Copper is a customer relationship management (CRM) built as an integration into Google Apps.
$12
per month per user
FreshBooks
Score 9.1 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
FreshBooks is an accounting service for small businesses. The solution enables users to send and manage invoices, track billable time and collect online payments. The vendor’s value proposition this that their solution provides a straightforward service that simplifies the billing process.
The interface looks nicer. I did not use Salesforce or HubSpot much in my day-to-day in previous jobs. I had to access it occasionally to review client emails.
If you need to track contract expiration dates of your clients or your prospects that you're trying to sell - Copper is your tool. If you want to track specific products, solutions, vendors, etc. Copper can do it. I use it to track many brands of IT products and services with the use of custom fields to track which prospects/clients have any number of these items. Rather than taking notes, I can select the product from a drop down list that I created VERY EASILY within Copper.
I recommend FreshBooks to anyone running a service-based business that needs invoicing, time reporting, and accounting tools. FB is adept in all three of these scenarios and isn't overly complicated like similar accounting packages I have used. I love how I can write estimates and proposals, manage the business development process from the software, and quickly convert prospects to invoiced clients.
Allows for contacts to be synced and organized directly from Gmail.
Gives a flexible style and customizable settings to match our company's specific needs.
Does a great job of helping us keep track of projects. We easily created a customized "Status" field with several status options that help us update the many phases of our project.
Invoicing - FreshBooks basically ensures our accountants spend less time on invoices via its automated invoicing system, which sends invoices to our customers and clients alike and also send them regular reminders for them to pay up their bills.
Collecting business insights - FreshBooks enable our company analysts measure our business performances via data reports provided by FreshBooks' intuitive dashboard. Allowing us do a comparative analysis of key business metrics of a current month against past months and determine if the business is growing.
Expense tracker - We have recently embraced FreshBooks as an expense tracker for teams at our company branch. Thusfar, FreshBooks has performed very well, making our expense management a perfect operation; ensuring teams do not exceed their planned budget and also eliminating the need for tracking expenses on excel spreadsheets.
Window change: for mobile - when you tap on a card from a pipeline it takes you to the lead’s basic info. I wish it would immediately just open all activities so I can quick see notes
I usually use Copper on the go. When you open the Copper app, it immediately opens a collab window. I wish it had some sort of easy dashboard….plus a notes area. I open Copper on mobile to quickly search for someone’s name or to take quick notes from a sales meeting
I can brand invoices with my business logo, but I might like to change colours of the invoices themselves to match the rest of my business documents. That isn't a major point at all, but it's something that I'd like to see.
Freshbooks doesn't remember the categories that similar expenses were previously assigned to. It would be nice if Freshbooks would suggest a category for an already saved vendor, to ensure the consistency of expense reporting.
The home page of a Freshbooks account has a great graph display of expenses and income, but it only shows the last 6 months. This is still very useful, but I'd like to be able to see this kind of graph for different periods of time.
At the current needs of our business, FreshBooks suits us perfectly - it allows online access by our accountant to the system for GST purposes, easy input of expenses and tracking of Profit and Loss statements. FreshBooks customer service is great as well - very understanding and accommodating.
Copper is simple to use and it's simple to figure out the additional functionality you may need or want to use. There are a lot of support articles and the support itself is great. But it's also fairly simple to figure out on your own. It integrates easily with Google Workspace as well.
FreshBooks is very easy to use even for novices. If you're looking for an online accounting software that is full of features, has great aesthetics and is user-friendly, then this is definitely the software for you. I've been using it for several years now and despite being tempted to switch by other vendors, I like the feel of FreshBooks and it's mobile features.
There have been a few times when I contacted the "help desk" or "support team" and they just told me to watch a video or join a seminar to learn what I am looking to do. I would have expected someone to take a few minutes and literally walk me through the steps one by one until either I figured it out or accomplished the goal of my request.
I think the support level for FreshBooks is on par with a 6 because the folks behind this application do a fairly good job at providing support for their customer base. I still don't think they are at an elite level when it comes to supporting but are getting there although too slow in my opinion.
We selected Copper over these other CRMs mainly because of its ability to integrate with Google Workspace. Members of our team have used Salesforce in the past and found it to be a nightmare to work with/on. Candidly, Copper doesn't fill all of our needs so we supplement that with the use of Asana.
FreshBooks does very well in comparison, especially since it is free software for Barclays bank users. Sage software is much worse than FreshBooks. However, Xero and QuickBooks, the market leaders, are still ahead with usability, additional features, reporting, and connection with third-party software providers. We chose FreshBooks as it does everything we require from this type of software.
In reality, we do not implement all of its use at the moment in order to determine an adequate ROI.
In our approach to the use of the system, it seems to us a considerable time saving by achieving the integration of the Mexican subsidiary with its parent located in the US.
Financial reports meet the necessary USGAAP requirements.
