Luke Redpath's dashboard

Luke Redpath replied on March 20, 2010 19:12 to the idea "As a User, I want to delete projects" in Pivotal Labs:

I can't believe its not possible to delete a project...it would be really handy if this was possible as I'd like to clean up my account.

Luke Redpath started following the idea "As a User, I want to delete projects" in Pivotal Labs.

Luke Redpath replied on March 09, 2010 10:03 to the question "Does FreeAgent allow for Non-CT Taxable Expenses?" in FreeAgent Central:

Is there any progress on this? I've still got my PCG membership sitting under "Business Entertaining" to discount it from the corporation tax calculation but it would nice to move it into the correct category.

Luke Redpath replied on February 18, 2010 15:30 to the question "Reverse charge method on VAT" in FreeAgent Central:

Emily - I may be wrong but doesn't FreeAgent support the creation of out-of-scope invoices (i.e. NO VAT instead of 0% VAT) that won't appear in the box 6 calculation? I'm pretty sure it does but it might be different for me seeing as I'm on the flat-rate scheme.

I know I create several out of scope VAT invoices each month (for electronically supplied services) that do not appear in my VAT return figures.

Luke Redpath replied on February 15, 2010 10:48 to the question "Single invoice line for re-billed expenses" in FreeAgent Central:

Kris, it seems that you can still do what you want, you just may not be able to use the automatic re-bill option.

You definitely need to record them as separate expenses in order to properly account for the input VAT, like you say.

In order to produce a single "expenses" line for your invoice, I would simply calculate the expenses total and create the invoice line manually (with standard VAT as normal).

This does mean the original expenses will not be linked to the invoice as they are when you use the "re-bill" option but I'm not sure if that's actually a problem. Perhaps Emily can confirm, but does this actually do anything other than display the expenses under the invoice as "Expenses re-billed on this invoice"? I'm 90% certain it has no other impact on your books.

Luke Redpath marked one of Olly's replies in FreeAgent Central as useful. Olly replied to the question "Can we use the API to create multi-currency invoices?".

Luke Redpath replied on February 13, 2010 12:12 to the question "Can we use the API to create multi-currency invoices?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Olly, just updated my script and it worked perfectly, thanks.

The documentation doesn't seem to have been updated yet, so I had to do a bit of guesswork but for anybody who needs to know, you just need to add a element to your payload when posting to /invoices.

Luke Redpath replied on February 13, 2010 12:10 to the question "Single invoice line for re-billed expenses" in FreeAgent Central:

Of course, I should mention that the above only applies to expenses that you have incurred on your behalf (travel, food etc.), not things that you have paid for on the client's behalf (hosting, domain names etc.) which would usually be disbursements for VAT and treated differently.

Luke Redpath replied on February 13, 2010 12:08 to the question "Single invoice line for re-billed expenses" in FreeAgent Central:

Kris, what is it about the VAT that is causing a problem; are you not charging VAT on all your re-billed expenses regardless of whether they were VATable expenses in the first place? (all re-billed expenses form part of your service charge so you should be charging VAT on them).

Unless my client wants a breakdown of expenses, I generally add up all of the expenses I want to re-bill (including the original VAT) to get the net cost and group them into a single expenses line on my invoice (with VAT added on top).

Of course, this does mean they won't show as re-billed but I don't really find that an issue.

Luke Redpath marked one of Emily's replies in FreeAgent Central as useful. Emily replied to the question "How can I correct old transactions from locked VAT periods?".

Luke Redpath replied on January 29, 2010 14:15 to the question "How can I correct old transactions from locked VAT periods?" in FreeAgent Central:

Hi Emily, thanks for the answer. I didn't realize I had to keep each previous one unlocked to unlock the next, that's where I was going wrong.

Luke Redpath asked a question in FreeAgent Central on January 29, 2010 12:59:

How can I correct old transactions from locked VAT periods?

It only occurred to me today that some of my expenses over the past year (web hosting, some online services) have been auto categorized as including VAT at the standard rate. However, as all of these services were purchased from the US, they do not include any VAT.

Fortunately I'm on the flat-rate scheme so this hasn't affected the figures on my VAT returns but I'd like to go back through my bank transactions and correct these. However, it seems FreeAgent will only let me unlock the last locked VAT period and I'm unable to correct the transactions earlier than this.

