FreshBooks is a cloud-based software platform for small and medium-sized businesses that automates repetitive bookkeeping and accounting tasks. FreshBooks allows you to automatically track your expenses, produce detailed financial reports, set up recurring billing, and a whole lot more.
| Best for | Automating time-consuming accounting tasks |
| Price range | $6 - $20 per month |
| Free Trial | 30 days |
| Integrations | 100+, including Gmail, Bench, Stripe, Fundbox |
| Apps | Web-based, iOS, Android |
FreshBooks’ double-entry accounting tools automatically sort through revenue items and related expenses to give you an accurate calculation of your profits and losses. Automatic checks and balances ensure debt and credit amounts are equal, reducing the odds of costly errors at tax time.
FreshBooks is also much more than an accounting platform. It contains a suite of tools that streamline and automate your bookkeeping and financial tasks.
Invoice generator. Create customizable invoices with your company logo and personalized thank-you emails that trigger under certain rules. Add invoice due dates, tracked time, expenses, and more. Get instant updates when an invoice has been viewed and paid.
Expenses. Connect your bank account or credit card to FreshBooks to automatically record all your expenses. Take a picture of a receipt and log it to ensure it never gets lost. FreshBooks automatically sorts all your expenses into categories, so you and your accountant have all the information you need at tax time.
Time tracking. Start a timer whenever you sit down to work on a project; when you’re done, you’ll have an accurate time-log to add to the invoice. You can even track time from various third-party apps, e.g. Asana, Basecamp, Trello, and Teamwork.
Collaboration. Invite employees, contractors, and partners to manage projects and decide which files they can access with team permissions.
Estimates. Outline a project’s scope, timeline, and deliverables – and convert these into ready-to-pay invoices in an instant. Your clients can view, accept, and respond to your estimates online.
Payments. FreshBooks lets your customers pay directly through invoices and automatically records each payment in your account. You can ask for payment through your FreshBooks Payments tool (costs 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction), Stripe, or PayPal.
Your FreshBooks dashboard contains important reports about your business’s financial activities. You can report filtering by client, team member, or date. You can save, export, or print reports to share with your accountant.
Report types include:
At last count, FreshBooks had 46 FreshBooks-tested apps and 72-community-built apps. These apps cover dozens of categories including accounts receivable, analytics, CRM tools, e-commerce, file storage, marketing, project management, payroll, shipping & tracking, and website management.
Top picks include:
FreshBooks offers four plans: Lite, Plus, Premium, and Select. The more you pay, the more billable clients you can have and the more features you get.
If you’re new to FreshBooks, then you can start a free 30-day trial without having to enter your credit card details. Once your trial ends, you can cancel anytime.
| Lite | Plus | Premium | Select | |
| Price (monthly) | $6 | $10 | $20 | Custom |
| Max. billable clients | 5 | 50 | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Lite lets you do the basics, e.g. track unlimited expenses, send unlimited estimates, get paid with credit cards and bank transfers, track sales tax and see reports.
Plus adds in plenty more features, e.g. set up recurring billing and client retainers, use double-entry accounting reports, invite your accountant, mobile mileage tracking.
Premium offers advanced features, e.g., track bills and vendors with accounts payable, track project profitability, customize email templates with dynamic fields, customize email signatures, automatically send late payment reminders, run financial and accounting reports.
Select has the most advanced features, e.g. access to lower credit card transaction rates, dedicated account manager, help with onboarding and migrating from other software, removal of FreshBooks branding from client emails
Here are the optional add-ons:
One of the things customers like most about FreshBooks is how easy it is to use. The interface is very intuitive and can be learnt in a quick time.
FreshBooks is entirely web-based, so you can access it from anywhere without ever having to install anything on your computer. FreshBooks also has an app (iOS and Android) containing many of the features accessible through the browser-based version.
Select subscribers get help migrating from other software and setting up their account with custom onboarding services. All other subscribers get only minimal help with onboarding and setup. However, given the ease of use of the FreshBooks platform, this isn’t that big a deal.
FreshBooks says it protects your and your clients’ information with industry-standard SSL and encryption.
FreshBooks offers support 7 days a week between 8am and 8pm EST. The best way to reach the team is by phone (866-303-6061) or email (support@freshbooks.com).
“FreshBooks helped tremendously with cash flow. We've collected on our accounts receivable at a higher percentage than we ever had before.”
-Jessica McCormick, founder and tax director, McCormick Tax Group, LLC
“Invoicing and Recurring Invoices are a life-saver for me. The invoices dashboard is so useful, the fact that it shows you overdue amounts right away keeps me organized.”
-Carolina Ramirez Herrera, Managing Partner, CRH Collective
“FreshBooks makes it super easy for me to make future projections. The dashboard is well designed. It’s my starting point for a lot of analysis and projections for the next month. Obviously, this level of information was not available to me when I was using Excel. All of this information empowers me to be even more financially literate. It’s super confidence-building.”
-Marc Schenker, Founder, The Glorious Company
Many SMB owners find that accounting and bookkeeping tasks can be a real drain on their resources. FreshBooks automates most of your finance-related tasks, giving you time to focus on growing your business and reducing the likelihood of costly errors at tax time.