FreshBooks Pricing Overview

The desktop site is very easy to understand and work with, it's setup in such a way that it's very user-friendly. Generating estimates and converting them to invoices has been an invaluable tool for us. Adding clients is very simple. Changing one invoice from another and the payment terms/options, late fees are all very easy to use. It would be great if Freshbooks would add the ability for the discount attributed to an invoice only apply to the original invoice amount, so if an invoice is late, the late fee isn't also discounted. Or assess the late fee differently so that it's tabulated post discount. Otherwise, we have to go in and manually change the amount which often leads to losing money because the fraction changes. Better yet, allow for discounts to be in dollars or percentage.

The mobile and tablet versions sometimes have issues syncing properly which is something that most apps can have issues with. However, it would be great if there were additional functionalities in the mobile and tablet versions like being able to select invoices by most recent, draft, by client, etc currently it's supposed to be most recent, but it's un-selectable, and it doesn't actually show the most recent, it will often have a jumbled list of invoices for example some of which are ancient but they may or may not have been accessed recently. This can also sometimes be an issue with the desktop version, if I search for an expense like rent it will often display rents from several months if not years ago instead of the most recent rent expense, this can at least be ameliorated by refining the search parameters, but it's annoying to have to do that..

It makes bookkeeping and accounting as well as tracking my business's progress and adding to the professionalism that helps to give confidence to our clients. Generating estimates and converting them to invoices has been an invaluable tool for us. Adding clients is very simple.

They have always had excellent support that is available via a phone call answered by a human. T

I've been a FreshBooks customer since 2008. It was very helpful in launching my consulting business. In 2016 I, along with other "classic" FreshBooks subscribers, received a letter from founder Mike McDerment introducing their new platform. Notably, the email promised the following: "Your current monthly service charge will be the same on the new product. Over time as we build more capabilities, you may choose to pay more to use some of those new capabilities based on the value they bring. That will be your decision at that time. We are excited to do more for you, more that we hope you will gladly choose to pay for." and "We believe in time, everyone will prefer to run their business on the new product, but we recognize that change is hard, and you will need to change on your timeline, not ours." In 2018 I was contacted by FreshBooks that my fees to continue using their software would be increasing by about 100%. This was not for the new version, this was to keep using the same exact product I already had. That's right, all the same features, now twice as expensive. Given the work it would take to move to another system, I decided it was worth it to just bite the bullet and accept the fee increase. This year I was informed that I would be forced to move to the new version of their software, and that my fees would be increasing, yet again, by another 25% . I expected this would happen at some point. You can't stop progress, right? As part of the transition I was told I must sever the relationship with my existing credit card processing company, Heartland, and be forced to use WePay, a Chase company, to process all of my payment. I am not a huge fan of Chase as a corporation and really didn't appreciate being forced into a relationship with them. I've had a great working partnership with Heartland and my local sales rep Jeff for over 5 years. So now onto my review of the NEW version of FreshBooks. If you are reading other reviews you may want to figure out if their review was for FB Classic or the New Freshbooks Meh. The Layout/UX is not as efficient as the classic version of FreshBooks. I used to be able to see a lot more content at once, but now there's at least 50% more whitespace. I'm sure it would get top marks in a college UX design class, but I'm not hanging this software on my wall to admire for its aesthetics. I want to see as much useful, relevant data as I can. I want that data to be easily sortable and filterable in ways that make sense. I want to be able to copy and paste things directly from the UI into an email when I need to while keeping the tables intact. I used to have those things in Classic Freshbooks, but no longer. On the flip side I now routinely scroll past the overabundance of white space, unasked for charts and graphs, forced tutorials and totally unhelpful quotes from philosophers while I'm trying to get work done. The previous version was designed by a freelancer who actually had to create a solution to his own problems. This new version feels like a very academic "looks good on paper" approach to solving real-world business problems by people who have no idea what the people who are using their software need to do on a daily basis. I am unimpressed. I should mention that I also use QuickBooks Online for my accounting, since FreshBooks has never really been a full-service accounting software or at least one that any of my accountants or bookkeepers wanted to deal with. I kept FreshBooks because it handled invoicing in a very efficient way that saved me a ton of time. Unfortunately, with this new version, that is no longer the case. The new version of FreshBooks is about as nimble and innovative as QBO so I have made the decision to transition away from FreshBooks and just use QuickBooks to handle my invoicing as well. I don't like the payment processing with WePay. I used to get the full amount of my transactions up front and then remitted the processing fees at the end of the month. This made it better for my cashflow and easier from an accounting perspective. WePay deducts their fees in advance so now I have to figure out the math at the end of the month and add a journal entry in order to properly account for my processing fees. This is additional work that I didn't have to do previously. I used to be very enthusiastic about this product and company, but my experiences in recent years show that they are changing and becoming a lot like the clueless, boring, corporate blobs to which they were once a "Fresh" alternative. (see what I did there?)

