Do you want to automatically cross-post your WordPress content to Facebook?

If so, you’re in luck because yesterday Facebook launched a new WordPress plugin to do just that, plus more:

• Cross-post to your Facebook Timeline and the Facebook Pages you manage
• Mention specific Facebook friends when you hit publish
• Works on mobile
• Supports internationalization

Facebook claim that TechCrunch, Buzz Media and The Next Web are already using the plugin to “connect with their audiences while providing users with more engaging and personalized experiences.”

Widgets

The WordPress plugin also bundles in several useful widgets:

• Activity Feed. Shows readers’ a personalised feed their friends Facebook activity such as Likes & Comments.
• Recommendations: Gives readers personalised suggestions for pages on your site they might like, as well as a Recommendations Bar option to give users the option to add content to their Timeline as they read.
• Customisable Like, Subscribe and Send buttons.
• Comments Box: Makes it easy for people to comment on your site and post back to Facebook, and includes moderation tools. The plugin also features automatic SEO support for Facebook Comments, so search engines can index them to improve your site’s visibility.

Facebook built this plugin in collaboration with open source engineers. It lets you more closely integrate your WordPress site (.org or .com) with Facebook – no coding required.

What I Like

I’ve installed the plugin on this site.  You should be able to see the Activity Feed on the sidebar. I’ve experimented with most of the options and I’m pretty impressed so far.

The fact that the Activity Feed & recommendation bar are personalised (if the reader is logged in to Facebook) is an interesting twist and time will tell if it leads to more engagement.

At the very least being able to automatically post new content to Facebook will save me time and make sure I don’t forget or delay sharing content.

What I Don’t Like

The initial setup is not as straight forward as it should be. Just don’t forget to setup a Facebook app for your site – if you’ve not already done so.

The plugin does walk you through the steps but the terminology and design is overly technical in my opinion.

Your turn

Get the plugin here and let me know what you think. Good or bad.

Image by Stig Nygaard

Having a Google Places page used to be a smart move (if done right) not least because when the eight out of 10 people (Comscore) who want something locally do their research online – they were more likely to end up at your place.

If you have a business page on Google+ then you’re making your business findable by the 90 million+ users on the newest social network run by the world’s most powerful search company, i.e. Google+

What’s new & why does it matter?

Yesterday, Google replaced Google Places with Google+ Local.

Local businesses now have the opportunity to be even more visible to even more people. And in a way that’s more personalised.

So for example, people will be able to see what others in their Google+ network think about your business. And as we all know, so-called social proof matters.

How it works

From within Google+ you can now see a ‘Local’ tab on the left sidebar. From there, you’ll be able to search for local business pages.

An extract from Tate Modern's Google+ Local page

Each business features the old Places info (like images, address, opening hours, reviews) plus an overall rating which is made up individual review ratings.

Restaurants now use the Zagat scoring system which includes Appeal, Facilities & Service.

Doing a normal organic Google Search or within Google Maps will also pull up Google+ Local pages.

What to do now…

If you already have a Google Places page then Google will have turned it into a Google+ Local page for you.  You can continue to manage your information via Google Places for Business, which you can get to from within Google+ Local.

If you already have a Google+ business page then no problem. Just continue to use it as before. But be aware that Google intend to merge Google+ business page and Google+ Local pages at some point.

If you run a local business and you don’t have a Google+ business page then now would be a good time to set one up. You’ll be able to use the Google+ social goodness like status updates, Circles & hangouts, as well as being ready for the merge with your Google+ Local page. Watch this space for updates on that…

What’s your take on where this is all headed?

How useful would an online map be for your customers? Driving directions or a store locator perhaps: with popup details at each place?

What if a customer could use a map on your site to route them in their car using their onboard GPS?

What if you could visualise on a map where all your customers and leads are?

How valuable would it be to pull data from your customer database or website analytics and visually see sales trends, hot spots and cold zones by location?

What if you could embed these maps on your website, or pull up them up in a way that’s optimised for your smartphone or tablet?

Enter BatchGeo

Well, there’s a web tool called BatchGeo which does all of this and more. It’s incredibly easy to use. Just copy a table or spreadsheet of data into their website, and it does the rest. It generates a Google Map with the data you provide.

Most of what it does is FREE, with an option to upgrade to $99 per month for faster geocoding, Street View integration, handling more data points and to remove ads.

I’ve experimented with the tool and I suggest it could be a great way to put your small business on the map.

Here’s an example (by Duedil) showing London startups by location:

View this map full screen

What do you think? Let me know if you try this out, what works and what doesn’t.

