FreeAgent rolls out free licences to RBS/NatWest customers
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Francois is a writer, editor and broadcaster specialising in business.
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Being free should not be a major selling point for accountants in practice. If you can't afford £5 pm for sole trader software (or up to £10 pm for corporate clients), you should be raising your fees.
What FreeAgent should do is use its relationship with RBS to become the first major accounting software in the UK to use Open Banking to allow employee and supplier payments (together with payees' sort codes and account numbers) to be set up within the bookkeeping package and passed seamlessly to the bank, where an authorised signatory need merely approve them. This would save huge amounts of time in small businesses where the business owner is the only bank signatory, but where the bookkeeping is done by someone else. That would be truly game-changing for the accounting software industry.
What a great idea Charlie, I've been predicting something similar for a few years now. Perhaps this is the first step in the right direction.
I'd agree with you Charlie, on both points. We wouldn't say price, or lack of one, is the principle driver here, but it can help in a number of cases.
On your second point, we're certainly focused on improving efficiency and saving time for our users, and as mentioned in the article, now we exist within the wider bank group, we will have some head start on delivery in these kinds of capabilities.
I'm delighted to hear that, Kevin. Open Banking creates huge opportunities for our industry and you are in the front seat with your new partners!
Its sounds fantastic, wait a minute this is RBS, remember they lost 24 billion in 2008,
Its a brilliant PR move by RBS, but can we trust them.
On reflection, why is not my Bank or building society offering it, or something similar.
The internet changed everything, maybe going forward Banks will change everything. Who would have thought it.
I don't see how this changes anything, the client could sign up directly for free already and the accountant have a linked account, there is no benefit for the licence to be in the accountant's name if it is free. The only benefit is that we can do the set up now I suppose.
The banks have been here before in various forms. I know Barclays had a go with Sage and then Quickbooks at different times as a way of bringing small businesses onboard and into a better way of running their businesses.
I seem to recall that staff changes in the bank at the client level made the whole thing something less than its potential. The product needed pushing by the account manager. If they do not hang around long enough, the outcome was disappointing.
The trouble with accountingweb is that it is a service, ie it runs on their computers in the cloud. I want my accounting data on my machine where I can control access to it and back it up.