Thursday, September 24, 2009

Escaping spreadsheet hell

Have you ever seen someone get excited about accounting software? Yes, I mean the kind of software for which you used to need a diploma in number-crunching and a PhD in bean-counting in order to be able to use it.

Enter PC Pro’s review of FreeAgent, the web-based accounting tool that I’ve joined as an investor and advisor earlier this year.

This is not one of those product reviews where someone spends an hour testing five different applications and writes a roundup afterwards. No, this guy has spent a year working with FreeAgent, so his opinion is extremely well-founded. The article gives a good overview of what FreeAgent is all about and why it’s so much better than Sage (which is or at least used to be the de-facto standard accounting software in the UK).

I urge you to read the full article, but if you want the conclusion only, here you go:

FreeAgent ranks in my top couple of web applications of any sort. As an extremely busy person, I confess to almost enjoying doing the accounts now!

It’s rare that I feel able to recommend a product unreservedly: this is one of those occasions. FreeAgent starts at £15 per month for a sole trader and, given the range of features and ease of use, could easily become your most important application for administering your business.

Congrats to Ed, Olly and Roan at FreeAgent Central for building such an outstanding product – and for managing to turn an extremely unsexy product category into something which people get excited about!