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Hi,
I want to be able to take deposits or part payments up front from my clients.
What would the best process be for me to do this within freeagent?
Cheers
Ryan
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I’m
hopeful
Accepting deposits/part payments
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I’m
happy
Hi Ryan. I have the same issue and the team are working on a credit function. IN the meantime I add the deposit under 'other sales income' and refernce it to the client/project. This allows me to reconcile the accounts with the bank balance. When I raise an invoice I then edit the 'other sales income' entry to a payment in respect of the invoice. This keeps the dates right and everything ends up all OK. More steps than I would like but does the job.-
Ryan Taylor February 22, 2009 20:30Hi, Were do I find "other sales income". Any work around for the time being is good for me. CheersEditDeleteRemove
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confident
In your chosen bank account select 'Add Manual Money In'
In the drop down menu next to Type, scroll down to the Money In bit and you will see it there -
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happy
Ah yes. I've found it. Thanks.
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Ryan, Rich
Yes, we're still planning to handle Deposits and Retainers more smoothly than this, but thanks for explaining the workround Rich. -
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So Ryan, am I right to assume that you do you not issue an invoice when you receive a downpayment? Do you send any kind of acknowledgement instead, like a receipt?
The way I've been dealing with this, as my clients tend to request an invoice, is that I issue a (non-payable) invoice upon receipt of the funds, so then I have an invoice to apply the deposit to. I usually take another payment mid-way through the project which I invoice for, and then a final invoice at the end. At the moment I just have to make the invoices out to reflect the percentage of the contract that is still billable, and I make these calculations myself, but I look forward to the day when this is built into Freeagent, which from what I hear the team are working on something.
There is also the added complication of the fact that the deposit should be counted as a liability as mentioned in this thread but I'm just going to ignore that for now, esp since I don't charge VAT ! -
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Emily,
That's how I was intending to do it yes. Just invoice the client with a non-payable invoice for the deposit.
It will be very nice when this is built in. :-) -
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Hi Ed
How's this issue coming along ? And when it is will the deposit be able to be visable and reconciled as a reduction on the invoice ? -
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I’m
hopeful
Hi Ed,
Any news on this feature you mentioned above to handle deposits? Do you have a timescale as to when you are looking to add it?
Cheers,
Chris ( Just paid my first payment to you! )
Vizioz Limited
Umbraco Development Blog -
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Just to follow on that I'm keen for this feature to be implemented too. Some of my clients pay by monthly standing order in advance.
Cheers,
Chris -
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I’m
waiting for a solution :)
I would really like this feature as well.. As a designer, I ask my clients to deposit a percentage before I start working, another percentage on approval of the website, and the balance when the site goes live.
If I create an invoice, adding payments towards that invoice, I'm going to be in trouble with the (due-)date of the invoice, since most of the projects are not done within the 30 days.
I would suggest that we can add payments towards estimates, and with or before the last payment the estimate will be converted to an invoice.
Thanks!-
Just ran into the problem that an invoice passed it's due date before I send it out for the final payment. Because I already received a payment, I can't draft it and edit it, so now I'll have to send an overdue invoice, while my client actually has 30 days to pay..
Can we PLEASE fix this? -
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I'm evaluating FreeAgent right now, and this is a critical feature for me too - like Mark above, nearly every one of my client engagements involves an advance deposit. Any word on when this may be supported? -
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I’m
hopeful
Any progress on adding this feature? I see it's been a year since this question was raised and it would be great to get an idea on when it will be available.
Keep up the great work! -
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Add me to the list of users after this feature -
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Just wanted to give everyone a status update on this.
Supporting deposits/part payments gracefully is something we want to do but it's likely (in fact necessary) to be part of a larger rework of how bank transactions are currently explained in FreeAgent.
This is easily one of the most complicated parts of FreeAgent, and there are lots of tricky details, which is why we've not done it sooner. Well that, and doing lots of other stuff too!
We have some great ideas about how this could be handled, and how this fits into a much larger improvement of bank transactions explanations, but this is a major undertaking and it could be a while off. I just want to be honest and upfront with everyone about that.