Image by Fijian Scion @Flickr

Great news … if you want to launch a business and you’re aged between 18 & 24. A new scheme to help you startup in business was launched yesterday.

The Startup Loans scheme is backed by the UK government and chaired by James Caan of Dragons Den fame.

Joining the scheme gets you:

• A loan for up to £2,500.
• Business support and mentoring from people who’ve walked the walk.
• Over £500-worth of offers on products like business cards, websites & netbooks.

The loan is charged at a fixed annual rate of 3% plus the RPI (Retail Price Index) which is now 3.5%. You need to pay back the loan within 5 years.

To qualify you need to be between 18 & 24, want to start a business, and live in England. (Why not Wales, Northern Ireland & Scotland?)

To coincide with the launch, Lord Young has released the first comprehensive report into small business in Britain since 1971! It’s says a lot about the UK’s traditional lack of interest in entrepreneurship that its been so long but hey, let’s look forward. And the future looks encouraging…

Some interesting points from the report:

• In 1971, there were 820,000 businesses with less than 200 staff, and together they made up just 31% of private sector employment.
• Today there are 4.5 million small & medium enterprises (SMEs), making up 60% of all private sector employment.
• 95.4% of all those SMEs are micro businesses employing less than 10 people.
• 75% of all SMEs have no employees – other than the business owner.
• There are now more new businesses being formed than before the last recession & the founders are getting younger.

Click here to download your copy of the ‘Make Business Your Business’ report.

I listened to Lord Young on the radio yesterday, and he told us that:

If Britain had the same level of entrepreneurship as the US then 900,000 new businesses would be created and we’d eliminate unemployment.”

The report makes clear that that money is no longer the issue: a new business can bootstrap for £100, a smartphone & an internet connection. The report also points out that there is more information & support available than ever before. All consistent with what we believe here at StraightToGo.

The challenge is to make sense of and navigate through the snowballing and often conflicting information. This is the reason this site exists: to help entrepreneurs & small business owners to use the internet as a tool to help them start & grow their businesses. Enter your email address below for FREE updates on how to use the internet  to start & grow your small business.

And of course, if you’re serious about starting a business and believe you qualify for this exciting new scheme then click here to get started.

I’d love to know what you think about this new scheme, and if you go with it, how you get on.

Image by DailyPic @Flickr

How often have you not made a purchase, booked an appointment, or made a trip to a local business because you couldn’t quickly & easily get an answer to a simple question from the people behind a website?

What is Live Chat?

Live Chat is a way for a potential customer or client to type a question straight into your website and get a near instant reply.

What use is Live Chat to a local business?

According to ComScore, 81% of 18 to 34 year olds (& 69% of 35 to 59 year olds) are researching online before they venture out to buy offline. And these figures are increasing every day.

Live Chat is a great way to help your users with that research and can turn them into physical visitors…and buyers.

What happens when I can’t be around to take incoming chats?

Of course as a busy business owner, you can’t be available all the time. One option is to get a member of your team, or an assistant to help. Virtual assistants (VAs) are proving to be cost effective for many.

When there’s no-one available then the person asking the question can leave a message that you can pick up and respond to later.

The better Live Chat services provide stats on when users are asking questions. Use this information to prioritise your & your teams time.

What are the benefits for a Small Business?

1. Customer convenience

Asking your users to wade through phone menus, hang on for an operator, or expect a reply by Email is simply asking them to click away.

Live Chat gives your users immediate access to help.

Live Chat allows your users to do other things at the same time.

If you’re not making it easy & convenient for your users to take the next step then you’re missing out to your competitors who are.

2. Cut costs

Reduce telephone expenses as each chat takes place over the internet for FREE.

Cut the cost of serving users by having your staff chat with more than one of them at the same time.

3. Increase sales

Walk users through a sale if they become confused or have a question to ask.

Providing a way for users to ask questions and get responses quickly means you stand a much better chance of converting browsers into buyers.

4. Up-sell more products or services

Better understand your customers’ real problems and desires by listening to them and asking them questions directly.

Improve your own marketing messages by heeding your new found insights.

Discover new ways to improve your products and services.

5. Stand out from your competition

For now, few small business are using Live Chat to its full potential, or even at all.

Using Live Chat creates the impression that your business is bigger than it really is.

Now is a great time to differentiate yourself by using Live Chat as a tool to help you provide excellent customer service and so drive more sales.

Live Chat Services

I will review several Live Chat services that are suitable for small businesses over the coming weeks.

Meantime you might want to check out Olark (affiliate link) which is the service I’m currently using on this site. To start a chat just pull up the blue bar at the bottom of the page.