Invoicing, Time Tracking, Credit Card payments. The benefits in the former version was ease of use, efficiency, price (value) and simplicity. I believe the benefits I used to find have diminished in the new version of the software.

Freshbooks is easier to use than Quickbooks and Xero, without a doubt. It also offers a lot of integrations with other systems via Zapier and some direct connections. Additionally, their support team is the best of any SaaS vendor we've ever used, hands down. They are friendly, accessible via phone (answer on first ring usually, from my experience) and will work with you to resolve any problems. Given some of the issues we've had with Freshbooks, this has been tremendously important (see dislike section). Finally, their team is pretty responsive to user feedback. A few months ago we complained about not being able to turn off credit cards as a payment option on some large invoices (since fees are higher than ACH), and they implemented this toggle pretty soon after. Not many companies are so responsive to their customers in the SaaS space.

A few months ago, we ditched Quickbooks completely and went from using Freshbooks just for invoicing and receivables, to also using it for accounting, reconciliation, expense tracking etc. The accounting functionality was really not ready for prime time when they released it (and shortly after, we started using it). We're still working through duplicate transaction errors and bank feed issues which are making reconciliation and tax time very difficult. On the bright side, their support team has taken ownership and is manually combing through and deleting duplicate expenses for us so we don't have to do it manually ourselves. No other company would be so helpful! So, while there are still some bugs, I appreciate their hands on level of service.

Every service business needs basics like invoicing and time tracking. Freshbooks goes beyond this with simple yet innovative tools like recurring invoices and retainers w/ overage hour tracking which makes a whole business model available to us that wasn't possible due to the complications of tracking retainers before this software. Invoicing and getting paid is easier and faster than ever before. As I mentioned in the dislike section, I hope they continue to iron out the bugs around accounting and bank feeds in the near term.

Freshbooks makes the not-so-fun "business" part of running a solo business simple and easy. As a one-man company, I can track time, send invoices via email, and keep track of all my expenses. I really like that I can offer my clients multiple ways to pay. I prefer not to have to pay credit card fees if I don't have to, but not all my clients want to write checks either. In that case, I can offer them the option of using ACH to pay, which lowers the fees and enables my client to pay electronically. FreshBooks payments are great, they offer the ability to offer ACH payments and send my money faster than Stripe, usually the next day.

I'm not a big fan of the pay per client pricing model. It would be nice not to have to think about how many clients I have in the app. I can't help but feel like I'm overpaying for the same services if I have to upgrade in order to get one or two more clients on my plan. For example, I'm on the 50 clients plan which works for me now. However, when I started with FreshBooks, years ago, I was allotted, I think, 25 clients. When I got the 26th client, that was cool, but I then had to upgrade to the 50 client plan to send invoices. Sure, for a while I would simply go through and delete old clients and play the numbers game. I didn't like having to do that though. Finally, when the plan I had was phased out like an old iPhone, meaning I wouldn't see upgrades like Accounting access I was pretty much forced to upgrade. So with 26 clients, I had to purchase the 50 client plan, the price is reasonable for all that you get, I'm just not a fan of the pricing model.

With FreshBooks, I solve all the business issues that come along with running my own business. I can track my expenses, do my billing, and take electronic payments. I like that I can even have FreshBooks send reminder emails for overdue invoices which is a nice time saver.