So, definitely still on the cards but it's more of a medium term goal. -
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I’m
patient and hopeful
Hi Roan,
How do you decide what to prioritize? Just wondering as this is something it seems quite a lot of your already paying customers are asking for and some have been waiting for it for over a year now ( including me ).
I am sure it is also something that new clients will require, can you maybe give us some kind of assurance that it will be completed within the next 12 months?
Cheers, Chris-
Hi Chris,
We prioritise features largely on what our users want. This has been a popular request, but if you look through this site you'll see lots of other things which people are equally enthusiastic about!
We just have to make a judgement call, based on the benefit a new feature will bring against how difficult the development will be. In this case it'll make the bank explanation process much easier, but the development overhead is large, which is why it has happened yet.
I can give you assurance that this area will definitely be improved, but we trying to avoid giving any timescales (no matter how vague) because we just don't know for sure when something will be worked on.
Sorry, if that's not as definitive as you'd like. -
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If you need to get client deposits working right away you should try http://www.xero.com. It's similar to FreeAgent but does offer this option.
I'm working on transitioning my account over to them and it's gone quite smoothly so far. The only downside is it costs $9 more for unlimited invoices and accounts.-
Sorry you're leaving us Tim, but you've got to go with a system that works best for you.
The reality is that while there are a bunch of really good online apps, none of us are anywhere near perfect yet.
It's just a question of what suits you best given your current circumstances, but we're all improving with each release. -
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hopeful
I found Xero was well developed for some things (like this), but lacks features I really find useful (and rely on) in FreeAgent.
One big omission in Xero is the lack of any proper quoting/estimating system. And there didn't seem to be any decent project management either.
FreeAgent's project management is fairly basic, but it's better than nothing and I'm sure it will be improved as time goes on.
I've looked at A LOT of alternative solutions to FreeAgent, and so far I've not found anything that delivers the same breadth of features. Most of them focus really heavily on one or two features but forget about everything else.
In my opinion, the most important features for systems like this are:
- Fast quoting
- Fast invoicing
- Credit control (nicely done in FA with reminder e-mails)
- Expense/Bill management and general book-keeping
- Tax calculation/compliance (and real time tax positions)
- Project/Job management
- Contact management (currently FA has a basic implementation of this - would be nice if it could sync to Google contacts / Exchange / LDAP)
- Flexible reporting to facilitate growth/strategy (okay in FA, but could be much better, e.g. revenue by account/code/service/product)
This particular issue can be worked around with credit notes. I agree it's not the best solution, but I also think that there are far more important areas FreeAgent developers should spend their time on.
The FreeAgent development team has just got bigger. This means more updates, more often. I for one am staying tuned to see how things pan out. I'm betting FreeAgent comes out on top.
Matthew-
Thanks for the vote of confidence Matthew!
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Hi All,
I agree with Matthew, however I also think it would be really useful to have some idea of what your roadmap is, you don't need to tie yourself to timescales (I am sure a lot of your clients are developers and would also agree with that) but it would be good to have an idea of where these things are on your priority list so we don't give up hope ;-)
Cheers,
Chris-
Would be great - but I suspect they don't want to give away their road map to competitors.
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Actually, after much discussion we are planning to be more open about our roadmap in the future, but we want to do it in a fairly unique way, and it's taking some time putting it together.
Can't give too much away right now, but stay tuned. -
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Good stuff guys...
Really appreciate the transparency at FreeAgent and how you guys are communicating. You're right that you can't please everyone, but you are pleasing a lot of people!
Just on the issue. Breaking an invoice down into multiple payments would be ideal. Its never something we've known how to do "correctly". So generally its just an estimate - then sending out a number of invoices. Sending one invoice which gradually gets paid - doesnt seem to really work. Also you have it showing up as overdue which is annoying!
I think all it would take for us - would be something like adding a "now due" amount - and the invoice would show up in FreeAgent as that amount...