What is your experience of using Live Chat for your small business?

Enter your email below to get more posts on Live Chat & other services for small businesses.

Image by Paul Bica @Flickr

Your business urgently needs to borrow £10,000 for 3 weeks. You need it within 24 hours. What do you do?

Maybe a big customer missed a payment, or you’ve got to cover an unusually large VAT bill.

You’ve maxed out on your bank overdraft, and you don’t have time to get your suit dry-cleaned, arrange an appointment with the bank manager, do the paperwork, wait 2 weeks for a decision… only for them to say no!

What do you do?

The real problem

This scenario is playing itself out all day everyday for small businesses everywhere. I’m not talking about firms that have mismanaged their cashflow or just aren’t viable for whatever reason.

I am talking about entrepreneurs & small business owners who are working their socks off to realise their dreams and doing their bit rebuild the economy in the bargain.

From time to time, these sort of companies just need a few thousand for a few weeks, to smooth out the bumps. It’s a reality of managing cashflow and doing business.

The best option for many would be to extend their bank overdraft but what if you’ve already done that.

The UK business banks are simply not fast or responsive enough to handle this situation. Even if you have the time (and time is money of course) they’re more and more likely to turn you down.

If you’re not in a rush and you need credit or invoice financing of between £1,000 and £1 million over 3 months to 10 years then I would advise checking out a lender who’s signed up with the Government’s Enterprise Finance Guarantee (EFG) scheme. Visit the EFG website to find out more and to see who those lenders are.

An innovative solution

But, if you can’t get it any other way, you need it now, and you need credit of between £3,000 & £10,000 over a few weeks then it’s worth taking a look at a new no-nonsense online credit service called Wonga for Business.

What you get

In a nutshell you get:

• A potential cash advance of between £3,000 & £10,000. And up to £25,000 if you build up a good track record with them.
• An online application & decision within 12 minutes.
• A positive decision comes with details of fees and a weekly interest rate.
• Interest you pay is from 0.3 to 2% per week depending on perceived risk.
• Fees are also risk-based but range from 1 to 5% of the loan.
• No paperwork, no meetings, no hanging on the phone.
• If you go ahead the money is credited to your business account between 15 minutes & 24 hours later.
• You can borrow the money for between 1 & 52 weeks.

What you need to qualify

To qualify for a loan:

• Your business needs to be a UK Limited or Limited Liability Partnership.
• Your business needs to have been trading for at least 3 years.
• Your business must have a turnover of at least £20,000 per month.
• Your business must have an online bank account with a linked debit card.
• Each director or partner must become a personal guarantor & provide details of a personal debit card.
• You & your business must pass credit checks.
• You & your business are risk assessed which determines whether you qualify & if so how much you pay.

More on those costs…

Depending on the results of credit checks & a range of other factors:

The rate of interest varies depending on your perceived risk to us and once we set the rate it is fixed for the duration of the loan. We also charge an application fee of a percentage (based on perceived risk) of the amount of credit provided.”

So, for every £1,000 you borrow, the fee will range from £10 to £50. And the interest will cost you between £3 & £20 per week. The lower risk you’re seen to be, the less you pay.

I asked what those risk factors were and was told:

Our data-based risk algorithm will determine the pricing and approval. We have used it to process millions of consumer applications and use 8,000 pieces of data per decision.”

I also asked if there was an upper limit to the APR and was told:

APR does not apply to business loans, whether it’s Wonga for Business or a bank loan. You can use AER (Annual Equivalent Rate), which is still inappropriate for a Wonga for Business loan as most of them will be a lot less than a year. That’s why we’ll calculate the weekly repayments and total amount to repay, really clearly, for any business who is approved – before they commit. AER on our loans will start from just under 17%.”

When NOT to use Wonga for Business

Wonga have received a very mixed press ever since they launched their consumer loan service in the UK four years ago. Despite turning down two thirds of all applications, they’ve made 4 million loans totalling more than £1 billion so far.

The negative reviews are based on the relatively very high interest rates for those consumer loans. The business interest rates however are a lot lower than the consumer rates.

Wonga last week claimed a Net Promoter Score of +73. According to CEO and co-founder Errol Damelin, “Most of the banks in the UK are negative. The Co-op has a score in the 20s while First Direct has one in the 40s — that’s a good number. Wonga, at 73%, is in Google and Apple territory, and most of the time we’re ahead of these guys.”

[A Net Promoter Score is an up-and-coming measure of customer loyalty devised by Fred Reichheld and Bain & Co.]

I would however, suggest a small business needing a loan of between £3,000 and £10,000 to first see if you can get it some other way say via a bank overdraft, or through invoice financing. Why? Because, if you can get it, and if you can get it in time, then you’ll pay less.

