A look back at a big year

You asked? We delivered! This year, thanks to your suggestions to make FreeAgent work harder for you and your clients, we’ve officially ticked off some major updates and improvements on our 2024 to-do list. And we’re not stopping there - we’ve got even more planned for 2025!

In anticipation of the upcoming year, let’s dive into some of the things we’ve achieved together this year, as we continue to better serve you and your clients.

Mighty updates to cut down the daily admin

Updating your clients’ bank connections in bulk

This year we created a new ‘Bank connections’ page allowing you to view your clients' bank feed statuses in one place. Now, you can easily update all your clients’ connections in one go rather than navigating to each client’s account. In numbers, that translates to just three clicks to update your clients' bank feeds, down from the nine clicks it used to take for each individual client.

FreeAgent is the first accounting software to offer this functionality, and we’re delighted that this small change will make a big difference in how our Partners manage their banking admin.

Extending our capital asset and depreciation functionality

We’ve also taken our depreciation support up a gear by further extending our capital asset and depreciation functionality. You can now set default depreciation methods and capital allowance treatments for all new and existing capital asset categories.

To help you support your clients’ capital asset management and depreciation needs, we also added support for the reducing balance method of depreciation, assets that don’t depreciate and assets depreciating on a monthly basis. We also added support for asset lifetimes of up to 25 years when depreciating using the straight-line method and a more detailed capital asset report.

Changing your clients’ accounting year-end dates in FreeAgent

By popular demand, you can now update your clients’ accounting year-end dates in just a few clicks. Whether you’re changing a client’s first accounting year-end date or changing their accounting period, we’ve made it simple and flexible. Plus, sole trader clients can now align their year-end date with the tax year in light of the Basis Period reform.

Save time to better support your clients

Also, this year we focused on improvements that make managing invoicing and payments via the mobile app smoother than ever.

In November 2023, we launched Smart Capture, a tool that automatically extracts key data from clients’ receipts, matches it to a bank transaction, and uses AI to suggest a category. Many practices and their clients told us they wished Smart Capture could do even more to further support their day-to-day. That’s why this year we also extended Smart Capture to include bills as well as receipts, creating one clear process for all money-out transactions.

And for your e-commerce clients, we’ve made life easier too. They can now connect their Amazon UK Marketplace account to FreeAgent to save time and streamline their admin (and yours!).

Integrate with more market-leading software

Power up your practice efficiency with Engager.app

Launched at Accountex London 2024, Engager.app is an integration we know many of you had been waiting for. It will allow you to sync contacts, invoices and more between the two softwares, saving your practice valuable time and reducing potential errors.

We worked together with Engager.app on a deep partnership to deliver an integration that goes above and beyond most practice management and bookkeeping connections, bringing users game-changing task management features, with more to come in the future.

Detect and fix bookkeeping errors with Xenon Connect

Xenon Connect was another integration we were excited to launch at Accountex! Xenon’s core product, Xenon Exact, automatically detects any bookkeeping data that may have been entered incorrectly into FreeAgent, whether it’s unreconciled bank activity, old unpaid invoices or duplicate items.

You can filter through each detected item, and rectify the issue in FreeAgent. A bookkeeping health score is also calculated automatically based on the quantity and importance of your clients’ bookkeeping data issues.

Effortless invoicing with FreeAgent and Dext Prepare

This year we also updated and improved our integration with Dext Prepare. With this update, you and your clients can upload invoices to Dext Prepare, either individually or in bulk. Dext Prepare will then automatically extract the data and seamlessly generate invoices in FreeAgent, simplifying everyone’s daily admin tasks.

This integration not only saves time but also ensures accuracy, eliminating the need for manual data entry. In fact, Dext Prepare can also assist you in onboarding new clients onto FreeAgent with existing sales invoices, saving you from the hassle of manual recreation.

Building your digital toolkit is easier than ever

To make processes and workflows smoother and faster for you and your clients, we introduced a variety of other new integrations including Revolut BillPay, XBert, Buddy, Uku, Penfold, Corpay One, Adsum and more. We’re looking forward to introducing more integrations in 2025, so stay tuned for more to come! You can find the full list of supported integrations in our directory (new and improved as of this year!).

With 2024 coming to an end, we’re planning even more improvements in the upcoming year. If you’d like to find out more about any of these updates or discover how FreeAgent can boost your practice for 2025, book a call with your Account Manager by clicking on the ‘Your partner info’ tab in the Practice Portal. It’s easy and only takes a few minutes!