FreeAgent

The FreeAgent a US firm can buy is a smaller product than the one British accountants know. Founded in Edinburgh in 2007 by three freelance designers and developers tired of their own bookkeeping, it now serves more than 250,000 businesses and has been owned by NatWest Group since early 2018 while remaining operationally independent. The core is well-made and unfussy: daily bank feeds that build live accounts, recurring invoices that send and chase themselves, mobile receipt capture, a project view that ties estimates, invoices, expenses, tasks and tracked time to one job, and a dashboard that answers the cash question at a glance. Radar adds business insights on top.

For a US firm the question is what crosses the Atlantic, and the answer is less than you would hope. The US plan is a single tier at $27 a month, or $270 a year, with a 30-day trial and no card required, and the feature list it names is sales tax reporting and multi-currency invoicing. Nothing in the US navigation mentions payroll, 1099s, or any US tax filing. The nav on the US site has exactly four sections, Features, Pricing, Support and Login, with no accountants area at all. The URLs an accountant would expect, an accountants landing page or a partner program page, return 404 on the US site. FreeAgent does have a Practice Dashboard that lets accountants and bookkeepers see client accounts at a glance, described on the about page, but the channel that would let a US practice enrol clients, get a wholesale rate and hold the billing relationship is simply not presented to a US visitor.

The other constraints follow from the same geography. Customer data is held in data centres in Ireland, which is a fact worth putting in front of a client with a US data residency preference. The security page leads with Cyber Essentials Plus, a UK government scheme, and cites ISO 27001, 27017 and 27018 for the data centres, but names no SOC 2 report, so that could not be confirmed either way. Support is described as UK-based accountants. No integrations with US tax software, payroll providers or practice management systems are listed anywhere on the US site.

FreshBooks is the closest match on price and shape, similarly invoicing-first and similarly weak as a firm-managed ledger, though at least it sells in the United States as its home market. Xero and QuickBooks Online are the real answer for a US firm that wants what FreeAgent does well plus payroll, a full app ecosystem and an accountant console with wholesale billing. Wave is the option for clients who genuinely cannot pay.

Dated is the right tier, but for a more specific reason than a stalled roadmap. FreeAgent is actively developed and the vendor's investment is visible, it is simply going into the UK product, where the bank ownership, Making Tax Digital and Self Assessment filing give it a strong position. The US edition is a port that has not been given a US accountant channel, US payroll or US tax filing. Two things about that could not be established from the vendor's own material: whether the Practice Dashboard is available to US-based practices, and whether any SOC 2 report exists. A firm considering it should ask both before placing a client.