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.
$21
per month
FunctionFox
Score 8.0 out of 10
Small Businesses (1-50 employees)
FunctionFox provides TimeFox which is a timesheet and project management solution for small creative companies. The vendor says TimeFox is currently used by over 100,000 creative professionals in Canada, the US, Europe, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.
$5
per user
Hiveage
Score 8.0 out of 10
N/A
Hiveage (formerly Curdbee) is billed as a simple solution for expense tracking and invoicing for small companies that do not need larger or relatively complex accounting software. Hiveage allows a user to send invoices and estimates and accept payments online, track time and expenses, set up autobilling and charge subscriptions, and manage multiple teams. Hiveage also lets users bill in multiple currencies, apply discount and shipping options, and manage taxes. Additional features include…
$16
per month
Pricing
FreshBooks
FunctionFox
Hiveage
Editions & Modules
Lite
$21
per month
Plus
$38
per month
Premium
$65
per month
Select
Custom Pricing
FunctionFox Classic
$5
per user
FunctionFox Premier
$10
per user
FunctionFox In-House
$20
per user
Free
$0
Basic
$16
per month
Pro
$25
per month
Plus
$42
per month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
FreshBooks
FunctionFox
Hiveage
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
Yes
Yes
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
10% discount for annual pricing.
No hidden fees. All customer support, and regular upgrades are included free of charge.
With the free trial, you can use Hiveage at no charge for 14 days (no credit card required). After your trial is up, you can choose from one of several paid plans or the free plan. If you’re not ready to subscribe, no problem: your invoices, expenses, and other data will be securely stored (and available for export) in case you decide to upgrade later on.
Hiveage and FreshBooks are actually pretty comparable. I tested both before choosing Hiveage. At the time that I chose Hiveage, the reason for choosing it was that the pricing was cheaper with their old pricing structure (you could select what features you did and didn't need …
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.
If you are trying to track time across teams or functions, that is really what FunctionFox is designed for. I think this would work better for individual, smaller teams with similar tasks and activities, instead of for larger companies with more complex organizational operations. If you are just getting started with time tracking, this could be a good place to start.
For a very small business or a freelancer this is an excellent billing/invoicing system. Easy to get set up and configured quickly so you can get paid online quickly. It works very well for what it is intended. But for a growing small business it doesn't have the more complex accounting/bookkeeping features you might need. There is some limitation to customization as well.
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.
With only a couple clicks I can still easily pull reports by employee on a weekly basis which provide the information I need to run payroll.
I pull reports by client each month for our monthly client billings, which we have broken down by project so I can easily see how our time was spent on their account.
We set a budget for the approved number of hours we can apply to any one project for the month, and the system provides the project manager with a warning as the limit comes near. That function has been fantastic!
FunctionFox's Help Desk personnel are wonderful, providing an exceptionally personalized experience. They take their time, and will even schedule a call to go into greater depth, such as an entire account review just to ensure you're able to use all the product features to your company's best advantage. Our entire team jumped on a half hour call a couple months ago, and she answered ALL of our questions, including providing us with info on some features we hadn't realized even existed.
Setting up to receive online payments from a number of payment processors was quick and easy, and the range of processors was excellent.
Invoicing and recurring invoicing were easy and straightforward to use, and clients liked it as well.
The entire system is user-friendly and very easy to use for anyone. It has all the basics you need for billing/invoicing for a small business and is especially ideal for freelancers.
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.
The function of the site is not as user-friendly as others, it's sometimes hard to find certain projects and organize data in order to track effectively. I would often need to download/export reports.
Sometimes a project would accidentally be created twice and hours billed to two separate projects for the same thing. Which made tracking and billing increasingly difficult.
Little to no organization of projects for billing and finance purposes, which makes it hard when we conduct billing as there is not a clear way to know if a project is complete, ongoing, rejected etc.
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.
All of my employees are used to it and introducing a new software to them requires them to get trained again increasing the costs. TimeFox is an easy to use and understand software. Another advantage of TimeFox is that is an online software and I can access it whenever I want to.
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.
It's a good tool for tracking hours and overall budget. It does not give you insight into why there are those hours, or what part of the project has over burned. The tool is also tough to export reports and find the correct information throughout. Not only this, but I also have a hard time changing project details - there's no real easy way to and there's a larger room for error
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.
I haven't used FunctionFox for a lot of support requests. On the times that i've been having issues I've had the issue resolved within a day, most questions I have had i've been able to source answers online or from a colleague. From what I have experienced the support team seems great.
Unsure on implementation of FunctionFox - was before my time at the company. Everyone at the company had a good understanding of the product and how to use it by the time I joined. My understanding is we implemented ourselves with a few training sessions for the creative team and adding hours as well as training for the account team to add projects
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.
When we were looking for software we tested several, and FunctionFox was hands down the best value. While there are other options, and each company is different, nothing could come close to filling our needs the way FunctionFox has. The money we spend has been returned several times over.
Hiveage and FreshBooks are actually pretty comparable. I tested both before choosing Hiveage. At the time that I chose Hiveage, the reason for choosing it was that the pricing was cheaper with their old pricing structure (you could select what features you did and didn't need as "modules" and just pay for what you used). The pricing is now comparable and both offer the same features, and similar ease-of-use.
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.
FunctionFox pays for itself just about every month in terms of how much more I am able to bill than before I started using the software, and how much less time I need to spend on non-billable admin tasks. I used to create invoices based mostly on what sounded fair, rather than on accurate time & cost records. I'm sure my clients loved it, but it wasn't healthy for my business. Now I base invoices on actual time and expense records, and end up with more money in my pocket.
It's not tangible, but FunctionFox has improved my ability to communicate with clients, and with freelance partners when I'm involved in a collaborative project. I can anticipate and discuss potential budget or delivery deadline overruns before they occur. The goodwill this builds has had a tremendously positive impact on client and partnership relations.
I fell into freelancing without a lot of experience running a business. FunctionFox has been a great teacher, helping me think through many issues that I wouldn't have even recognized as important. It is simple to use, with a UI that is neither intimidating nor overwhelming, and it has been super flexible in terms of molding it to suit the way I work.
