Award-winning accounting software, included — saving you up to £330 a year.

Yes. It comes as standard with every Buzz package, so there is no separate monthly subscription — worth up to £330 a year against subscribing directly. It is the full product, not a restricted version, and it is HMRC-recognised for Making Tax Digital for both VAT and Income Tax. The trade-off to understand: the licence runs through us, so if you leave, it stops. Your data does not — you can take a full export or move the subscription into your own name and carry on in the same file. Ask any firm bundling software the same question before you sign.

Sole traders, freelancers, contractors, landlords and smaller limited companies — businesses with one or two people, a manageable transaction volume and no stock. It is built around how the self-employed genuinely work: time tracking and invoicing in the same place as the bookkeeping, a tax timeline that shows what is due and when, and an estimate of your Self Assessment bill updating as you go. That last feature does more for cash discipline than any amount of advice, because it puts the number in front of you in July rather than in January.

When you have stock to value, multi-currency trading, a lot of users needing different permission levels, complex payroll, or a need for the wider app ecosystem — inventory, advanced credit control, industry-specific integrations. At that point Xero does more, and we will say so rather than keep you on the included option because it is free. The rough marker is when the software starts dictating workarounds instead of supporting the business. We support both and we are a Xero Gold Partner, so there is no incentive at our end to push you either way.

Yes. FreeAgent is HMRC-recognised for MTD for VAT, which has been mandatory for VAT-registered businesses since April 2022, and for MTD for Income Tax, which phases in from April 2026 for qualifying income over £50,000, April 2027 over £30,000 and April 2028 over £20,000. Recognised software is necessary but not sufficient: MTD requires digital records kept through the year and quarterly submissions, so the habit has to change too. Having the right tool and using it once a quarter in a panic still produces late updates and penalty points. See the MTD guide.

Yes. We handle migrations from spreadsheets, QuickBooks, Sage and Xero regularly. Opening balances, outstanding invoices and unpaid bills come across, bank feeds are connected, and we agree a switch-over date that does not fall inside a VAT period or across a pay run. Whether to import full transaction history is a judgement we make with you: it is often unnecessary, since prior years remain readable in the old system or as an export, and importing a messy history simply moves the mess. Expect the first reconciliation after a move to turn something up.

No, and the split is worth agreeing explicitly rather than assuming. Some clients do everything in FreeAgent and we review and file; others send the paperwork and we do all the entry; most land somewhere in between, typically raising their own sales invoices while we handle purchases, reconciliation and month end. What does not work is an unspoken assumption on either side — that is how a VAT quarter arrives with nothing coded. We set out who does what in the proposal, and adjust it if the arrangement is not working.

Then tell us, because you should not be paying twice. FreeAgent is offered free with certain business bank accounts, and where you already have it on that basis we can act as your accountant on the existing subscription rather than issuing a new one. The one thing to check is that the account continues to qualify — the free licence is tied to the banking relationship, so closing or changing the account can end it, sometimes with little notice. Worth knowing before you move bank for a better rate.