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Freshbooks Review For 2020: Features, Pricing & Competitors

Freshbooks Review

There will come a time in your business when you’ll need to invest in business accounting software. As your business grows, it's imperative to keep good financial records, without becoming overwhelmed. 

As soon as you start researching, you’ll see there are lots of possible solutions. Erm, hello overwhelm! Don't worry we've got you. 

Today, we’re going to talk about one of the market leaders, Freshbooks. We'll share the features, pros, cons and the main competitors. By the end of this Freshbooks review you’ll know if it’s the right solution for you. Pinky promise!

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Review of: Freshbooks

Purpose: Business Accounting Software

Value for Money

3.5/5

Prices start at $15 (for 5  billable clients) up to $50 (for 500 billable clients). If you have more clients than this, they offer bespoke packages. As you increase your number of clients the costs shoot up rapidly.

Support

5/5

They offer great customer support. Numerous customer service awards. 

Thorough help centre, plus an information packed blog.

Ease of Use

4.5/5

Incredibly easy to set up and use even if you don’t have much previous bookkeeping experience. Occasional navigational difficulty, but strong customer support & plenty of tools to help.

Effectiveness

4/5

Protects your personal information with industry standard SSL and encryption, so your business is always safe & secure. Offers great features, but with some limitations – e.g. no Payroll.

We Like

  • Easy to use
  • Excellent customer service
  • Good mobile apps
  • Well-designed user interface
  • Well designed invoice templates
  • Context-sensitive content
  • Tracking expenses is easy!

We Don't Like

  • Entirely web-based software, so if you want a downloadable program, FreshBooks isn’t for you
  • Limited users
  • Limited features - a few functions that fall short, such as payroll tools
  • Lacks double-entry bookkeeping
Visit Freshbooks.com

Is It Right For Me?

Freshbooks Pricing

Customer Reviews

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What Is Freshboooks?

FreshBooks is an accountancy software tool, founded in 2004 by 2ndsite, Inc. It's core market is small businesses, freelancers and individual retailers. They offer cloud-based accounting tools, which let you manage invoices, expenses and your time.

Freshbooks Review: Features

  • Automatic expense import & tax calculations
  • Personalized thank you emails
  • Credit card processing
  • Customizable invoices, templates & billing
  • Reminders & late fees
  • Request deposits
  • Time & attendance tracking
  • Expense tracking
  • Customizable due dates
  • Apply discounts to invoices
  • Duplicate Invoices
  • Receipt attachments
  • File sharing
  • Collaboration tools
  • Profit & Loss
  • Client relationship feed
  • Contact management
  • Google apps add-ons
  • Due date tracking
  • Time tracking by project
  • Billable hours
  • Invoices
  • Late payment reminders
  • Collaborative workspace
  • Credit card processing
  • Data import
  • Document templates
  • Electronic payments
  • Email integration
  • Expense tracking
  • Online invoicing
  • Invoice processing
  • Contact management
  • Mobile apps
  • Multi-currency & language
  • POS
  • Project planning
  • Recurring billing
  • Time tracking & timer
  • Timesheet management
  • Deadline tracking
  • Tracking features
  • Attach receipts (PDF or Image)
  • Currency conversion
  • Billing & invoicing
  • Profit / loss statement
  • Accounting reports & taxes
  • API
  • Automated billing
  • Time clock integration
  • Email invitations & reminders
  • Reporting & statistics
  • Billable hours tracking
  • Automated expense input
  • Collaboration tools
  • Project management
  • Touch ID

    • Freshbooks Features: The Breakdown

    Optimize expense tracking

    It’s easy with Freshbooks to track your business expenses. You can add and organize receipts in the software, and you’ll get an easy-to-read report. You can also track client expenses and add them directly to their invoice. Link the Expense Tool up with your bank or credit card account to import expenses directly from your bank. 

    Time tracking

    Easily track your time against specific clients or  projects in Freshbooks. There's a Chrome extension to allow time tracking in apps such as Asana and Trello. This helps you bill with accuracy and means you can add the hours you’ve tracked to your client’s invoice. You can manually log time in FreshBooks or use the built-in timer. Easily review the logged time of your employees and contractors. Then the time logged can be added to projects and invoices. You can choose to record un billable time as well.

    Flexible Billing

    FreshBooks offers flexible billing features. You can charge per hour or a flat rate according to your agreement with the client. 

    Thorough reporting

    FreshBooks enables you to produce financial reports by processing data you’ve already entered. Easily generate an expense report or profit and loss report in just a few clicks. Filter your accounts records and generate accurate tax reports. Then export these reports and share them with your accountant with zero hassle.

    Project Management

    Set a time budget and due date for client projects and discuss the project with your team using the communication tool ‘discuss’. 

