Pioneering online accounting software company, FreeAgent Central, is celebrating this week after being nominated Web App of the year in the prestigious .net Awards. Last year’s winners include Stephen Fry, Twitter and DropBox.

The public now has until 12 October to vote for FreeAgent Central before a panel of 100 top industry experts decide the final winners. Last year an astounding 60,000 votes were cast, and this year’s awards ceremony is set to be the biggest and best yet.

With 16 categories, the .net Awards celebrate the best in web design and development, mixing public opinion with insights of a leading panel of judges from the likes of Yahoo, Adobe, AKQA, Opera, Last.fm and Microsoft.

Ed Molyneux, FreeAgent Central CEO comments: “This is an incredible achievement for us and we are very, very proud to receive such recognition from .Net. This is a big step forward in our mission to democratise accounting. We are extremely proud of FreeAgent and we hope our customers will help us out by casting their votes online now!”

This news follows the announcement last month of the company’s nomination for the Sift Media Software Satisfaction awards for the second year running, having taken home Gold last year.

This year’s SME Accounting Category is billed by Accounting Web as a fight between the ‘leading lights of the accounting software as a service industry’ with FreeAgent being a key player in the small business and freelance market.

FreeAgent online software is easy to use and gives a clear picture of profit and loss, making running a business easier and putting the small business owner in control of their finances.

As freelancers themselves, the three founders of FreeAgent Central needed a finance tool that would give them a clear picture of their business accounts. That product did not exist and so FreeAgent was born.

The software has a clean and simple design, highly intuitive and usable. It prepares VAT returns, calculates self assessed income tax and corporation tax and manages PAYE and NI. Users can monitor profit and loss, send and track invoices, track time and expenses, manage projects and payments.

The software was recently updated to allow customers to file their VAT returns electronically within the system directly to HMRC, saving many hours of paperwork.

FreeAgent also encourages collaboration between accountant and client by allowing accountants to login to the system, so they can offer the most up-to-date advice. Accountants can easily export trial balance data to generate end-of-year accounts.

An active online community of FreeAgent customers has grown up where users openly discuss ideas, questions and problems about accounts. Additionally there is a live advice helpline where users can ‘Ask an Expert’ about financial issues they may be having.

FreeAgent is accessible around the clock and from any computer, which is ideal for the way many small business owners and freelancers work.

FreeAgent is subscription based with costs starting at £15 per month for a sole trader, £20 for a partnership and £25 for a limited company.

www.freeagentcentral.com

FreeAgent Central has launched an official affiliate programme for non-members following the runaway success of its Evangelist scheme for subscribers. The eagerly anticipated affiliate programme already has a waiting list of 20 companies ready to sign up.

Affiliates and Evangelists earn a one-off reward of twice the monthly subscription fee for each new referral – up to £50 – or an ongoing 20% share of the subscription payments from the new member.

Before becoming an Evangelist, members earn 10% off the FreeAgent subscription price for every referral and once they’ve referred 10 friends, subscription is free for life and they become an Evangelist. The top four FreeAgent Evangelists have already referred a total of 156 new members.

Ed Molyneux, FreeAgent CEO explains: “From the very early days of FreeAgent we have been thrilled by how happy we make our customers! Our subscribers genuinely want to tell the world about us because we make such an immediate difference to their business.

“Now we want to give something back to those ‘evangelists’ and also to help spread the word further. We are very excited about how powerful this affiliate scheme is and the impact it could have on our subscriber numbers.”

A growing number of proactive users are now using FreeAgent free of charge, and you can see John O’Nolan talking about it in his video testimonial here. It’s a win-win situation: users get FreeAgent for nothing and FreeAgent gets more customers.

Users don’t become Evangelists automatically so to sign up please get in touch and find out more. To find out more about the Affiliate programme get in touch here.

FreeAgent Central has made joining the affiliate programme as painless as possible and signing up can be done in a matter of minutes.

The techy carnival is coming to town with TechCrunch and its ‘digital power broker’ Mike Butcher, hooking up with Informatics Ventures for Engage | Invest | Exploit 10 in Edinburgh on 12 May 2010.

This is the first TechCrunch Europe UK event to be held outside of London and its programme has attracted a prestigious line up of speakers and a powerful delegate list of the great and good from Scotland’s tech community.

Informatics Ventures is based in Edinburgh University’s School of Informatics and Engage | Invest | Exploit 10 is its third annual showcase of the most promising, high-growth companies spun out of leading Scottish Universities.

This year’s event will be the biggest to date with an exhibition of 50 start-ups and spin-outs from bio tech, clean tech, social media, gaming and mobile all in one place and in one morning. EIE is Scotland’s biggest opportunity for Informatics entrepreneurs and investors to meet.

During the TechCrunch afternoon sessions, Skyscanner’s Lara Bayley will be presenting on “Why Scotland for Startups?”; followed by fast pitches from some early stage local startups. A panel of entrepreneurs with Adtaily, Onedrum and Cloudsoft will discuss linking Scotland to Europe.

Andrew Nutter looks at “How to turn on an investor”; Rapid Mobile will cover “Mobile innovation in Scotland and finally a panel of investors will discuss “Investing in Tech startups in and beyond Scotland.”

We’ve done a roll call of Hot Tin Roof clients who are attending and we are almost at a 100% hit rate with MoneyDashboard, FreeAgent Central, EdgeCase, Flexiant, Civic and Informatics Ventures (naturally) all signed up. And of course, there’s no show without punch, so we’ll be there too!

Don’t worry – if you haven’t got your tickets yet – it’s not too late – just click here.

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.

www.freeagentcentral.com

This news has also been covered by Mike Butcher over at TechCrunch UK. Read all about it here: http://uk.techcrunch.com/2009/03/23/freeagent-central-secures-angel-round-for-growth/

Hot Tin Roof has blazed into 2009 winning a number of high profile accounts, including eteaket and McLean & Melrose Wealth Management, further strengthening the agency’s events portfolio and sustaining its robust growth rate.

Hot Tin Roof will work with one of Edinburgh’s Michelin star restaurants to host a series of exclusive business dinners, sponsored by McLean & Melrose, for the movers and shakers of Edinburgh. McLean & Melrose offers a wide range of high quality wealth management services to some of Edinburgh’s leading businesses and individuals.

At a glittering tea party, the agency will also launch Edinburgh’s first tea boutique and café, eteaket, bringing over 40 tea tasting experiences from around the world to a chic contemporary city centre space.  Scotland may be a nation of tea drinkers but coffee shops dominate the high street.  Hot Tin Roof’s media and events campaign will put the cup of tea back on the menu.

Hot Tin Roof has a strong track record of event management for the White Company, The Living Room and Est Est Est.  By developing powerful strategies to build brands and reputation even in tough trading conditions, the independent PR agency keeps its clients in the spotlight at a time when it matters most.

Sarah Lee, Director of Hot Tin Roof said:

“This is a cracking start to the year and we are looking forward to developing the agency’s events arm even further.  Companies are still out there doing business, despite the headlines, looking for ways to engage with customers, communicate their offering and protect their reputation.”

Bucking the recession trend, Hot Tin Roof continues to grow and these new wins follow a fantastically strong end to 2008 for Hot Tin Roof.  In the last weeks of the old year, the agency secured a string of new clients including iconoclastic whisky brands Pig’s Nose and Sheep Dip from Spencerfield Spirit and FreeAgent Central, a pioneering online accounting service for the small business market.

Ends

This contract win story was featured in The Drum, read full article here…

(Registration required): http://thedrum.co.uk/news/2009/02/19/9648-hot-tin-roof-to-boost-events-work-with-two-contracts