If you run your books in FreeAgent, you’ve probably noticed the same thing most of its users notice eventually: the accounting side is excellent, but the document side is on you. As a result, bills end up keyed in by hand, and receipts get photographed, attached, then categorised one by one. For a sole trader doing twenty invoices a month, that workflow is fine. However, for a practice with fifteen clients, or a landlord with a stack of contractor invoices, it stops being fine pretty fast.
This post covers how to plug that gap. In particular, it walks through what FreeAgent does and doesn’t handle natively, where Datamolino fits in, how the setup actually works, and what’s worth knowing about Making Tax Digital for Income Tax now that it’s live.
The FreeAgent gap
Most FreeAgent users know its strengths. It’s HMRC-recognised, it handles VAT and Self Assessment cleanly, and the UI is genuinely friendly for non-accountants. In addition, it has a reasonable file attachment system: you can email receipts in, attach them to bills, and store them against transactions.
Where it stops being friendly is bulk processing. FreeAgent doesn’t extract supplier names, line items, or tax breakdowns from a PDF on its own. Instead, you attach the file, then you type the data. For one invoice that’s twenty seconds. For fifty invoices a month across multiple clients, however, it’s the part of the week you keep putting off.
Notably, the FreeAgent App Marketplace lists data capture partners specifically because FreeAgent itself doesn’t try to be one.
Why FreeAgent users have fewer scanning options than Xero users
This is worth being honest about. Some of the better-known capture tools either don’t work with FreeAgent at all, or work with it as a side integration rather than a core one.
Tools that don’t support FreeAgent
Hubdoc (owned by Xero) integrates with Xero, QuickBooks Online, and Bill.com. However, it does not support FreeAgent. If you switched to FreeAgent from Xero and used to rely on Hubdoc, you’ve probably already discovered this the hard way.
Tools owned by competing platforms
AutoEntry (owned by Sage) does support FreeAgent and captures line items. The integration works. That said, the product’s roadmap and marketing focus sits firmly on Sage, which is fine if Sage is your other ecosystem and less ideal if FreeAgent is your only one.
Similarly, Dext supports FreeAgent and publishes line items to it, including split rules. It’s a solid option. However, the pricing reflects its enterprise focus, which doesn’t always match a sole trader’s budget.
What this means in practice
So the FreeAgent gap isn’t quite “no one supports it.” Rather, it’s narrower than that. Competing accounting platforms own several capture tools, which in turn shapes how much energy goes into the FreeAgent integration. As a result, independent options exist but are thinner on the ground than they are for Xero.
Datamolino sits in that independent group. Importantly, no other accounting platform owns it (not Xero, not Sage, not Intuit), which means FreeAgent gets the same treatment as Xero and QuickBooks rather than appearing as an afterthought. The full integration details live on the Datamolino FreeAgent integration page.
What Datamolino does for FreeAgent users
Three things are worth pulling out, because they’re where the real time savings come from.
Full line-item capture
Datamolino extracts each line of an invoice, not just the totals. Specifically, that means description, quantity, amount, and tax rate per line. When you export to FreeAgent, you can choose: Invoice Total, Tax Summary, or Line items. Furthermore, each line carries its own ledger account, tax code, and tracking category. For practices doing job costing or landlords splitting expenses across properties, that’s the difference between accurate cost analysis and a rough total in the right ledger.
Rule-based coding that actually remembers
Once you’ve coded an invoice from a particular supplier, Datamolino remembers the pairing. The next time that supplier’s invoice comes in, Datamolino matches the contact and suggests the ledger account, the tax code, and the tracking category. In addition, for recurring suppliers you can turn on auto-export and the invoice goes straight to FreeAgent without you touching it. The coding logic follows rules rather than guesses, which matters when you’re answering to HMRC: the same input gives the same output every time.
Multi-client support that fits how practices actually work
Datamolino lets you create unlimited folders, each connected to its own FreeAgent company. For example, one folder per client, one folder per property, one folder per location, with different coding rules for each. The Practice Dashboard handles all your FreeAgent client connections from one place. Importantly, pricing scales with documents processed, not number of users or clients, so a practice managing fifteen FreeAgent clients pays for the volume, not the headcount.
Bank statements and sales invoices, not just bills
Datamolino handles three document types: purchase invoices and receipts, sales invoices issued outside FreeAgent, and bank statement PDFs where you don’t have a working bank feed. In addition, each document type has its own folder logic. For FreeAgent users without a connected bank feed (or with one that hasn’t worked for weeks, which happens more often than it should), this is often the first reason they sign up. The full feature list lives on the Datamolino features page.
“I have tried various other receipt capturing softwares but Datamolino is by far the best. Line items are captured perfectly, processing time is lightning.” — Datamolino customer review on the FreeAgent integration page
For larger practices, Chris Ripley (UK, ~3,000 documents a month across five entities) has noted that FreeAgent compatibility was critical for adoption. Specifically, several of his clients run on FreeAgent, and switching scanning tools wasn’t an option if FreeAgent wasn’t first-class.
How it actually works: setup in five steps
The whole connection takes under five minutes. The longer-running part is teaching it your supplier preferences, which happens naturally as you process the first batch.
- Create a folder. From the Datamolino dashboard, click + Add Folder. Then give it a name (a client name, a property, a location, whatever maps to one FreeAgent company).
- Connect to FreeAgent. Inside the folder, click Connect, then Connect to FreeAgent. Next, FreeAgent redirects you to authorise. Practice users see a list of their FreeAgent clients to pick from, while single-business users land straight on their own company. Datamolino then syncs your supplier and customer lists, ledger accounts, VAT codes, and tracking categories.
- Upload invoices. Drag and drop, email them to the folder’s unique address, snap them with the mobile app, or have suppliers CC the folder address directly. PDF, scan, photo, ZIP, all work. As soon as files arrive, Datamolino starts processing.
- Review and code the first batch. The first time you see an invoice from a supplier, you pair the captured supplier name with your FreeAgent contact, set the ledger account and tax code, and decide whether you want Invoice Total, Tax Summary, or Line items export. After that, Datamolino remembers the pairing for next time.
- Export. Once the data looks right, export to FreeAgent. Datamolino then creates the bill with all the captured details and the original PDF attached. Future invoices from the same supplier follow your rules. In addition, you can set auto-export on if you want recurring suppliers to bypass review entirely.
A quick word on MTD for Income Tax
MTD for Income Tax went live on 6 April 2026. If you’re a sole trader or landlord with qualifying income over £50,000, you’re in the first phase, and your first quarterly update to HMRC is due 7 August 2026.
What MTD requires is digital records and quarterly summary submissions of income and expenses. Importantly, it does not require receipt-by-receipt submission. However, the digital records part is where capture tools earn their keep: if your bills get typed in by hand, your records are only as accurate as your typing, and quarterly submissions multiply that exposure by four.
In practice, Datamolino handles the capture side while FreeAgent handles the submission side. We’ve written more about how to set up an MTD-ready workflow in our MTD invoice automation guide.
Try Datamolino free: process 100 documents at no cost.