How the Equali integration works

This article explains how the Equali integration automates your e-commerce bookkeeping in FreeAgent.

Benefits of the Equali integration

Equali simplifies and automates your e-commerce bookkeeping by automatically posting a full breakdown of your sales, refunds, taxes and fees to FreeAgent, for a faster, hassle-free month-end. It removes the need to log in to multiple payment portals and download settlement reports to manually reconcile.

The Equali dashboard gives you a clear view of every order and payment, including the results of automated reconciliations. See how your online business is performing in one place inside FreeAgent and focus on growth rather than spreadsheets.

How the Equali integration works

1. E-commerce bank account is created in FreeAgent

Once you connect your FreeAgent account and data sources, such as e-commerce platforms, marketplaces and payment providers, an e-commerce bank account will be created in the Banking area in FreeAgent for each marketplace. 

This is different from regular bank accounts in FreeAgent as it’s solely used to record the details of payments, refunds and fees from the marketplace. Read more about bank transaction explanations and how to set up a default bank account for FreeAgent settlement posting on Equali's website.

2. Equali captures your payment data

Equali will automatically capture your order and payment data and group the transactions by payout. 

3. Settlement and summary entries are posted to FreeAgent

When you’re ready to post a settlement to FreeAgent, simply visit the ‘Settlements’ page on the Equali dashboard to review a fully categorised breakdown of each settlement, then post directly to your FreeAgent account with confidence. Learn how to map FreeAgent's categories with Equali's ledger account ID's for a Settlement and set up automated settlement posting on Equali's website.

Summary entries will be automatically posted to the relevant marketplace bank account in FreeAgent. Each entry will be broken down into sales, fees, refunds and taxes, so it’s easy to match against your bank payouts and keep your VAT and year-end figures accurate without using spreadsheets.

4. Payouts from the marketplaces are posted to FreeAgent

When you receive the payout from the marketplace in your main bank account, it’ll be automatically imported into your main bank account in FreeAgent if you have a bank feed enabled. If you don't have a bank feed enabled, you can either upload the payout into your main bank in FreeAgent or enter it manually.

If you have Guess enabled, the payout will be automatically categorised as a transfer between the marketplace bank account and your main bank account. If you don't have Guess enabled, you'll need to explain the transactions as a transfer between bank accounts. This will clear the balance in the marketplace bank account down to zero.

With every settlement, for every marketplace, Equali will post a matching money out transaction to FreeAgent for the net amount of your payout from that marketplace. This will match the total value of money in transactions received into your main bank account from the marketplace. If the settlement from a marketplace results in a refund from your main bank account, Equali will post a matching money in transaction instead.

Learn more in the FreeAgent quick-start guide on Equali's website.

Adding VAT registration details

When you enter VAT registration details in FreeAgent, Equali will automatically recognise this and add VAT to income categories at the auto rate. Equali will check this with every settlement that they post and include VAT on transactions posted to FreeAgent going forward.

If you want to add VAT to transactions that already exist in FreeAgent from Equali within the VAT registration period, you'll need to edit the transactions to add VAT to them.