What This Integration Does
This integration creates a FreeAgent invoice for every successful Stripe charge and marks it as paid, with the VAT treatment, contact, and project tag set correctly from the start. For UK contractors, agencies, and small businesses on FreeAgent, it removes the pile-up of “explain this Stripe payment” entries that accumulate in the bank feed and never quite get reconciled.
The integration also keeps FreeAgent’s contact records in sync with the customers paying through Stripe, so the same client never ends up as three separate entries spelt slightly differently each time.
The Workflow
When Stripe completes a charge, the integration receives the webhook and inspects the metadata attached to the payment. If the charge carries a project reference (for an agency that tags each invoice with the client project), that reference is used to set the FreeAgent project on the new invoice. The customer is matched against FreeAgent contacts by email, and a new contact is created if there is no match, populated with the registered company name from the Stripe billing details.
The invoice is then drafted in FreeAgent with line items pulled from the Stripe charge description, the correct VAT rate applied based on the customer’s country and VAT registration status, and the invoice number set to follow FreeAgent’s existing sequence. The Stripe payment is registered against the invoice immediately, and a corresponding bank transaction is posted against the Stripe holding account ready to be explained when the actual Stripe payout arrives in the business bank account.
A practical example: a Brighton consultancy bills a retainer monthly. Each month, when the Stripe charge succeeds, the integration creates the FreeAgent invoice tagged to the right project, applies UK VAT, and matches the payment. The consultancy’s profit and loss for the month is already complete the day the invoice runs.
Before and After
Before, the founder spends the first Saturday of every month opening Stripe, FreeAgent, and a spreadsheet side by side, working through each charge, creating the invoice, applying VAT, tagging the project, and matching payments. It takes three or four hours and is work that routinely gets postponed until VAT season forces it.
After, FreeAgent is current by the time Monday morning starts. The bank feed lines up cleanly. The MTD VAT return is one button away because every invoice is already posted with the right code.
Who Needs This
UK-based limited companies, contractors, and small agencies who use FreeAgent as their statutory accounts platform and Stripe for client payments. The pain point that drives the integration is usually VAT registration. Once the business crosses the threshold, manual reconciliation becomes a compliance risk, not merely an inconvenience.
How We Build This
We build this directly against the Stripe API and FreeAgent APIs. FreeAgent is a UK-built accounting platform with a well-documented REST API; we use OAuth2 for authentication and webhook subscriptions for downstream events. The customer matching logic, project tagging, and VAT mapping are configured for your specific business, not applied from a generic template. The broader range of payment-to-accounting integrations we build is listed in the integrations overview, including Stripe to Sage and GoCardless to Xero for those on different platforms.
Start the Integration
If you run on Stripe and FreeAgent and reconciliation has become a recurring weekend job, we can scope a Stripe to FreeAgent build tuned for your invoice numbering, VAT setup, and project structure.
Written by
Alex
CEO
I’m a software developer and CEO of Digital Royalty, helping growing teams scale their SaaS platforms without losing quality, visibility, or control. I focus on building structured, maintainable systems with clear processes, reporting, and accountability. With over a decade of experience across agency and in-house roles, I specialise in delivering long-term, scalable solutions that support complex, evolving products.
