ACCOUNTING
Freshbooks Review: Invoice and Accounting SaaS For SMBs
Freshbooks Review: Invoice and Accounting SaaS For SMBs
Table of Contents
Accounting SaaS tools need to do much more than just monitor your debits and credits. You need something that can automatically invoice your clients, increase your accounts receivable conversion rate and connect with all the existing tools you rely on on a day-to-day basis. Whether you are a business with contractors or a self-employed professional, you want something that will automate the finance task that has to be done and eliminate those that don’t. Freshbooks can do all that and a lot more; read our Freshbooks review to see how they can help your business.
Freshbooks Features For Your Business
Invoicing
Freshbooks has a customisable invoicing generator for your clients with a simple interface where you can add your tracked time and automatically calculate your taxes and add expenses to your invoices. Using their invoicing tool, you can streamline your workflow for time tracking, reporting, project management, and recurring invoices. You can even add logos on invoices and estimates on Freshbooks to help your clients communicate your brand and business. Data is cloud-based so that you can access and edit your invoices at any time.
Accounting, Payments, and Expenses
Accuracy is essential in bookkeeping and the calculation of profits and losses. Accounting software such as Freshbooks allows its users to efficiently work with their resources without needing to worry about clerical errors. With their accounting service, you can bill your clients, track payments and save transactions with receipts and use automated bank reconciliation. You can then view a summary of these changes in a detailed report. Their payments services also accept credit card payments online, over the phone transactions, and in-person. You can also categorise all of these services in one place with the client portal.
Time Tracking
People who want to track their efficiency and deliverability may wish to use Freshbook’s time tracking service, showing how long you and your team worked for a specific project. They also have app integrations like Asana, Basecamp, Trello and Teamwork to sync your time tracking reports with these productivity and project management apps. With their time tracking tool, you can automatically bill for tracked hours, included time entry notes, and have detailed breakdowns on the time tracking report.
Projects
You can easily access your files and give designated permissions to your team members with Freshbook’s projects. They offer a web-based centralised place for file storage where you can store your team’s work. Collaboration is also possible between your members and clients to add images, files, and other notes for ongoing projects.
Freshbooks Customer Service and Help Support
Freshbooks also offers customer service and support for its tools and services. You may contact them via their Help Support centre or send them a request for assistance. They also offer customer support via a customer support representative to ask specific questions which aren’t available on their website.
Considerations When Using Freshbooks
While Freshbooks offers many services to help your invoicing, accounting, and payments, it has some limitations on its services. It lacks inventory tracking and vendor management, so it is best suited for companies that sell services and are project-based. This means it may not be the best accounting service for E-commerce businesses. Customisation options are fewer, with only two templates and limited fonts, but if you don’t need this flexibility, it shouldn’t be an issue. Finally, you can’t view your reports and analysis on its mobile app version.
How Much Does Freshbooks Cost?
Invoice generation and accounting reports are valuable for any business that wants to have accurate data on bank transactions, reports, taxes, and accounting needs. You can access Freshbook’s accounting services for only $4.50 (billed annually) /month with their Lite plan. It features five billable clients with unlimited invoices, tracks unlimited expenses, sends unlimited estimates, sees your reports, and more. Their most popular tier, Freshbooks Plus, costs $7.50 /month with 50 billable clients and Lite’s features where another user can use the account.
They also offer a customised plan for businesses with bespoke requirements, which also includes 500 billable clients. Freshbooks’ accounting tools and services are also available for a free trial of 30 days with all features of your chosen pricing plan unlocked. After reading our Freshbooks review, discover more of Freshbook’s pricing plans here.
Which Freshbooks Alternatives Should You Consider Using?
Quickbooks
Quickbooks is available for desktop and mobile, which includes features like tracking income & expenses and sending custom invoices and quotes. Moreover, users also recommend their project profitability calculator, their accounting error audit reports, and loves their price rate. Their starting price is $8/month without needing to download any client and is cloud-based. You can also connect your bank for one user and your accountant with this tier.
Quickbooks also includes a 30-day trial for businesses that want to try their service. However, many companies that use Quickbooks mention that it is too focused on small businesses or lacks customised data reports.
Wave
If you’re looking for a free-forever alternative for Freshbooks, Wave is one of the popular choices among many freelancers and solopreneurs. Some of their key features include recurring invoices for repeat clients, book balancing with tax deductions, and running basic reports. However, they may need to charge 2.9% + 30¢ per transaction for Visa, Mastercard, and Discover. Bank payments (ACH) have a 1% per transaction ($1 minimum fee). If you’re also looking to use their payroll services, there is a $35 monthly base fee + $6 per active employee and + $6 per independent contractor paid.
Xero
One of the frequently used online accounting software, Xero, is a complete business solution. It easily connects your business with accounting tools, payment services, banks, and third-party app integrations. Since it is cloud-based, you can access your account and saves data in real-time. Professionals can subscribe to Xero’s services starting at $20USD per month to send 20 invoices and quotes, enter five bills, reconcile bank transactions, and capture bills and receipts with Hubdoc. Xero has regionalised pricing plans for people outside the US.
Final Thoughts
It is quick and easy to generate invoices and provide detailed accounting reports to your client using Freshbook’s services from checking all features in this Freshbooks review. Everything from basic accounting to expense-tracking and invoicing is possible with this SaaS tool, and with a 30-day free trial, you can give it a go without worrying about costs.