FreshBooks

Benefits:

It was easy to follow and use - nothing complicated. Perfect for someone that isn't good at bookkeeping but has their own business with low overhead.

Drawbacks:

I really didn't dislike anything about it.

In sum:

I now keep books for my small freelance business and my personal expenses. And I am always referring friends and others to Freshbooks especially when they first start up - then once they do, they keep using it even after the business grows.

Benefits:

I love being able to pull reports (P & L) very quickly to see my numbers. Clients can log into their invoices at any time and pay or download (which saves me from having to send it to them). Creating an invoice is very simple. The per month plan allows for up to 50 clients, which is plenty for the time being. Customer support is fantastic!

Drawbacks:

I'd like to be able to integrate with my website instead of manually having to enter the revenue. The old system used to show in the Dashboard what money was in transit. Now you have to login to WePay. No biggie, just an extra step. Clients cannot select the amount to pay if paying a partial amount of the invoice. This is a hassle when a client asks to pay a different amount as what was set up in the Payment Schedule. You have to go in and change it. Also, with Payment Schedules, if you don't enter them in date order, you have to reenter them. Let's say you get several payments entered and forgot one, you have to go and change all the dates in order for the system to accept it. It's a pain!

In sum:

An easy solution to invoicing and accounting without the big monthly bill

Benefits:

I like strong billing features, unique time tracking and customer management tools, and some accounting functions. Is the cloud accounting solution n.1 designed for small business owners. With powerful billing and billing features that are market leaders. Additionally it has a cleaner aesthetics, and greater availability of features such as those mentioned above. Finally, there are price options to suit most companies. Payments are made monthly, and a contract is not necessary, you can cancel the service at any time. There is also a free 30-day trial and no bank or credit card information is required.

Drawbacks:

This version may be a bit more difficult to navigate than the new version of FreshBooks. Account with few tutorials so that the client can be updated and become familiar with the software, although there is a free trial, there could be tutorials that allow the user to know each of the updated tools and new formats, likewise, it is necessary tutors so that The user is aware of the changes and what is the innovation. For example, it is necessary for the client to know what are the characteristics of the control panel, which in this case are the home screen displays attractive and organized graphics that provide a quick view of the activity and the financial health of the company. These graphs are called Invoices and Expenses, Pending Invoices, Expense Categories, Recent Activity, Active Projects, and Recent Customer Reviews. But I insist that there are few tutorials guiding the client in their experience.

In sum:

Benefits: clean user interface and extended and detailed functions. It allows for inventory, time tracking and the ability to request customer reviews. I like that it is designed for companies that look for invoicing and light accounting tools, in addition to a stable software and involves less paper time. In addition, the customer service is wonderful, offers many resources for their customers such as phones, email, contact form, web and social networks. I also like the fact that the screen can be customized because it allows the organization to be carried out through a daily or weekly calendar, which adjusts the software to the client's program.

Benefits:

Invoicing Time Tracker Online payments

Drawbacks:

Two majors issues that are making me look elsewhere. 1. Time tracker doesn't always work. You pause your time and return later and it is still going. There is a huge disconnect between the app and website time tracker which causes sync issues. I've used a couple of other time tracker software tools and I didn't have this issue. It is important to have accurate time and I constantly have to adjust. 2. The invoicing is inaccurate. I didn't notice this until recently when I submitted an invoice for what should have been an even amount. I noticed my hours said 80 but the invoice total wasn't adding up. The hours on the invoice was short by about $10. This happened more than one. Every invoice I have to adjust the amount. I notified Freshbooks and again months late the issue still exists. I am definitely going to use another tool and say goodbye to Freshbooks for good.

In sum:

Good product but very buggy and major issues persist for months (or years). They make you go through so many hoops just to troubleshoot.

Benefits:

I used Freshbooks in a small Alarm Start-up company that I used to be a sales manager at. This is an ideal program for smaller company for tracking and invoicing. I've also used Quickbooks and liked the invoicing on Freshbooks much better. It has some nice features such as you can see when people open the quote or invoice that you send them and how many times they have opened it. This is nice when you have a potential sale and you can tell if the prospect has looked at your quote and if he re-opened it. The customer can pay the can pay the invoice straight from the online and is easy and intuitive for them. Being an web based platform is nice to be able to pull it up on any device no matter where you are.

Drawbacks:

I wish there was a little more customization on controls and privileges for the user. The salesmen in the company was able to adjust pricing and I did not want them to be able to do this. There was not much customization on the presentation of the quotes and invoices either. You can have your company logo and small adjustments but very limited on the appearance.

Benefits:

It's user-friendly and makes it really easy to monitor and collect payments. You can create and estimate, get the client to approve online, roll to an invoice, set up recurring invoices for each client, log your hours, have them automatically roll to the corresponding monthly invoice, send via email or mail, and track when it's paid.

