Item: FreshBooks
Rating: 8
Author: Joshua Burcham

Overall Satisfaction with FreshBooks

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I used FreshBooks to track my time, invoice clients, and track payments. FreshBooks makes it very easy for me to set up new projects and track the amount of time I spent working on them. As a freelancer, I don't want to send a lot of time doing non-billable work. FreshBooks almost makes all of the project tracking stuff happen "in the background" with very little effort.

Pros and Cons

Pros

It makes sending invoices for billable time super easy. You can generate an invoice with a detailed description of each time entry in just a few seconds.
The user interface is great. It makes the normally tedious tasks associated with time tracking and invoicing seem easy.
Reporting is easy. It's great to be able to see quickly which clients are slow to pay, what clients have I spent the most time this month/quarter/year working with, etc.

Cons

Sometimes I wish there was more flexibility with the options: applying late payments, the details that show up in the reports. I suppose being able to customize things adds to complexity... so it's a trade-off.
There aren't enough accounting reports to use this as a stand-alone accounting solution. I paired it with QuickBooks Online.
It's not a problem for me, but they don't support many currencies.

Return on Investment

I don't like dealing with invoicing and FreshBooks made it easy for me to quickly send clients invoices each month or at the end of each project.
The time tracking feature has increased my revenue because it makes it very easy to track even small units of time. Phone calls and meetings that might otherwise go untracked.
Clients like the professional invoices with detailed time entries.
I receive payment faster when clients can click the link in the invoice email and pay online.

Alternatives Considered

Xero, Harvest and QuickBooks Online

I actually switched from a FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online combination to using Harvest and Xero at the request of my bookkeeper. It seems like FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online are both market leaders in their space. Harvest is more focused on time tracking than being an overall small business solution. I like Harvest, but I do miss the features of FreshBooks. I'm considering switching back at the end of the year.

Other Software Used

SketchUp, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator CC, Evernote, LastPass, Harvest, QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zoom, Skype, Google Analytics, AdWords, Yoast Wordpress SEO Plugins, WordPress, WooCommerce, WooCommerce Subscriptions

Likelihood to Recommend

FreshBooks is great for small businesses that need an easy, simple solution to track time and invoice clients. If you work with simple project rates and hourly rates that don't get too complicated it should work great. For businesses that need complex financial reporting, you'll either have to use an additional solution that integrates with FreshBooks or look for a different solution altogether.

FreshBooks Feature Ratings

Comments

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FreshBooks makes it all so easy