An expert partners acquainted me with FreshBooks around 4 years back. From that point forward I've had four distinctive low maintenance aides (they leave for all day work!) and every ha aced FBs in a couple of days, not weeks just like the case with a contending item that I utilized already. It is exceptionally thorough and furthermore adaptable for errands, customers, activities, and cost classes. It interfaces neatly with an installment framework, so my customers who like to pay with charge card can do as such without any issues. I likewise like the APIs that pull cost information from my financial balance exchanges and business Visa charges.

I am based in the US, so there are a few things I would like to help complete our tax returns more easily: 1) a way to track the actual miles driven on the expense side. I do it now in a note but it is cumbersome. 2) a way to track expenses associated with a project but not billable to that project. I do it now by setting up two project titles, but I can only link those manually (actually, offline completely). An example would be some of my assistant's time that I can't bill the client for but that I would like to track so I can better estimate future project expenses, because it fits into "cost of goods sold" (when the "good" is our service).

Compared with the prior bookkeeping system I used, I've saved a lot of time with FreshBooks, in training (as noted above) and in actual entries. I can generate CSV/Excel sheets that allow me to do some customized reporting. My clients like the easy online payment process for credit card.

I most appreciate Freshbook's commitment to being better every day. It's a scrappy startup of sorts, supporting fellow scrappy startups. I appreciate the ongoing improvements and being a disruptor. Other things I like: - Invoicing is super easy. - Layout is logical. Easy to find things. - Priced right. - I have not been fully utilizing reports and accounting resources but will be this year. - Bank reconciliation is super logical and easy. - Love the integrations with Gusto and Stripe. - Appreciate the self help documents to troubleshoot.

- I miss the old time tracking system SOOOO much. I don't like how I have to open up each day to add a descriptor to each time task. I wish I could add the new entry for multiple days (in week view) AND add notes. - Would like to assign an expense to a client without it having to be billable. This would help me track costs associated with the client that I later recoup with lump sum invoicing. - Would like to remove expense categories that I don't use.

- Must have a product for time tracking, accounting and invoicing. - Has helped me have visibility into the status of my business and feel on top of something that generally feels very overwhelming.

I enjoy the responsive and helpful customer service. I have rarely encountered a customer service rep that wasn't help and willing to do whatever it took to ensure I was satisfied with the service and software. They took the time to explain and research the different topics that I called about. There was also rarely ever a wait time when I called. The price point fits the budget of our small business. The reports generated are easy to read and easy to generate. I have a wide variety of different template reports that I can choose from in order to provide me with the data that I am looking for. I enjoy the automation of the invoicing and billing especially in an industry where we have multiple recurring services that need to be billed on a monthly basis. I like the flexibility I have to create different recurring invoices whether it be weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly or custom.

Transitioning from classic to the new version was hard. It was less intuitive and had less functionality than its predecessor. I can't properly filter transactions, Taking payments over the phone is now a service that costs me money, and the system as a whole seems less user-friendly. The bank integrations would often fail which made it so I lost a number of expense transactions that I then had to input manually.

P&L Reports, Automatic invoicing, Online payments, Accounting reports, tracking expenses, budget allocation, revenue projections, previous year numbers, Auto integration with various credit cards to avoid manual input of data, Import expenses, Hourly consulting tracking and billing, Cash flow statements. I would also like to see a recurring ACH option for invoices I send to clients to save money on the CC processing fee.

Freshbooks is streamlined and easy to use. Features and reports are intuitively placed making it easy to track my time, create estimates, manage invoices, and track expenses.

The only downside of Freshbooks is that I cannot process a credit card for my clients without upping my subscription status two levels. As a solo-entrepreneur, I don't need to add extra employees or use any of the other features available at that level so it is simply not cost-effective. As a result, I am forced to process through another provider and then track invoice payments and fees separately and manually.

Before Freshbooks, I was trying to keep track of everything on my own using spreadsheets and creating invoices in Word. Now, everything is in one spot. Even though I don't charge by the hour, I do keep track of the hours I spend on each project using Freshbooks Time Tracking so that I make sure my estimating is on-point.