The bottom-line

What I like about Wonga for Business is the speed, the transparency, that there is no paperwork, and no meetings.

If you need credit within 48 hours or so, it’s worth checking out Wonga for Business. But watch out for two things:

1. Only take out a loan for a few weeks – keep costs down
2. Don’t miss a repayment – you are personally liable!

Yes, the rates are relatively high but you need to balance that against the cost of getting a loan with lower rates. Why? Because it will almost certainly take longer and you risk not getting it at all. What are the costs of missing a VAT payment? What are the longer-term costs of missing out on critical training for you or your team?

It remains to be seen how successful this new small business service is but I suspect they’re addressing a real gap in the market and as such are worth checking out. After all, it only takes 12 minutes…

Have you tried Wonga for Business yet? If so, please share your experience in the comments below.

PS Don’t forget to pop-in your email address below to get more articles like this one straight to your inbox.

…when I checked my Google Analytics this morning, I was amazed to find that organic search traffic had increased by more than 500% overnight.

The background

Before getting carried away, I want to make a few things clear:

• This site is only 5 weeks old and so I’d not been expecting much organic traffic so far.
• As regular readers will know, this site is a successor to a previous site which had been steadily gaining organic search traffic and incoming links over its 7 month life.
• I am not an SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) specialist.
• Both sites were built using WordPress and hosted with Bluehost.

In this article I want to pass on a few things I’ve learnt about redirecting traffic from a domain you no longer want to use to a new domain.

The goal

Two things:

1. To redirect all search traffic that was landing at my old site, and redirect it to the corresponding page on this site.
2. To preserve and transfer the Page Rankings I’d built up on those old pages across to the new site.

Steps I took

First I did the usual Google research and found the most useful sites to be Google’s own plus an excellent SEOMoz guide on How To Properly Move Domains.

I won’t explain the detailed actions I took as they’ll all very well explained over at SEOMoz.

What I want do here though is to add a few points that were not clear to me & some extra steps I had to take.  Maybe you can learn from them too.

Lessons learned

1. Creating a sitemap for your old domain – I use the Google XML Sitemaps plugin to maintain my sitemaps and so they were both already in place.

2. Register and verify your old domain and new domain with Google Webmaster Tools - What I discovered too late was that you need to register and verify your old domain with and without the leading www. And you need to do this before the redirection. If you don’t do this first, then it makes a later step of Renaming Your Site difficult/impossible. (I’m still trying to figure out how to resolve this.)

3. Against my better judgement, I skipped the testing stage in a development environment. I just redirected a handful of individual pages in live and moved on. For a larger site than mine (with thousands of pages) then I’d definitely use a development or test environment.

4. 301 Redirect your old domain to the new one. This is the key step which tells the search engines to redirect a user from an old page to a new one: permanently. As I mentioned above I use Bluehost and they have a CPANEL tool that means you can redirect all your pages in one simple step. You get to it via the Domains section in the CPANEL.

Note: The Wild Card Redirect option means that every page on the old site that has a corresponding page on the new site is redirected.

What wasn’t clear was that the new site has to be a primary domain rather than an Add-on or sub-domain. This meant I had to get Bluehost to switch the new site with the existing primary domain on my account. This is a free service and the online chat support was pretty good.

Once they’ve done the switch which took about 15 minutes, you then have to manually swap all your website’s folders & files over. The new ones need to be at the top level, and the old primary site’s have to be in a new sub-folder. This is the hairiest step in the whole process by far. Do not forget to do a full site backup first.

Once you’ve made sure your new site is your primary domain, then you can go ahead and do the Redirection.

5. Fill out the Change of Address form in Google Webmaster Tools. See (2) above.

6. Do your happy dance!. I’m holding off for now until I get step (5) sorted and I’ve seen more results but hopefully you’ll get to do your dance in no time.

I hope these lessons will help you in some way if you do have to move domains.

Please share any tips of your own in the comments below, or social share this article if you’ve found it helpful.

Not so long ago if you wanted to make a living from your music then you’d have no option but to wait to be picked. Picked by a record label.

Your options were pretty limited. Perhaps you’d make a little pocket money on the side from playing pubs and clubs but all the while you’d be hoping to get spotted.

It was binary – either you’d ‘get lucky’ and become rich and famous, or (much more likely) you’d give up and do something else.

1,000 True Fans is all you need

The internet has turned the music industry upside down and inside out. It’s opened up the real possibility for anyone with the talent to spread their music and make a living from it.