Having the VAT locked periods is nice as a safety net but I feel I should be able to remove this if I want to. I don't like that I can't go back in time and make corrections; I feel like my hands are tied.

A comment on the question "Can we use the API to create multi-currency invoices?" in FreeAgent Central:

Thanks for the reply Olly, looks like I can update my scripts. – Luke Redpath, on January 28, 2010 17:43

Luke Redpath replied on January 24, 2010 22:15 to the idea "Cannot specify date & location of Directors meeting in Dividend Vouchers" in FreeAgent Central:

"A handwritten date/location etc but printed dividend amounts would cast doubt on the authenticity of vouchers should HMRC or anyone else want to check"

No offense, but that sounds like complete nonsense. What are you basing that on? All that matters is that you have a voucher, its signed and dated and there was enough profit to declare a dividend.

Anyway, lets be honest here - we're mostly one-man companies. Who actually has a meeting for their dividend payments? Do you sit there on your own with a cup of tea and a biscuit when you have this "meeting"? As far as I'm concerned, date of payment = date of "meeting". The vouchers are a piece of necessary bureaucracy, nothing more.

Luke Redpath replied on January 24, 2010 18:35 to the idea "Cannot specify date & location of Directors meeting in Dividend Vouchers" in FreeAgent Central:

Can you not print them out and write them on? That's what I do; it might seem like a long-winded way of doing it but you should be keeping a hard copy of the vouchers along with your payslips and other personal tax documents anyway as they are proof of income.

Luke Redpath replied on January 21, 2010 12:24 to the idea "Use more precise and friendly page titles" in FreeAgent Central:

I'm all for moving the most important part of a title tag to the front, in fact I tweeted about this very thing last night!

Luke Redpath shared an idea in FreeAgent Central on January 21, 2010 12:21:

Mark bank accounts as inactive or closed

I'm in the process of changing my business bank account. I've added this to FreeAgent and once I'm up and running this will become my primary account.

Obviously I don't want to remove my bank account as its records are still important, but on the other hand because I will have closed the account, I'm never going to need to add anything to it again and its balance is not interesting (as it will be zero once the account is closed).

Therefore it would be nice if we can mark a bank account as closed or inactive which would:

* Make the account read-only
* Show the account as being inactive on the Banking overview screen
* Not show the account on the Banking panel on the Dashboard screen

Luke Redpath asked a question in FreeAgent Central on January 21, 2010 12:13:

Can we use the API to create multi-currency invoices?

Prior to multi-currency support, I had written some Ruby scripts that take my financial reports from Apple each month for my iPhone app sales and create an appropriate invoice in FreeAgent, scraping XE.com to do the currency conversion of my app's unit price.

Now multi-currency has arrived, it would be nice to be able to continue using my script, but instead of doing the manual conversion, simply specifying the invoice currency and POSTing the unit price in whatever the native currency is.

The API docs don't seem to have been updated so I was wondering if this is possible.

Luke Redpath replied on January 18, 2010 22:34 to the question "registered office address" in FreeAgent Central:

Your business address and registered address aren't the same IMO. If it meant registered address, it would say that.

Its clearer from the horses mouth:
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/managing/c...

"[A VAT invoice must show] the seller's name or trading name, and address"

Seeing as you don't have to be a limited company to be VAT registered, it would make no sense for VAT invoicing rules to stipulate that the invoice includes your registered address. Your trading address should be fine.

Disclaimer: I am not an accountant or a lawyer, but I do run my own VAT-registered Ltd company. The above is my interpretation of what are (IMO) clear rules.

One other (albeit less authoritative) source:
http://link4business.info/2008/08/bus...

Note that it states that invoices only require your business address, which may or may not be your registered address. It does however make a good point that any official company letterhead must state your registered office address somewhere.

Luke Redpath replied on January 18, 2010 22:15 to the idea "PCG Subscription Handling - Not allowable for corporation tax" in FreeAgent Central:

Short answer: either take a chance and claim it as a company expense or cut your losses and avoid the hassle by not bothering to claim it. For the sake of £138 a year, I'm not convinced its worth it.