Drawbacks:

While it's great for estimates, invoicing, discounting, setting terms and collections, you cannot do anything more sophisticated such as creating a proposal. On the expense tracking side, it doesn't allow you to track expenses of different currencies with respective exchange rates.

In sum:

I have two businesses and have been using Freshbooks for 3 years as my billing platform. Freshbooks makes it easy to bill for items, and bill for time - which automatically rolls onto the invoice each month. I bill in both USD and CAD. Freshbooks lets me assign currency type by the client or by invoice. The features I love include the ability to see when a client has viewed the invoice, how many times it's been viewed when they've forwarded it (for payment), the ability for clients to pay online, and the auto-generated late payment notifications. I started out small, on the free plan, but after a year I went with the paid plan which gave me the ability to customize the look and feel of the invoices and customer portal. Yes, there's a client portal where clients can view their invoices and generate statements. Another feature I use is Documents. It's where I store my Wire Transfer details for clients to easily access. Overall, Freshbooks is a great system to start and grow your business.

Benefits:

It manages my projects, automatically generates invoices, keeps my time management on track, and imports expenses from my business credit card, automatically categorizing them for tax purposes.

Drawbacks:

I can't access project pages from the mobile app; the time tracker used to have a pause feature and now it doesn't; when I end the time tracker I have to click on it again to type in the work I did, unlike before when it had the pause feature; and I can't attach a document (such as a vendor contract) to an invoice when I send it through the FreshBooks system.

In sum:

Overall, it's changed my life. As a sole proprietor, I don't have time to do lots of accounting, and FreshBooks really does it all for me. I absolutely love this software and find the price to be entirely reasonable given all the things it does for me.

Benefits:

It does what is expected of it at a good monthly price. Invoices looks good and options to receive payments are good enough.

Drawbacks:

Navigation isn't good, hard to find things and reporting also a bit messy. Search fields do not take broad searches.

In sum:

I used Freshbooks at the company I work for, for about a year or so. We sent invoices to our customers and tracked payments through stripe and paypal. Even though the software is very restricted in terms of functionality (or maybe it was the package we used), the creators were able to make its navigation quite counter-intuitive. Often times you have to click around for a long time to properly understand a customer's history. Search fields are not broad, so often you will find yourself looking for a customer like SeagullBeachHotel like crazy... (0 results for Seagull Beach Hotel, or Seagull, etc). Apart from the bad navigation, system does its job as intended, payments are collected and transferred fine. Invoices are issued and statuses pretty much (not always) are correct. A couple of times we had an error with a payment received and there was no additional information to better understand what happened. Typical answer is "you have to tell your customer to ask his/her bank". No blame, but problems become hard to solve. I wish their system could make it better to customize email messages and to avoid getting marked as spam. It was a bit common for our customers to not pay because the email fell into spambox. Overall a useful tool. I was an end user, so I haven't got a chance t compare with other platforms like this (only Chargeover, being a bit more complex and even less user friendly than Freshbooks). I would recommend it to small companies looking for a cost effective solution to send invoices and receive payments.

Benefits:

As a long-time user (9 years), I've developed a workflow around Freshbooks so that I can track time, send invoices, draft estimates, and get paid pretty fluidly. It's integrated into my business, and I appreciate that it also integrates with other apps I may need to use. I find it's easy to use and does what I need it to.

Drawbacks:

In their newer version, they've taken away the Paypal integration, which turned off a bunch of my clients who prefer to pay that way. A few other things are a bit buggy, but seems to be due to my migrating from their "Classic" platform to the one they have now. For someone starting fresh with New Freshbooks, I doubt they would have these types of issues.

In sum:

There are some things about the workflows that I wish could be made more seamless and efficient. I feel like it takes too many clicks to do something like send out a quick estimate for a potential client, but maybe that's just me. With their newer platform, they seem to have listened to a lot of feedback from users to make their software better. When I've needed to contact support, either by phone or email, they are super friendly and actually seem to care about resolving your issue, which is nice. I've been a happy user for years and recommend it to others who need an online invoicing solution.

Benefits:

Not only is the design pleasing, but it's super easy to use and integrate with just about any other platform you use. My favorite features are the automations. I have the ability to integrate this with my email list so that new clients added to my email list automatically. I also love how easy the reports are to use. Creating recurring invoices it's the bomb and I love that some of my clients have saved they're credit cards and their invoices get paid automatically!! I spend less time entering payments and managing expenses and more time doing the stuff I want to do.

Drawbacks:

I would like a simpler way to manage tasks. This feature still feels clunky to me. It's also like to back to search within deleted clients and projects. Overall I'm just being picky because I can't think of anything else I need this to do.

In sum:

I was using Excel to track expenses and create invoices. I have to track down receipts and call on clients who were late to pay. It was up to me to remember to invoice clients each month. It was pretty overwhelming for me. Freshbooks basically made me a more efficient person by sending invoices automatically, importing expenses and chasing down clients who are late to pay.