The FreeAgent integration allows you to keep your customers in sync and gives you an instant overview of what invoices you have for a contact without ever leaving their contact record in Capsule. It also makes it super simple to add new contacts from Capsule to FreeAgent when you want to start invoicing them.
What does the FreeAgent integration do?
Integrating Capsule with FreeAgent will automatically add all your FreeAgent contacts into your Capsule account.
All invoice information in FreeAgent is summarized in Capsule including;
- Payment due dates,
- Whether an invoice has been paid
- Overdue amounts on the linked contact record in Capsule.
Once the integration is setup and working, Capsule will keep updating FreeAgent with any changes you make to your contact records, so you should always treat Capsule as your source of truth, e.g. if you update an address in Capsule, the corresponding contact in FreeAgent will be automatically updated as well.
Lastly, new Capsule contacts can also be easily added to FreeAgent when you are ready to raise an invoice.
How to set up the FreeAgent integration
If you don’t already have a FreeAgent account then sign up for one now at freeagent.com.
- In Capsule, go to Account SettingsIntegrationsFreeAgent and click the button to Configure FreeAgent.
- Choose the option to Enable Integration. You will now be asked to log in to FreeAgent to give Capsule access to your FreeAgent account. The integration is now up and running.
An initial sync takes place from FreeAgent to Capsule, linking up existing Capsule contacts with their corresponding FreeAgent contacts as well as adding any contacts not already existing in Capsule; as explained here.
If you are using access controls in Capsule - There isn’t a way Capsule can automatically assign a user/team to a new contact record when created from a new FreeAgent contact. If you are using access controls and roles to assign your contacts to different teams in Capsule, you will need to make sure to assign new contacts created from FreeAgent to the correct team in Capsule. In the meantime, all users can view this contact. You can learn more on how to assign the contacts to a team here.
Excluding FreeAgent supplier invoices
Suppliers can be treated differently to customers. If you’d prefer to not share supplier invoices with your users you can select to exclude their invoices from being displayed in Capsule.
Go to Account SettingsIntegrationsFreeAgentSettings, check the box to Exclude supplier invoices and click Save. The Supplier contacts will still show in Capsule but their invoices will not.
What happens during the FreeAgent sync?
There are regular 2 hour syncs between FreeAgent and Capsule. Where there's a new FreeAgent contact, this contact will be uploaded into Capsule. At this point:
- If the contact doesn’t already exist in Capsule, a new contact will be created
- Those that can be matched by name will be automatically linked.
Exporting contacts from Capsule to FreeAgent
If you have a contact in Capsule not displaying any FreeAgent information, and you want this contact in FreeAgent, simply click on 'Export to FreeAgent. This saves having to manually add this contact to FreeAgent for invoicing.
Where an individual is linked to an organization in Capsule, it is expected you are wanting to invoice the organization not the individual. Capsule exports the organization, and the person record you are exporting from will be treated as the ‘Contact Person’ field in FreeAgent. The following fields are populated in FreeAgent from Capsule:
- Name of organization
- Contact Person (where export is from the person record in Capsule)
- First Email address
- First Phone number
- Mobile Phone
- First Address
The integration will overwrite addresses in FreeAgent with that in Capsule. If the address in FreeAgent is correct and the address in Capsule is incorrect, it's important the address in Capsule in updated before enabling the sync to avoid losing the correct information.
Deleting and managing duplicates with FreeAgent
Duplicates may occur because of the integration. If there is a slight difference in spelling of a contact between Capsule and FreeAgent, the sync with treat the customer in FreeAgent as new and create a duplicate contact in Capsule. If duplicates are accidentally created, you can merge them following the steps here. These need to be merged with the exact same name as what is stored in FreeAgent, or FreeAgent will continue to send the ‘new’ contact to Capsule.
Deleting a contact has to happen in both FreeAgent and Capsule, in that order. Deleting a contact in Capsule first, without deleting the contact in FreeAgent will mean that the contact will be added to Capsule again the next time the sync takes place. Because of this it is important to delete the contact in FreeAgent and then delete it in Capsule.
Using FreeAgent as a B2B vs B2C Business
When dealing with people for the FreeAgent integration we split contacts into B2C contacts (people not associated with an organization) and B2B contacts (people associated with an organization).
When exporting a B2C contact to FreeAgent, the Person's details are exported to the accounting system. We are expecting invoices will be issued to this person. When exporting a B2B contact we export only the organization's details. We do this because in a B2B relationship invoices are almost always issued to an organization rather than a person.
When you use the option to Export to FreeAgent from a Person's contact record, the first and last name for the Person is used in the 'Contact Person' field in FreeAgent and all other details added to FreeAgent will be from the Organization.
How to disable the FreeAgent Integration
To disconnect the FreeAgent integration:
- In Capsule, go to Account SettingsIntegrationsFreeAgent and click the button to Configure FreeAgent.
- Click Disable Integration and confirm.
Once the integration has been disabled, any invoice history and links to FreeAgent will stop being displayed but Contacts created by the integration will remain in Capsule.