FreeAgent efficiency hacks for busy businesses

This article explains how to use some handy FreeAgent features to save time on your daily admin.

FreeAgent contains lots of powerful features designed to help you to save time on everyday admin. Read on to find out how to streamline your invoicing, expense management and banking and for some other pro tips.

Saving time on invoicing admin

To save time on your invoicing admin, you can create price lists and recurring invoices, set up invoice email templates, and enable online payment options.

Price lists

Speed up your invoicing by creating price lists to quickly populate your invoices.

Then, to save you entering all the details each time, autofill the line item details from your price list when you’re creating an invoice or recurring invoice profile.

Recurring invoices

Speed up your invoicing for repeat customers by setting up a recurring invoice profile to automatically create your invoices.

Invoice email templates

Save time on your invoicing admin by setting up email templates to automatically email the invoices to your customer, send them reminders, and send them a thank you email once they’ve paid the invoice.

Once you’ve set up the templates, simply tick the relevant option when creating your invoice or recurring invoice profile.

Payment options

Get paid faster and more efficiently by setting up payment solutions like PayPal or Stripe for card payments.

This will save your customers from having to organise a bank transfer or write a cheque and can simplify your admin.

Simply select the relevant option when you’re creating an invoice or recurring invoice profile, and add a payment button to your invoice emails, or share a payment link digitally via text or WhatsApp.

Saving time on expense management

Speed up the process of managing your expenses by using Smart Capture to automatically extract the date and amount from your receipts.

You can take a picture of a receipt or upload a file, individually or in bulk, and Smart Capture will attempt to automatically extract the date and amount. It will then attach the file to a ‘Money out’ bank transaction, if one exists that is marked ‘For Approval’ and has a matching date and value.

Alternatively, if there isn’t a matching bank transaction, you can quickly convert the file into an out-of-pocket expense or bill, and Smart Capture will automatically extract the date and amount and suggest a cost category.

Saving time on banking admin

Streamline your banking admin with FreeAgent’s Guess feature, and by approving and explaining bank transactions in bulk.

Guess

Speed up your banking admin by using FreeAgent’s powerful Guess feature to automatically categorise new bank transactions.

For example, Guess might see that you typically explain Costa Coffee transactions using the ‘Accommodation and Meals’ category. If FreeAgent then detects a Costa Coffee transaction imported into your account, Guess will automatically suggest an explanation of ‘Accommodation and Meals’ to save you time.

Approving and explaining bank transactions in bulk

Speed up the process of approving bank transactions that Guess has correctly categorised by selecting multiple transactions on a page and selecting ‘Approve X explanations’.

To select all the transactions on a page quickly, tick the checkbox for one transaction and then tick the box that appears to the left of ‘Date’, just below the time period drop-down menu.

Speed up the process of explaining bank transactions that Guess has been unable to categorise automatically, by explaining them in bulk. This can save you time when reconciling your bank transactions.

More pro tips for saving time

FreeAgent’s search functionality and Radar feature can also speed up your daily admin.

Search functionality

Search your FreeAgent account to quickly locate specific bank transactions, invoices, bills or out-of-pocket expenses.

For example, if you wanted to see everything that was paid for as ‘Hotels’, select the magnifying glass next to your business name and enter ‘Hotels’ in the search box.

This will display all bank transactions, invoices, bills and out-of-pocket expenses that contain ‘Hotel’.

This is really useful if you want to query any payments when reconciling your bank and can help speed up the process of explaining transactions, making any amendments or looking for information.

Radar

Stay on top of your business admin by using Radar to receive tailored insights into your business’s performance and news of the latest updates.

Select the bell-shaped icon beside your company name in the top-right of the screen to access the Radar area.

Admin-To-Do notifications

New tasks will be shown under the ‘Admin To-Do’ tab.

Radar notifications

New Insights and product updates will be shown under the ‘Radar’ tab within the drop-down menu.