One record of truth, and everything else plugged into it.
The problem is rarely the software. It is four systems that do not talk to each other and somebody retyping the same numbers into all of them. We pick the ledger, connect the rest and switch off the duplicates.
- One record of truth, everything else plugged in
- Xero or FreeAgent, whichever suits you
- Bank feeds and receipt capture
- Your trade apps connected and checked
- Written down, so it does not drift back
Choosing the stack, then making it work together
Most small businesses do not have a software problem, they have an integration problem: an accounting package, a card machine, a booking system and a spreadsheet, none of which talk to each other, and a person spending two days a month typing the same figures into all four.
The work is deciding what the record of truth is, connecting everything else to it, and switching off the things that duplicate it.
In this order
- 1Look at what you actually run
Including the spreadsheets. The spreadsheet nobody mentions is usually where the real process lives.
- 2
- 3Connect the bank and the card machine
Read-only feeds, so transactions arrive daily and nothing is keyed twice.
- 4Automate the paperwork
Receipt capture from your phone, supplier bills read automatically, sales invoices raised in the same place the bookkeeping lives.
- 5Connect the trade-specific tools
Job management, EPOS, e-commerce, stock, time recording. Whatever your industry runs on, if it has a ledger connector we use it.
- 6Write down who does what
The part that gets skipped. A stack nobody owns drifts back to spreadsheets within a quarter.
Measured in hours and in days
- Data entry
- Bank feeds and receipt capture remove most manual keying, which is where errors come from as well as time.
- How current the numbers are
- Books that are days behind rather than months behind mean the management accounts are worth reading.
- The year end
- A clean, connected year is a materially smaller job, and that shows up in what it costs to do.
- Making Tax Digital
- Digital records with a digital link is a legal requirement for VAT now and for income tax from April 2026. Getting there deliberately beats getting there in a panic.
- What you can see
- Debtors, cash and margin on a screen instead of in a folder.
Four figures worth knowing by heart
All excluding VAT, from the vendors’ own published pricing, checked 8 September 2026.
2026/27 figures. See key tax dates and the calculators for the full picture.
How we actually choose between them
- Your bank decides it more often than anything else
- If you hold a business account with NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland or Ulster Bank — or Mettle with one transaction a month — FreeAgent is free for as long as you keep it. For a simple company that is £330 a year of software for nothing, and it settles the question.
- Stock, projects or multi-currency means Xero
- FreeAgent does the day-to-day well and does not pretend to be an enterprise system. The moment you are tracking stock, costing projects at scale, invoicing in another currency or running a payroll of any size, Xero pulls away and it is not close.
- Priced on transaction volume
- A £300,000 consultancy with forty transactions a month is a simpler file than a £120,000 shop with two thousand. The volume decides how much the software has to automate, and therefore which one.
- The apps your trade actually runs on
- Job management, EPOS, e-commerce, stock, time recording. We check the connector genuinely posts to the ledger correctly before recommending anything — “it integrates” on a website and “it reconciles cleanly” are not the same claim.
- What you are already on
- If your current setup works and the records are clean, the right answer is to leave it alone and work in it. A migration has a cost and it has to buy you something.
Four failures, all of them quiet
- Two systems, both half right
- The ledger and a spreadsheet, or a job system nobody reconciles to the accounts. Two versions of the truth means somebody reconciles them at the year end, and that somebody bills for it.
- Bank rules that are confidently wrong
- Automation is excellent on repetitive identical transactions and confidently wrong on the exceptions. It is wrong in a plausible way rather than an obvious one, which is why a clean-looking ledger is not evidence of a correct one.
- An app connected but never checked
- A connector that posts to the wrong nominal, or posts gross where it should post net, will do so silently for a year. The first sign is a margin that has moved for no reason anybody can explain.
- Nobody owns it
- A stack with no named owner drifts back to spreadsheets within a couple of quarters, usually starting with one person who found a workaround and never mentioned it.
What people ask about software and systems
Which is better, Xero or FreeAgent?
Neither, in the abstract. FreeAgent suits sole traders, contractors and simpler limited companies, and comes free with some business bank accounts. Xero handles stock, projects, multi-currency and larger transaction volumes better. We are partners for both, so the recommendation is about your business rather than our licence.
Do I have to change software to work with you?
No, but we will tell you honestly if what you are on is costing you more in bookkeeping time than a migration would. Some packages make a clean year end genuinely harder.
How long does a migration take?
A straightforward one is a few weeks including a parallel period, and is best timed at a year end or a VAT quarter end. The conversions that go wrong are the ones done mid-quarter in a hurry.
Is there a separate charge for this?
Setting the stack up as part of onboarding is included. A migration from a system with years of history in it is quoted separately, because it is real work.
What about the apps for my trade?
Most of them connect. Tell us what you run and we will check the connector before promising anything, because "it integrates" on a website and "it posts to the ledger correctly" are not always the same claim.