It’s now possible for an artist with the talent to find their true fans and connect with them. Directly. A true fan will support you and buy everything you can put her way.

As Kevin Kelly famously said, 1,000 true fans is enough to make a decent living. Just think, if each one spent $100 per year on your music & merchandise then how useful would that be?

The snag? You have to take responsibility, for yourself. You can make money from your music but you need to become your own publisher and your own marketer.

Where are your True Fans?

But, how do you find your true fans and how do you get your music in front of them? How do they find you and your music?

Where are people finding and listening to music nowadays? Online of course.

Millions of people are using iTunes, Amazon MP3, Facebook, Google Play, and discovery services like Spotify, eMusic, Last.fm, MOG, Rhapsody, Earbits, and more.

The next question is how do you easily, quickly and cheaply get your music onto all these funky new services that your fans are plugged into?

A note of caution…

The fact is, no matter how much time and money you spend, and what tools you use, you might never get enough true fans.

The good news is that the reach and immediacy of the internet makes it faster than ever to find out.

So … it’s probably best to start out with the lowest cost options before committing your hard earned cash.

Many of the shiny new services and apps may not make sense for you yet. So start with the free ones, and those with no-strings. And, always read (& understand) the small print. You don’t want to be signing away your rights before you’ve even started.

The beauty of the internet is that, with the right tools, you can tell whether you’ve got an audience. And fast.

Zero friction

When I was a kid, we’d get to know new music for free on the (pirate) radio before we bought it. No friction.

Today there are so many ways to get your music out to so many more people. Just don’t fluff it by asking them for an email (or a tweet) before they can listen to it.

When starting out, just give it away. Make it as easy as possible for people to try it, and then if they like it, make it easy for them to share it with their friends.

To spread Tarra’s music, just hit Share

Once you know you’ve got a bunch of people who like it then you know that some of them will pay for your next great work.

Start with the FREE basics

No need to dive straight into the more expensive, more complex tools. Instead, start with some of the many free tools and services:

• Setup a blog on Tumblr, Posterous or WordPress
• Host your music on Dropbox, images on Flickr, and video on YouTube
• Keep your fans updated on gigs and other news via your blog
• Get yourself known on the indie blogs & review sites: HypeMachine and CMU are good places to start

Still FREE but a bit trickier to setup:

• Broadcast live video over Ustream
• Manage your fans email list using MailChimp
• Sell your music from your website or blog using PayPal or PayLoadz for music

Work the social networks

The social networks are where many of your fans hang out, so:

• Build-up a fan base using Twitter & Facebook
• Check out Google’s new social network, Google Plus
• Live stream gigs over Google Plus Hangouts on Air –  musicians are loving it
• Don’t forget LinkedIn for professional networking
• Send out links to your blog to all these sites. TweetDeck makes this easy

Don’t forget the golden rule of doing business on social networks: DON’T BE SPAMMY!

Get & promote gigs

The following sites let you upload details of upcoming gigs, sell tickets, and connect with fans & promoters:

• Songkick
• Sonicbids
• Bandsintown
• Musicglue

Setup & share your own Music Player

A bunch of sites now let you build a custom Music Player. A what?

A Music Player lets your fans:

• Listen to your music to see if they like it
• Check out images, video, bios & news about you & your music
• Download your music for free
• Buy your music – at a price you set, or they set themselves
• Buy CDs & Vinyl – cut & ship for you
• Buy merch – made to order & shipped for you

While you can:

• Give your player a custom look-and-feel
• Embed your player into your own website or blog
• Let your fans embed your player into their sites (like the ReverbNation embed in this post)
• Pull up stats on the number of listens, downloads & sales
• Setup a Facebook or MySpace app version of your player
• Pull out your money into your PayPal or bank account

Bandcamp and TopSpin are two of the more established so-called direct-to-fan services in this area.

(I’ve embedded 3 players within this article for you to get the idea)

What’s it all cost?

With both Bandcamp & TopSpin you keep 85% of the royalties & 100% of the rights. TopSpin also charge you $9.99 per month (or $99.99 per year) but that gets you a ton of sharing features to help you promote your music.

Distribute your music to iTunes, Amazon, Spotify…

There are more and more sites which will distribute your music (audio, video & artwork) to the dozens of online retail download, streaming, discovery, radio and all manor of places where your music can be found, listened to, shared and sold.

The great thing about these music distribution services is that for a modest fee you can upload your music once and they will push it out to all the main outlets where your fans are.

Crucially, they also give you online access to sales stats and collect the royalties for you.

The most well known and established distributor is probably CDBaby.

Other well know distributers are DittoMusic, ReverbNation, RouteNote, TuneCore & Zimbalam.

