FreeAgent Central has secured its first round of funding, positioning the company for rapid expansion as it embarks on an aggressive growth strategy.
The independent software company, pioneering online accounting specifically for small businesses and freelancers, has received an undisclosed amount of investment from private and angel investors including serial entrepreneur Christoph Janz, founder of Pageflakes and an early investor in Zendesk, another highly successful SaaS player.
This comes after a hugely competitive start to the year with a sustained 40% increase in users every month during the first quarter.
Built for freelancers, by freelancers, FreeAgent has engaged with its users since its launch to ensure its software is simple in design, highly intuitive and usable. Most recently the company completed a wholesale redesign of the site’s interface and implemented a number of improvements, many of which were suggested by its users.
“Anyone who’s founded a startup will recognise the problem: it can be hard to get to grips with the accounting side of things,” said Christoph Janz, who joins the board of directors at FreeAgent Central. “The team have created an easy-to-use solution to that problem which I believe will have a big impact on the success of its small business customers.”
This funding and future investment will all aid the development of new features including exciting developments in multi-currency accounting, internationalisation and predictive cashflow.
The company has also successfully forged partnerships with some of the UK’s largest accounting practices. A leading provider of accountancy services to professional contractors and freelancers, London-based Blevins Franks will now be providing all its clients with a subscription to the FreeAgent service as part of its offering.
Providing FreeAgent software to practices means accountants spend less time number crunching, more time offering accounting advice and giving businesses a lot more transparency in their figures.
Phil Richards from Blevins Franks commented, “After 16 years helping Freelancers and Contractors run their Limited Companies FreeAgent have come up with something really special that enables a contractor to run their own company simply and easily. The last 12 months that we have worked with FreeAgent have been very exciting for us and we look forward to adapting our services as FreeAgent service itself develops more”.
Ed Molyneux, CEO of FreeAgent Central comments: “During an economic crisis it is vital small businesses and freelancers have a clear picture of their finances and the ability to control their cashflow.
“With this investment we can continue to improve our service for those in need of easy-to-use financial management tools, and expand quickly to reach even more of those small businesses and freelancers that make up the engine room of the British economy. We’re delighted to be welcome Christoph to the team and he’s already been able to provide invaluable help.”
Unlike accounting packages like Sage and Quickbooks, FreeAgent is web-based, requires no downloads or installation and is accessible from any computer with internet access. Uniquely, it is also able to provide a ‘Tax Timeline’ – a real-time forecast of tax liabilities and deadlines which help the business owner to avoid tax bill surprises and missed deadlines.