    Client Portal

    They offer a well designed client portal. Your customers can accept, save, print, or comment on estimates. Pay, print, save and write messages on invoices and view, comment on, or accept proposals. This makes all the back and forth confined to one centralised place.

    Contact Management

    You can add basic client information as well as internal notes. Set a default language and currency, as well as creating default invoice reminders and late fees for each specific customer. 

    Is Freshbooks Right For Me?

    If you’re a service-based businesses, solopreneur or a freelancer, Freshbooks maybe be the solution for you. If you’re looking for an easy way to track expenses and invoice clients. Then, Freshbooks could take a weight off your shoulders.

    Freshbooks Vs Competitors

    Freshbooks vs Quickbooks

    QuickBooks works best for companies that sell products and require a scalable, fully-fledged accounting software. FreshBooks works best for service-based businesses, for freelancers and solopreneurs who need a way to track expenses and revenue for simple reports.

    Freshbooks vs Zoho Books

    Both focus on small to mid sized business and freelancers. Freshbooks is more expensive ($15) compared to Zoho Books $9 (for their lowest priced plan). Freshbooks is a little easier to use and has better customer support.

    Freshbooks vs Sage50

    Freshbooks is award-winning accounting software. It has a greater customer satisfaction levels, more features and it's just under  half the price of Sage50. However, Freshbooks isn’t recommended for large organisations, where Sage50 is.

    Freshbooks Review: Pricing

    You can take advantage of their 30-day free trial. 

    Then you can pay yearly or monthly for all plans. Each plan has three tiers.

    The ‘Lite’ package is $15 per month. You get 5 clients, estimates, unlimited invoices, expense tracking, time tracking, online credit card payments and expenses can be imported from your bank account.

    The ‘Plus’ package costs $25 per month. It has all the ‘Lite’ tier features, plus 50 clients, late fees for overdue accounts, payment reminders, accounting reports, recurring invoice scheduling and you can send proposals.

    The ‘Premium’ tier costs $50 per month and gives you up to 500 clients.

    There's also an optional add-on for $10 per person per month, which means you can add team members to your account.

    You can reduce these fees by 10% if you pay yearly.

    FreshBooks Select

    If you have more than 500 clients FreshBooks Select might be for you. This includes all of the features of FreshBooks Premium, but adds more users and more features, such as advanced payments, QuickBooks and Xero integrations, and a dedicated account manager.

    Additional costs

    • Additional Users: The plans only include one user. You can add additional users for $10/month per user.

    FreshBooks Payments: This allows you to accept payments from most major credit cards directly from your invoices. Payment processing costs 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for most credit cards.

    Freshbooks Customer Reviews

    ‘One of the most useful apps for running your business on the go’. Rhonda Abrams USA Today

    ‘FreshBooks is the perfect tool for businesses who have hundreds of clients and customers whom they invoice regularly. It removes the need to manually send invoices to clients and customers, by streamlining inputted information to create an automated invoicing system which keeps clients and customers up to date with their bills.It is also a great tool for managing expenses, especially for companies with different teams working on varying projects, ensuring these teams do not exceed the budget ceiling’. Sandra Ikegwuonu, Sterling Bank

    Frequently Asked Questions About Freshbooks

    Is FreshBooks better than QuickBooks?

    QuickBooks offers more features than FreshBooks and the features are more robust. QuickBooks is a great fit for companies selling products and who need a scalable, robust accounting software. FreshBooks is a great fit for service-based businesses and freelancers who need to track their expenses and revenue.

    FreshBooks Pricing

    FreshBooks has 3 plans: Lite ($15), Plus ($25), and Premium ($50). All plans include basic accounting features like payment processing, invoicing and time tracking.

    Is FreshBooks good for accounting?

    FreshBooks is perfect for small business owners who are looking for a basic, user-friendly  accounting tool to do invoicing and expense tracking.

    Is FreshBooks cloud based?

    FreshBooks is cloud-based. Rest assured it uses secure servers to ensure all client payments and data is safe. 

    Does FreshBooks do payroll?

    Not directly, but Freshbooks does integrate with Gusto which will take care of your payroll.

    Does FreshBooks integrate with PayPal?

    No, but it directly integrates with Stripe.

    Is Freshbooks Worth It?

    If you need to send recurring invoices, want to track time, or you run a subscription model business, FreshBooks could be a great solution for you. 

    They offer extensive integrations with many applications. Regular secure backups are included, and their mobile app means you can keep track of your business finances wherever you are. 

    FreshBooks is ideal for small to mid sized businesses who want an easy to use, basic accounting solution.

    It's missing some features, such as user permissions and accounts payable, so if you  need these, then you should check out one of Freshbooks’ competitors, such as Quickbooks or Xero. 

    We hope this Freshbooks Review has helped you decide if it's the tool for you. If you're still on the fence, why not use the free trial and see if you like it, before committing.

    Freshbooks

    Cloud Based Accounting Software
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