Some of these services also let you:

• Setup your own Music Player and embed it within your own website or blog, Facebook & MySpace
• Provide social sharing & email list management
• Sell physical goods like CDs, vinyl & merch
• Track & configure your Music Player from you iPhone or Android
• Register for chart listings via Nielsen SoundScan (US) or OCC (UK)
• ReverbNation offer Press Kits & Gig Finder options
• TopSpin offer automated pre-order & membership products
• Add-on services to help you with promotion

Another cool service is SoundCloud who let you upload your music, turn it into a visual waveform, share it with others who can comment on any point within the track.  Dozens of 3rd party apps make this service play nicely with others like TuneCore.

What’s it all cost?

These services charge some combination of:

• An upfront fee to upload your music: typically $1 to $10 for a single & $10 to $50 for an album
• A % of what’s left after iTunes or Amazon or whoever take their cut: typically up to 15%
• An annual fee: typically up to $25 per album

So for example, DittoMusic charge $1 to upload a single plus $8 per year but you keep 100% of the royalties after the outlet charges.

What can you make?

It varies how quickly these sites can get the money from the stores, and then how often you can access your proceeds (monthly, quarterly or on demand.)

Zimabalam distribute your music videos to YouTube, and you get to keep 100% of the royalties generated.

Some like CDBaby handle the licensing of your music should it be used in movies, music videos, TV shows, commercials or games. This is what they call sync licensing. To get the royalties you need to get a sync license. CDBaby will arrange this for you but you need to opt-in.

Is it all worth it?

Well, what do you think?

For a low cost, and little of your time, they do it all. You keep 100% of the rights and collect a high percentage of the royalties – straight into your PayPal or bank account.

You make music, while the business looks after itself – and you.

Please share your experiences with these services in the comments below.

And don’t forget to signup to get more FREE articles like this straight to your inbox.

I’ve been grappling with ‘doing the books & records’ for my own small businesses since 2001, and it’s always been stressful and tedious.

I’m sure I’ve lost hair & reduced my life expectancy by several years trying to reconcile spreadsheets of numbers: for invoices, expenses, bills, paid, due, overdue, straddling accounting periods. And that was just for a single VAT return.

Each year from 2002 to 2011, I would lock myself in my home-office for endless days and nights trying to prepare ‘records’ for my accountant to do the annual accounts.

That was then…

A few weeks ago I got an email from the accountant asking for the numbers again. But this time it was different. It took me 5 minutes to sense check all was in order. I then I pinged him back, asking him to sign-in with his own account and he had full access to all the numbers he could possibly want.

A few days later he emailed me the draft accounts – with the message that his assistant ‘really liked’ the accounting software I was using. (I’m not surprised since it pretty much did her job for her!)

That accounting software is called FreeAgent and it’s what I’ve been using for the past 18 months.

FreeAgent describes itself as painless online accounting. It is part of a new wave of accounting solutions for small businesses & freelancers based on Cloud computing. This means that there is nothing to install or upgrade, nothing to backup, and you can use it from anywhere you have an internet connection.

This is my summary of how FreeAgent has changed my life, what I like about it, and what could be improved.

‘Peace of Mind’

For me, a key test for any business software or service is how much ‘peace of mind’ it can bring me.

In the case of small business accounting this means asking: how much will this service allow me to stop worrying about missing tax deadlines, getting paid on time, keeping my customers happy, avoiding penalties, and generally keeping my cashflow in order.

On this basis FreeAgent has brought me almost total ‘peace of mind’.

Reminders

Of course no software can stop a client paying late but now I get to see really clearly who owes me what and when so I can chase up at the right time. It’s put me right back in control.

I also get reminded of upcoming bill and tax deadlines for VAT, PAYE/NI and Corporation tax.

Dashboard

When you sign-in you see a clear and reassuring Dashboard summary of your headline numbers:

• Invoice payment timeline showing which are paid, due and overdue
• Open and overdue bills & invoices
• Bank & card balances graphed over time
• Recent expenses & billed time
• Profit & Loss for the current year
• Current retained profit and how much can be paid out as a dividend right now

You can even reorder this info by clicking and dragging. Super simple.

Improved Client Relations

For each of your clients or customers, it’s super easy to set up their contact details including email and VAT numbers. You can then assign them to projects and tasks. You can also import contacts from Basecamp and sync them with Capsule CRM.

It’s easy to generate and fire off estimates, time sheets, and invoices for any of your contacts – all from within the service.  It’s also straightforward to brand these comms with your own logo.

