April 10, 2026
You've got 30 FreeAgent clients. Sole traders and small limited companies running businesses between £30k-£80k turnover. They're great clients - they pay on time, they're low-drama, they need your help.
But here's the trap: they need quarterly insights (especially with MTD), but they can't afford full advisory pricing. And pulling quarterly reports from FreeAgent? Hours disappear into manual work.
The issue is tax year alignment. You need April-to-March quarters. FreeAgent shows calendar months, 1st to 31st. So every quarterly report means exporting data, manipulating it in spreadsheets, rebuilding the timeline. For every client. Every quarter.
"We were having to pull data out of FreeAgent, manipulate the numbers because it's tax year, so we're looking at quarters," explains Nic Lonsdale, founder of Ginger Bucks, an accounting practice in the Midlands. "FreeAgent's running month to month. You've got that overlapping difference."
For one client? Manageable. For 30? You're spending days on this every quarter. Days you could spend growing your practice.
You can't charge enough to make manual reporting profitable. Skip it? You're back to compliance-only while clients wonder what they're paying for.
Nic found a different way.
Nic Lonsdale, founder of Ginger Bucks, works with founders - "people just trying to do something and make a change in their lives." Dance companies. Consultancies. Marketing agencies. A football league. All different industries, mostly on FreeAgent, mostly small.
"With the clients that we work with, they aren't massive," she says. "We're looking at clients that have an income around 30 grand per annum all the way up to around 80,000 pounds mark."
She connected 8 FreeAgent clients to Fathom Portfolio. The cost-effective option for accounting firms to monitor, identify and engage with their entire client base.
The cost? £45/month for up to 100 companies. That's about £5 per client.
"It is just literally a plug-in motion," Nic says. "When we have these conversations, we can pull up that report, we can go through it. There isn't that external work that has to go into building an Excel dashboard. It does it all there for us."
Before Portfolio: Hours pulling and manipulating data per client
After Portfolio: Minutes to generate reports, more time for advisory
The shift: "Before we were having to pull out, manipulate, build up our report deck. Now we've got this as our base."
The reports work because they match what clients need. "They just want clarity. Something easy to read, something digestible. Something they can take into a meeting and be like, 'I know what this means.' Board-level type of report, easy on the eye."
FreeAgent handles daily bookkeeping brilliantly - it's simple and accessible for small businesses. But when practices need to deliver quarterly insights at scale, Fathom Portfolio fills the gap.
Portfolio takes FreeAgent data and creates the quarterly reports practices need. Tax year alignment happens automatically. The formatting is client-ready. Multiple clients appear in one dashboard.
"Portfolio gives that elevation to the software," Nic says. "Especially with communicating with clients."
"I think it's a great add-on for MTD to be able to run the reports and see what monthly turnover is. If you put in a year-to-date report, you can understand where they are based. Are they above that 50k mark? Are they below? You can segment out your client list to understand which clients are falling into the MTD bracket or not. Fathom gives that overall practice view for you to be able to understand what is your rollout plan ready for MTD."
We asked Nic about upgrading these clients to Fathom Pro for deeper analysis.
"There's a line you have to draw. How much are you giving away? How profitable are you? They are usually our most profitable ones, but monitoring that scope creep..."
Portfolio keeps boundaries clear. Quarterly oversight, not constant deep-dives. Reports that inform, not overwhelm. A service genuinely profitable at the £30k-£80k client size.
When clients need more - like raising funding - Pro is there. But for everyday FreeAgent clients? Portfolio fits.
Nic's hiring a part-time accountant to scale this exact Portfolio workflow. Train them over six months, hand off quarterly delivery, add more FreeAgent clients without proportionally increasing workload.
That's scalable advisory.
Ginger Bucks grew profit by 900% last year. "This year, I want to do the same," Nic says. Portfolio is a big part of how.
Her recommendation to practices managing FreeAgent clients:
"10 out of 10. I would love more people to adopt it because it really helps accountants grow and give that high level advisory service."
Start delivering profitable quarterly reporting to your FreeAgent clients
Nic proved it works. Eight FreeAgent clients on Portfolio. Quarterly reviews delivered consistently. Profitable service tier she's hiring to scale.
See how Fathom Portfolio works for practices managing FreeAgent clients. Start your free trial today.
Ellie is a campaign marketing manager at Fathom, with a degree in branding and marketing. With a background in campaign strategy and creation, Ellie is passionate about showcasing how Fathom can make a real difference to finance professionals and businesses.
