslips than make 48 journal entries for the year, even in the event that our simple payroll calculator does not cover their situation.

Lewis feel free to drop me an email (ed at freeagentcentral dot com) if you a hand setting this up...

I would do it by journal entry:

Debit Salaries with Gross pay
Debit Employer NICs with Employer NIC
Credit Trade Creditors with Net pay
Credit PAYE/NI with PAYE & NIC owing to HMRC

The wages cheque should be analysed as Trade Creditors and the HMRC cheque as PAYE/NI.

The advantage of doing it this way is the expense is shown when it arises rather than when it is paid so the P&L account is more accurate especially if you pay your PAYE quarterly.

I also need the ability to have a bank account that's in a different currency from my 'base' currency. For example, I have a UK bank account for my UK clients and a Danish bank account for my clients here in Denmark. I'm currently having to ignore the references to 'kr' (kroner) in my UK account in FreeAgent and pretend they're UK pounds. However, that messes up the profit and loss and other general accounting functions...

Charles,

We've spent some time here at FreeAgent Towers discussing this today. Thanks loads for your detailed feedback.

What we'll plan to do, probably, is introduce a way of marking recorded time as unbillable - either by allowing you to create tasks which are unbillable or by having a permanent 'unbillable' task for each project.

The write-off function is another option - any timeslip might be flagged as unbillable whatever the task, and this single action would flag all remaining unbilled timeslips as such.

For the above, we'll need to consider which solution will be easiest to use for most people.

We'll certainly allow you to navigate directly to the expense from the project page, or at least be able to click something to 'not rebill on this project'.

On the expenses page we do show (in the small print) which items are rebillable and which are rebilled, thus

GNER KX-MK Travel -> Client A: Project A

GNER KX-MK Travel -> Client A: Project A on CA0023

..but it's not as clear as it could be, I agree. Traffic lights may well be the answer.

Rich,

As we've discussed on email now, we've tweaked FreeAgent to not require the whole account is setup (bank accounts and all) but only that the company details and accounting dates are in.

In truth, we can probably relax this requirement too if we're more careful about how we collect user details, and we'll aim to tidy this up soon.

Thanks for bearing with us...

Rich, can you email me (ed at freeagentcentral dot com) with your account name and I'll take a look straightaway...?

Hi Ed,

I've set up all the company stuff. All opening balances are £0 as it's a start up.

Rich,

That option is not visible until you've completed the company setup (accounting dates etc). One reason is that there are some opening balances related to each user which don't have any meaning until FreeAgent knows what date they relate to...

Bills feature most welcome when it comes.

Thanks Stuart - That makes sense :)

I'm looking forward to 'Bills' appearing as a new feature. It would be great to add a new bill as soon as it comes in, and be able to see how much I owe out at any one time.

You could use a journal entry. Date it on the last day of your year and only enter the net of VAT amount (it's simpler & will avoid problems with your VAT returns)

Debit Expense account
Credit Trade creditors

Don't forget to reverse the entry on the first day of your new year, ie

Debit Trade creditors
Credit Expense account

PS Would someone at FAC confirm using Trade Creditors won't throw anything else out of balance please?