Time Saving

The second test I use for judging any business tool or service is how much time it’s going to save me. In business, time after all is money. How much is your time worth?

I now spend around 30 minutes per month uploading bank statements and explaining anything that FreeAgent has not seen before. I also make sure the balances reconcile with the figures at the bank itself – they always do so this is a 1 minute job.

Once a quarter, I generate & file a VAT return. This takes 1 or 2 minutes.

Once a year, I’ll spend 30 minutes or so sense checking. I had no issues this year as it had been so easy to keep everything up-to-date throughout the year.

In between, it’s 2 minutes to setup a new bill, fire off a new invoice, or setup a new client or customer contact.

…and that’s about it.

Estimates & Invoices

Generating and emailing estimates, time sheets and invoices to clients takes just a few clicks. This must have saved me many hours.

Bills & Expenses

Tracking a recurring bill payment is a simple matter of setting up its details and payment frequency, once. I set these to sync up with standing orders through the bank. It’s useful to see all bill payments together over time, and as well as the recent ones in the Dashboard.

Expenses are handled in a similar way to bills.

Set, and (don’t) forget.

Banking

FreeAgent shows your bank balance graphed over your preferred timeline. It can do this for multiple bank, PayPal and card accounts.

It’s also easy to switch between transaction views by month and accounting year.

You either add each transaction manually, or in bulk by uploading an electronic statement from your bank.

Adding a transaction for a Bill or Expense is easy as the details are already there.

FreeAgent offers intelligent defaults and options when adding transactions. For example, when adding a Bill, the options are reconfigured to select from the list of Bills it already knows about. If adding a Purchase of Capital Asset then you get to select a depreciation period.

In all cases you can upload a scanned receipt, invoice or other document.

Taxes

If you’re VAT registered then the service works with both the regular and flat rate scheme.

Once a quarter, FreeAgent reminds me to pay VAT. A single click then instantly generates all the figures for the VAT period and shows them to me as a virtual form on screen. You get the chance to check it over and make any final adjustments.

One more click then gets the return filed with HMRC and triggers payment from your bank account. For me, this is the single best feature as it saves me literally hours of time each quarter.

FreeAgent calculates how much Corporation Tax is due as it goes along. You can go and check it out at any time for the current year and past years.

Accounting

Another great time saver is that it calculates all the accounting numbers as you go along. Add a new invoice or bill and all the accounting figures get automatically updated. At any time you can then call up any of the following:

• Profit & Loss statement
• Balance Sheet
• Trial Balance
• Aged Creditors & Debtors
• Capital Assets
• Journal Entries
• Transactions by accounting year & account, e.g. Internet & Telephone for current year

Another cool feature is that Dividend Vouchers are automatically created and ready to be signed by a Director. This is the sort of legally required task that small business owners (like me) need to do but often forget until it’s sometimes too late.

As a non-Accountant much of this is alien to me but my accountant really appreciated it when preparing the annual accounts. Either way, it’s strangely reassuring to know that all the accounts are always there and up-to-date.

Other Things I Like

User Experience

FreeAgent is a pleasure to use, which is saying a lot given the subject.

There are very few software services that I have been able to write that about. Enough said.

Give Your Accountant Access & Negotiate a Fee Reduction

FreeAgent makes it easy to set up multiple user accounts. This can be useful for another member of your team, your virtual assistant and crucially for your accountant.

My accountant’s assistant was able to sign-in and access everything she needed to prepare my annual accounts. She had never used the service before, had no training and did not need to ask any questions. Impressive.

If you currently use an accountant then before signing-up with FreeAgent, I’d advice asking them if they’d be OK to use it. It can only make their lives much easier too. So much so in fact that it would be worth negotiating a fee reduction: by at least the annual service cost.

Plays Nicely With Other Apps & Services

FreeAgent works with a bunch of other services, apps and widgets including HMRC, Basecamp and Capsule CRM. New ones are being rolled at all the time.

Support

I’ve put several questions to the FreeAgent team and had nothing but fast, friendly and helpful responses.

They also have an active Community Discussion forum, and a Knowledge Base with helpful articles, tutorials & videos.

Pricing

FreeAgent is aimed at UK-based small businesses and freelancers.

Sole trader – £15 per month

Partnership/LLP – £20 per month

Limited Company – £25 per month

Prices also attract VAT.

You can get twelve months for the the price of 10.

There are no sign-up or other costs and the contract is pay as you go, and so can be cancelled at a month’s notice.

Things That Could Be Better

No review is complete or credible without covering what could be better. I pick out here two things that would significantly improve the service for me.

