Probably number one in the PITA list of any business owner is the drudgery of the constant admin that’s required. You’ve had a great, but busy, week and you’re looking forward to your day off, maybe a couple of glasses of wine with your partner, a night at the cinema, a day at the park with the kids. Then you remember that you’ve got the weekly accounts to do and you can forget doing anything other than this for the next few hours.
Not if you’re an Acumenica client. With the power of FreeAgent (free to all Acumenica clients) you can be out of there in jig time. Here’s our top five ways to nail the admin and get your day (or night) off back on track.
- Synced up bank transactions
Tracking your bank transactions manually or using a spreadsheet can be a major drain on your time. Fortunately, Freeagent can pull all of your bank transactions into your accounting system automatically.This is easy, time efficient and super-secure
- Smart bank reconciliation
Once your bank transactions are in the system, the potential for tedium continues. Reconciling your bank account – the process of making sure your accounting records match the money in the bank – can take forever.
But FreeAgent can “guess” your transactions. It intelligently categorises or ‘explains’ your bank transactions based on existing information in your FreeAgent account, matching up bank transactions to the appropriate bill or invoice and you have to do is approve the transactions.
- Scan (or email) bills and invoices straight into the system
Instead of manually copying each line of your receipts, bills or invoices into your accounting software, our system analyses and extracts the important information so you don’t have to.
A quick photo or scan is all it takes to get the data from the receipt in your wallet to accurate usable data on FreeAgent. You can even provide your suppliers with a dedicated email address to send invoices straight into the system with no work from you at all.
- One click VAT and payroll filing
Once all your data is in, you can file your VAT and PAYE returns with a single click of your mouse. FreeAgent is MTD ready and HMRC recognised, ensuring filings happen without a hitch.
- Automatic Invoice Reminders
If you haven’t had to chase a customer about an overdue payment, you should count yourself lucky. The Credit Protection Association reports that the average small business in the UK chases five outstanding invoices at any given time, wasting up to an hour and a half every day.
To help solve this problem, we’ve included the ability to set automatic late payment reminders in FreeAgent. You can set these reminders to be sent as soon as a payment becomes overdue. FreeAgent can then re-send the reminder a few days later if your customer still needs an extra nudge. On the bright side, you can set FreeAgent to send automatic thank you emails when you get paid.
Use FreeAgent to stay compliant and manage the books, and Acumenica to provide the insight and expertise.
And that’s not the half of it: on average, Acumenica clients spend just one hour a month on their accounts but they still have all the vital financial information at their fingertips resulting in more profits, lower tax bills, and less headaches.
If you want to reduce your paperwork even further, talk to us about The Big Blue Envelope. Throw all your invoices and statements in an envelope every week or month, and we do the rest.
