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FreeAgent's insights from Accountex

19th May 2015
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Award-winning accounting software for small business owners and their accountants and bookkeepers.

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Thanks to everyone who came to see FreeAgent at Accountex last week - the team were there in full force and spoke to hundreds of accountants over the two days. Here are some insights that they brought back.

Straw poll - is phasing out tax returns a good idea?

The government’s announced plans to phase out tax returns are a hot topic in the accounting industry right now, so FreeAgent carried out an informal poll at our stand to take the temperature at Accountex. The view on day one seemed pretty balanced, but the No’s voted overwhelmingly on day two.

Many accountants that FreeAgent spoke to felt like the plans wouldn’t go ahead as proposed, and many predicted that the end result would still be Self Assessment by another name.

Big themes from the conference:

A shift from "why cloud?" to "which cloud?"

Even last year, “cloud accounting” was still a topic of debate, with many accountants still asking “why should I switch to the cloud?”. This year at Accountex it was clear that cloud accounting is firmly established, and accountants are now asking which cloud product (or products) best suit their needs and the varying needs of their different sizes of clients. At her Accountex talk, FreeAgent’s Partner Implementation Manager Louise Bowman recommended trialling at least three different cloud products before making a final choice - a few years ago accountants didn’t have this luxury of options!

Compliance still drives the agenda

Just as RTI and IXBRL were the dominant themes in past years, auto-enrolment has emerged as the compliance topic that both accountants and suppliers simply can’t ignore. As auto-enrolment requirements kick in for more and more businesses, this topic will only pick up steam.

User experience becoming a priority

FreeAgent found that ease of use and simplicity are now becoming as important as key features for accountants. In particular, accountants who work with smaller businesses are looking for systems that aren’t just powerful, but also simple for their clients to use so practices can reduce their admin burden and reap the benefits sooner.

Accountex by numbers

No conference is complete without freebies and FreeAgent certainly gave away their fair share of pens, water, notebooks, jelly beans, flyers, fortune cookies, and post-its!

Thanks again to everyone who popped by to say hello this year, and a special thanks to the DiGA and Receipt Bank teams who joined FreeAgent on stand to demonstrate their powerful reporting and expense management tools.

To find out more about FreeAgent visit their website, call 0800 025 3900 or follow @FA_Accountants on Twitter.

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