Payroll

One of my aims last year was to automate payroll. The plan was to setup standing orders for salary and PAYE/NI taxes, and track it all within FreeAgent. And, to have FreeAgent automatically fire off the relevant filings.

It turns however that FreeAgent does not calculate the precisely correct PAYE and NI amounts. Also, it does not generate and file the legally required forms like P35, P14 and P11D.

I ended up wasting hours trawling through HMRC documents trying to figure for myself what forms needed to be filed and when. I decided to pay my accountant to do this for me. This works out (for me) at more than the total cost of the FreeAgent service, and is on top of his normal fees.

If you don’t need anyone on PAYE then of course this is not an issue. But if you do, then bear in mind that you’ll either need to invest the time to do it all yourself, or pay an accountant to do it for you. But again, negotiate.

This is the biggest downside of FreeAgent in my opinion, and needs to be sorted out ASAP.

Lack of automated bank feed

This is a relatively minor issue but it would be so much better to have an automated feed from my bank to FreeAgent.

I asked them for an update as I wrote this and was told (within 15 minutes by email) that they “…are working on automatic bank feeds at the moment however cannot confirm any release date so please accept our apologies for this.”

Conclusion

Overall, I am extremely happy with FreeAgent for dealing with all my limited company accounts.

I recommend this service to any small UK-based sole trader, partnership (LLP) or limited company who would like to benefit from the significant ‘peace of mind’ and time savings that I’ve experienced from this reliable, easy to use and largely automated accounting system.

FreeAgent have a free 30 day trial.

To get 10% off the standard rates then go straight to FreeAgent

If asked, make sure you enter the following referral code to get your 10% off: 3vbqfxnl

Disclosure: I get 10% off if you use my referral code – as well as you. It’s a win-win.

Have you tried FreeAgent? What are your thoughts?

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Playing a "towards Indo-Bangladesh Friendship" Gig

I was lucky enough to catch India’s leading contemporary fusion rock band Indian Ocean perform live this week in New Delhi. The last time I was in India was 12 years ago!

Formed in 1990, music critics have described the band’s music as “Indo-rock fusion with jazz-spiced rhythms that integrates shlokas, sufism, environmentalism, mythology and revolution.”

Indian Ocean describe themselves as independent musicians in the sense that they make their own music and perform only their own music. In India, this is a big deal where so much music is Bollywood-inspired, religious, traditional or covers.

Album success

Their first album in 1993 sold over 40,000 copies and became the biggest selling record by an Indian band at the time. They’ve since performed in the USA, UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan.

Their 2006 album Desert Rain, the first live album released by any Indian band, went on to become No. 2 on the iTunes UK World Music chart.

Giving it away

The band went on to produce another three albums before they decided to reduce the distance between the band and its listeners and free themselves from having to “negotiate contracts with record companies and fighting over copyright issues, worries about bad distribution, albums not being available at different places and so on.”

As a result, the band gave away their latest album 16/330 Khajoor Road - for free.

They say “…we make almost all our income playing live shows and composing music for films etc., so it’s no great hardship for us to give up this amount (royalties). We also hope that this becomes a means for other artists in India to reach out to their listening public.”

Personalized music

Indian Ocean are one of several leading bands and artists behind the world’s first personalized music service, Divine Raaga Project (DRP).

The initiative was setup to let you, your college, business, cause, or event to request one of these great musicians to create a unique and original piece of music – the way you want it.

This is a fascinating development and I’m intrigued to see how it goes.

The lesson…for artists & entrepreneurs

So, we have a great rock band who are now doing something that musicians do not traditionally do: They’re giving away their music over the internet, for free.

What’s the effect of doing this? It spreads their music faster and further than ever before. No friction. [By the way, the concert I went to in Delhi was free. It was a one-off India/Bangladesh cultural get-together. But the effect will have been to further spread the music.]

How do they make an income? By selling intimacy. For example:

• They sell access to their live performances.
• They sell original, personalized music – for you, on demand.

And, as a by-product they’re able to:

• Compose music for films.
• Sell sponsorship.

Seth Godin (leading marketer) & Derek Sivers (CDBaby founder) discuss how for musicians in the 21st century:

• The challenge is to be great
• The opportunity is to spread the music and to sell intimacy

Indian Ocean (for me and many others) are great artists. They are experimenting in ways to spread their art.  As a result, they are opening up ever more opportunities to benefit financially. By selling intimacy.

There’s a lesson here for all artists & entrepreneurs.

Interview with the band

Here’s an interesting video interview of the band in their home-town, Delhi. They talk about how the city is changing, what independent music means to them, and the nature of Indian Ocean the band.

What do you think? Leave a comment below.

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