Tim's dashboard

A comment on the problem "Profit and Loss account for sole trader doesn't show salaries paid" in FreeAgent Central:

What I'd really like is for FreeAgent to leave our payroll alone! It doesn't seem to be able to handle things like student loan deductions, for example; so I'd rather it just left us alone, and treated our 'Net Salary' transactions in the same way it treats all of our other expenses. Its insistence on us using its payroll system or nothing at all means that we're having to prepare our accounts manually, as it's throwing them off with inflated profits. – Tim, on June 10, 2008 11:31

A comment on the problem "Profit and Loss account for sole trader doesn't show salaries paid" in FreeAgent Central:

What I'd really like is for FreeAgent to leave our payroll alone! It doesn't seem to be able to handle things like student loan deductions, for example; so I'd rather it just left us alone, and treated our 'Net Salary' transactions in the same way it treats all of our other expenses. Its insistence on us using its payroll system or nothing at all means that we're having to prepare our accounts manually. – Tim, on June 10, 2008 11:31

Tim replied on May 27, 2008 11:18 to the problem "Profit and Loss account for sole trader doesn't show salaries paid" in FreeAgent Central:

> Is there maybe a way we could make it easy to bring payroll data into FreeAgent?
That might be the best way. Trying to set up payroll now doesn't help us with our 07/08 accounts, as it only lets us enter a start date in the current tax year.

Also, we would need to edit each entry that FreeAgent payroll generates for us, as it doesn't do student loan repayments.

Tim replied on May 27, 2008 10:51 to the problem "Profit and Loss account for sole trader doesn't show salaries paid" in FreeAgent Central:

We've been able to categorise payments to users as 'Net Salary' for some months now, but those payments don't show up in our profit and loss account. So we end up with inflated profits (and thus higher tax!). All the other payments we make show up under their correct headings, but not Net Salary.

Tim replied on May 27, 2008 10:23 to the problem "Profit and Loss account for sole trader doesn't show salaries paid" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks, Ed. Looking forward to it.

Tim reported a problem in FreeAgent Central on May 16, 2008 15:11:

Profit and Loss account for sole trader doesn't show salaries paid

I'm looking at our Profit and Loss account, and have noticed that the salaries paid to our employees are not showing up, thus giving us false figures. I wonder if FreeAgent is assuming that sole traders can't be employers as well. If so, can we get this sorted?

Tim reported a problem in FreeAgent Central on May 16, 2008 11:21:

Adding 10 items to an invoices causes the order to be muddled up

I'm preparing a big invoice for a client, and when I add the 10th item to it, the order of the items gets muddled up.

Tim replied on May 16, 2008 09:08 to the idea "Sort clients alphabetically in the clients tab" in FreeAgent Central:

Excellent Olly, thanks.

Tim replied on May 07, 2008 11:08 to the idea "Sort clients alphabetically in the clients tab" in FreeAgent Central:

Olly, thanks for the quick reply. The way you are currently sorting is exactly the way I would like it sorted, except that what you've described doesn't match what I'm seeing! All our clients have an organisation name defined, and yet they are all jumbled up alphabetically, both in the list under the Client's tab, and the menu list when new invoices are created.
UPDATE: They are, however correctly sorted in the list that appears when I click on the 'Summary' item at the top of the list of clients. (PS. The summary item could do with being differentiated from the rest of the list stylistically, as it just looks like another client name).

Tim shared an idea in FreeAgent Central on May 07, 2008 09:56:

Sort clients alphabetically in the clients tab

We have about 20 clients, and it often takes me a while to find the one I'm looking for in the client's tab because they don't seem to be sorted in any particular order. Just a simple alphabetical sort would make my life a good bit easier.

A comment on the question "How do I specify the date on which invoices recur?" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks Olly, but I want to send the invoice today. So it needs to have today's date on it, then recur again every year on the 1st of January. I'm guessing I just need to send the one I've made, then create a copy of it and do what you said with that one. – Tim, on April 24, 2008 15:49

Tim asked a question in FreeAgent Central on April 24, 2008 15:18:

How do I specify the date on which invoices recur?

I'm creating some invoices which I want to recur every year on a certain date. However, FreeAgent will only let me create invoices which recur on today's date. So for example, if today is the 24th of April, and I want to set an invoice to recur every year on the 1st of January, how do I do it?

Tim replied on March 11, 2008 11:37 to the problem "Invoice Creation: Selecting the right project is painful" in FreeAgent Central:

There is one minor change I'd suggest to these menus:
The way it's currently grouped, you have the client name, then all the projects for that client. But each project has the clients' name repeated, which makes it a bit harder to scan the list and find the right project.It would be clearer with just the project name.

Tim replied on February 21, 2008 12:28 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Roan, this sounds really interesting, but can you confirm whether we'd be able to adjust the HTML as well, or just the CSS? We're quite familiar with Rails view templates, and having the ability to edit the HTML would give us much more control over the layout than we'd get with just ediiting the CSS.

Tim reported a problem in FreeAgent Central on February 21, 2008 12:19:

Invoice printing bug

This is an issue that was sorted in a previous release, but has crept back into the system:

When I've finished writing up an invoice, I 'Save As PDF', then send that to the client, then 'Mark as Sent'. However, the PDF has 'DRAFT' all over it, so I can't send it. So I have to 'Mark as Sent' before I've sent it to get a decent PDF. As I said, this issue has only crept back in quite recently. The default behaviour used to be that any invoice you saved as a PDF would look presentable for sending to clients.

Tim replied on February 21, 2008 12:11 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

Ultimately we'd like total control: being able to put what we like, where we like. But I understand that giving us that much flexibility will be really hard for you. Showing and hiding certain elements sounds like a halfway solution, and I think we'd prefer a really good set of non-customisable templates to the current one with the option of hiding certain parts.

We'd be happy to get our design guys to send you over an example template (in HTML, AI or PDF), if you were interested. If that would be helpful, just drop me an email.

Tim replied on February 21, 2008 11:07 to the idea "customising invoices" in FreeAgent Central:

We would also really appreciate the ability to customise our invoices. One of the design agencies we work for has been teasing us about the presentation of our FreeAgent invoices (recently the various elements don't seem to be aligning properly). This is probably our number 2 request (second to having an API).

Tim replied on January 30, 2008 16:41 to the idea "hyperlinks to receipts" in FreeAgent Central:

The question of how easily we can integrate FreeAgent with the rest of our record-keeping systems is going to be absolutely crucial for us in determining how much we use it going forward. Personally, I would love to be able to create hyperlinks to our invoices and receipts, but assuming we're not going to get that, can you give us any idea as to when the API might be available?

Tim asked a question in FreeAgent Central on January 29, 2008 11:26:

What happened to subcontractor costs?

Maybe I'm imagining this, but I'm sure there used to be an expense type called 'Subcontractor Costs'. I'm trying to find a category for the money we pay to our developers, and there's nothing. So they're in 'Sundries'. It doesn't seem quite right, somehow.

Tim reported a problem in FreeAgent Central on January 24, 2008 12:46:

No option to specify other countries than those in 'the list'

One of our clients is based in Jordan. It's not on the main list of FreeAgent countries, but neither is there an 'other' option, to let me enter it myself. His invoicing address is therefore 'Amman, Jordan, United Kingdom'. What should I do?