E.g its a £10k project. You can specify to break this into multiple payment dates. And FreeAgent can send out phased invoices based on things like date or task or project completion.
That would be awesome!
Cheers
Colin -
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I think you've pretty much nailed what people are after Colin. For now I'm just creating 2 invoices, one for an initial payment and one for the remainder
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^ me too.....again a bit of a fiasco but it works.
(roll on a proper fix though!) -
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Ditto... Although I have to split my clients invoices into three staged payments, 50% up front, 30% on completion and 20% after the development has gone live and signed off by the client.
I also have one Estimate for the work which I then have to split into three separate invoices and manually work out the percentage split, which can be a pain if the estimate has a lot of lines as they want the invoices also reflecting the same details.
I then issue the first invoice and leave the other two in the draft status until we have reached the agreed point to invoice. -
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I’m
indifferent
Hi Guys,
Any update on the deposits/part payments situation.
I'm just getting to grips with Freeagent after moving from LessAccounting.
I would love to be able to do deposits/part payments properly!
Thanks -
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I usually take payments in a similar setup, deposit + mid payment + completion payment. I just send three invoices, stating "nth payment: x% of total fee %y" or something like that. Keeps it very simple as each incoming payment has a relevant invoice. Does this not suit you guys?
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If i currently raise 5000 invoices a year and want 33% deposit, 33% part payment and 34% final, it would mean my invoices rise to 15,000 a year and my paperwork, accounting, work load would all increase for the same revenue, not cool!
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Yeah its a good idea @memo, but I agree with @AJ, it just ads too much extra work, and the potential for mistakes to be made.
Freeagent really need a part-payment/deposit system.
Hopefully we'll get something soon. -
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You could just raise one invoice for the total, and then change the custom payment terms to whatever you want. Just set the actual payment terms to the expected length of the job.
Then when you get part payment on the invoice you can explain the transaction as partial payment on that invoice.
If you have to refund anything, just raise a credit note.
I don't see any issue with that.
However, there does become an issue if someone pays you and there is no invoice due, or you can't raise one. You can't explain the payment against anything. There needs to be an option to have the money explained as a payment on account or something.
Some of my clients are constantly overpaying stuff by mistake, and we're having to send the payments back to them rather than just keeping the cash and having it as a credit to their account which could be used on the next invoice for them. Doesn't help our cashflow.
Matthew -
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Hi Roan/Ed,
I was just wondering if there had been any progress on introducing a deposits feature into FreeAgent?
Ryan -
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Ryan, There is still no way to do deposits which is why I've moved over to Wave Accounting. It's free and it has been great for my business since making the switch in January.
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We've been discussing it internally recently and doing some planning.
I can't say when we'll be coding in anger but it's definitely on our roadmap for the future.
Sorry I can't be any more specific than that. -
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Roan, thanks for the update.
I'm happy to wait. Couldn't work without FreeAgent now so have no intention of moving elsewhere. -
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I’m
frustrated
Raising invoices in advance so you have something to allocate against is great but if you are VAT registered then you have the issue of potentially paying VAT over when it is not due yet.
This throws up another question if you are VAT registered which is, the tax point is either invoice date or deposit date if deposit is more than 14 days prior to the invoice date. How do you deal with that?
Other than raising additional sales invoices how do I allocate a part payment or payment on account? -
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Maybe it could be like a 'loan' account attached to a contact, they give you the money, it goes into the load account, when you invoice them then then money comes out of that account first? If only part paid then the invoice could reflext this and ask for the balance? -
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I’m
frustrated
Is there any progress on this issue? We are new users to Free Agent and this is the one issue which is causing us problems. looking at the age of some of these posts leads us to question the support offered to existing customers
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We do not seem to have seen any movement on this and it is a necessity to have this functionality. It is what you would expect as standard practice in any other system. Why has there not been an update on this or even a fix as it causes pain when sending out statements to customers and not all transactions are included because I have had to enter them into the contra account. This causes me to have to answer questions and queries from customers that could easily be avoided.
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