Before we get started you should know I’m proud to be affiliated with FreshBooks and may get compensated if you purchase using any of the links on this page. Onto the review!
FreshBooks promises to make it easier to make your small business run. Their tagline promises they are an “all-in-one small business invoicing and accounting solution.”
Click here to try FreshBooks for free. There is no credit card required and you can cancel at any time.
In this article, I’ll be going over:
- What FreshBooks Is and What It Isn’t
- If FreshBooks is Easy to Use
- How FreshBooks Works
- The Pros and Cons of FreshBooks
- Who FreshBooks is Good For and Who It Doesn’t Work For
- A FreshBooks Overview Video
What is FreshBooks?
FreshBooks is a cloud accounting app. It has an award-winning interface and is excellent at creating invoices, tracking time, reporting and managing expenses.
It is both simple and efficient and gets high marks from businesses that use it.
Is FreshBooks Easy to Use?
Unlike many other accounting software suites on the market, FreshBooks is very easy to use. The company puts a lot of time and energy into making the user interface as simple as possible to get through and understand.
One of the best things about FreshBooks is that it doesn’t require you to be a bookkeeper or accountant to be able to use it effectively. This is GREAT news for small business owners that often wear a large variety of hats and don’t have the time to become expert bookkeepers or the money to hire a bookkeeper.
Is FreshBooks Good for Accounting?
FreshBooks used to be good for invoicing, with some accounting features thrown in. But the upgrade they rolled out in 2018 changed that. Now FreshBooks is a full-fledged accounting software with an easy to use interface.
Double Entry Accounting Rolled Out in 2018
One of the biggest improvements to FreshBooks in its role as an accounting software occurred in November 2018. At that time, they added double-entry accounting techniques. They also added new features like reporting, bank reconciliation, and journal entries.
Important Note! All the versions of FreshBooks EXCEPT Lite now come with Double Entry Accounting
How Does FreshBooks Work?
FreshBooks is cloud-based – that means that you can access it from any computer or mobile device that’s connected to the web. They have an excellent app that is intuitive and easy to use as well.
It’s perfect for communicating with team members, figuring out which clients owe you money and how much, tracking projects, and managing finances.
How Much Does FreshBooks Cost?
FreshBooks has a 4-tier pricing structure. There are no free plans with FreshBooks. These prices are for monthly payments, all plans are lower priced when you pay for a year at a time. Here are the basics of the various plans:
| Plan | Billable Clients | Cost |
| Lite | 5 | $15 |
| Plus | 50 | $25 |
| Premium | 500 | $50 |
| Select | Over 500 | Varies |
Important! All of these plans are for 1 user. Additional users are $10 per month per user.
Who Is FreshBooks Good For?
FreshBooks is excellent for people running a one-stop-shop and small businesses. It works particularly well in businesses where you bill clients by the project or by the hour. Think attorneys, accountants, and gutter installers.
It doesn’t work as well for businesses like retail and e-commerce.
Pros of FreshBooks
Track Expenses With Ease: With FreshBooks, you no longer have to keep paper receipts. You can easily take a picture of the receipt with your FreshBooks App and attach it to an item that’s in FreshBooks in order to track that expense.
In Field Time Tracking: Because I do client visits, I think that this is a BRILLIANT feature. You can use the app (available for iOS or Android) to precisely track your time in the field. This makes billing correctly so much easier.
Really Cool Reports: FreshBooks can take the data you entered and slice and dice it into reports with a couple of clicks. You can create P & L reports, expense reports, and tax reports to make tax time easier.
Easy to Use Mobile App: I’ve mentioned the usefulness of the mobile app a couple of different times in this pros section. But it’s so good that it needs its own paragraph. Like all FreshBooks software, the mobile app is easy to use and keeps you up to date on the go.
Cons of FreshBooks
Freshbooks is a very good accounting software for many businesses, but it doesn’t work well for e-commerce or traditional retail. It’s just not set up for that. However, what it does, it does exceptionally well.
FreshBooks Video Overview
To get a better idea of the features of Fresh Books, check out this video.
What Are People Saying About FreshBooks?
Easy to Use
Ease of use, mobile app, ability to have a ticketing system for customers, ability to have subs long hours in the system, ability to create professional looking quotes and invoices on the fly, integration to credit card and bank accounts to track and attach expenses to jobs.
Wayne
Easy to Use
Freshbooks is a simple and straight-forward accounting solution. It’s delivered with relatively small amount of standard accounting categories so you’re not overwhelmed placing expenses into their proper buckets and adding new categories is quite easy. Our business doesn’t have a ton of complex expenses – and if yours does, Freshbooks might not be a good fit. What we love about Freshbooks is how straight-forward their invoicing system has been. It’s easy to create recurring invoicing and it integrates with popular credit card processors to facilitate easy online payments. Perhaps the attribute that has kept us with Freshbooks through the years is their customer service – it’s amazing. Customer service has always been super friendly, easy to understand, and they always seen eager to help. This interest and willingness to be helpful goes a long way.
Richard
Good For Beginners
Overall this software it really nice for the beginner who is on a tight budget and need to get some accounting work done and fast without have to search all of the computer for documents and invoices. I this a wonderful platform that time after time will give me the results that I need. I will keep using the production because it has not failed me yet.
Casscilla
The Bottom Line on FreshBooks
FreshBooks is a quality program that is very easy to use and can streamline your expense tracking, time tracking, team collaboration, and billing. If you are a solo operator or have a small team of people working for you in a client-based business, FreshBooks can be an excellent option to make your life easier.
Click here to try FreshBooks for free. No credit card required and you can cancel at any time.