FreshBooks Review

COMPLETE REVIEW

FreshBooks is a web-based software developed by the company with the same name. The company was founded in 2003 and it is based in Toronto. Initially, the product was called 2ndSite, but it was rebranded in 2006, when it received the name FreshBooks.

FreshBooks claims its product has been used by over 10 million customers so far, from more than 120 countries worldwide and that QuickBooks is the only similar product with more subscribers than them.

This cloud-based software is mostly tailored for the self-employed and small businesses.

The program also has mobile apps that are compatible with iOS and Android devices.

All three plans include a free 30-days trial, with no credit card requirements.

All three plans allow you to send unlimited invoices, see when a client has received, paid or viewed an invoice, accept online payments, add and categorize expenses, set up automatic late payment reminders and fees, track time by clients and project, create estimates and more.

With the Lite plan, which is the cheapest one, you can only bill up to 5 active clients.

The Plus plan allows up to 50, while with Premium you can bill up to 500.

After testing the product for a while, we reached some conclusions regarding its features, strengths and minuses. FreshBooks is a very good option for people who are looking for solid billing and invoicing tools. Its customer management and time tracking features are also impressive. However, this program doesn’t shine that bright when it comes to reports (which are quite limited), tracking inventory or bank reconciliation abilities. It’s also not optimized for multiple users. As an overall opinion, FreshBooks is more of an invoicing program and only has basic accounting capabilities, as far as we’ve seen.

Back on advantages, FreshBooks has one of the cleanest, simplest, most intuitive and user-friendly interfaces we’ve tested, especially with the new version of the product, which was released last year. The new version did remove some options from the Classic version, which makes it even simpler, maybe too simple.

The setup process only takes around 10 minutes.

The tabs you’re going to see after getting started are Dashboard, Invoices, Estimates, Clients, Expenses, Projects, Time Tracking.

Another thing we really appreciate about this product is the fact that it comes with an excellent customer support, so in case you are having difficulties of any kind, you can really benefit from their helpful reps or the extensive Help Center on their website.

The mobile app from FreshBooks is also praiseworthy. It is very well-designed and comes with a lot of useful features. It allows you to create and send invoices, record payments, track your time and more. While it doesn’t have all the tools available for the desktop version, it does come very close to it.

In terms of invoice templates, FreshBooks includes two customizable templates. There is also a chat feature included. You can see recent actions for each invoice and messages related to it, from your client.

When it comes to tracking expenses, for each expense you enter, you can add a description, an image, a vendor, a category and a total. On the downside, FreshBooks doesn’t allow you to enter bank statements manually in the program.

Another useful aspect of FreshBooks is that it comes with a lot of auto-fill features that make your job easier. For instance, it can auto-fill things like language preference, currency for client accounts that you create. The same goes for invoices. FreshBooks auto-fills any stored information about clients.

On to integrations, FreshBooks doesn’t include nearly as many apps as major competitors. There are only around 25 integrations available. Here are some of them: Zapier, Shopify, Stripe, OneSaas, Acuity, Gusto, Capsule.