Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Which software is better?

If you’re hunting for the best company accounting tools, there’s no denying that you’ve come across both FreshBooks and QuickBooks. As two web-based accounting systems built exclusively for small business owners, FreshBooks and QuickBooks both provide comprehensive functionality, a range of plans to select from, and overall, user-friendly and powerful platforms. With these underlying similarities in mind, though, you may be wondering: what is the difference between QuickBooks vs FreshBooks and what is the better choice for my business?

We’re here to help you out. In this post, we will break down all these accounting software systems—discussing functions, pricing, and more—so that you have all the details you need to decide which approach is correct for you.

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: An overview

As a small company, accounting software will improve the working life. This is the best way to track funds going in and out, charge clients, and simply process the finances at the end of the year.

Suppose you’re a freelancer or an enterprise. In that case, there are other advantages of using accounting software: you know just how much time you invested in each customer and job, and you can quickly handle invoices when it’s billing time.

QuickBooks vs FreshBooks Online is two of the most common small business accounting resources.Although they are both useful tools and common for good purposes, they perform well in various implementations and different companies’ styles.

About Freshbooks

Created in 2003, FreshBooks has grown into an all-in-one small business invoice, and accounting system to enable businesses and small teams to devote less time on accounting and more time enjoying the job they enjoy.

FreshBooks provides a very user-friendly collection of features for billing, spending, time recording, tasks, forecasts, and more.

About Quickbooks

QuickBooks is one of the most common accounting platforms on the market and part of the Intuit product family established in 1983.

When we speak about QuickBooks in this article, we’re focused on QuickBooks Online (QBO), Intuit’s cloud-based accounting platform, rather than their standard desktop edition. Cloud-based SaaS systems are still our main recommendation, as you can hold all your enterprise software synchronized and modified with far less manual labor.

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Which one is better?

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Features

With this summary in mind, let’s break down the distinctions between QuickBooks vs FreshBooks—starting with the functionality and choices that FreshBooks has to give.

QuickBooks Online Features

Now that we’ve been researching FreshBooks in terms of functionality and pricing, let’s break down QuickBooks Online. Probably one of the most significant distinctions between FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks Online is that although FreshBooks caters primarily to service-based companies and self-employed professionals, QuickBooks Online is tailored for a broader spectrum of small business owners, especially those with product-based operations.

That being said, QuickBooks Online provides four main package choices relative to FreshBooks’ three options. Overall, though, you should anticipate QuickBooks to have the following capabilities, regardless of any of the plans you choose:

• Profits and spending monitoring
• Power to collect and organize receipts
• Pay definitions for revenue and spending association
• Customizable invoices and forecasts; turn estimates into invoices;
• Ability to receive purchases electronically, including credit cards and bank transfers via QuickBooks Payments via a third party processor.
• Tracking the mileage
• Company Bank Account and Credit Card Link and Auto Purchase Import
• Basic financial records, including benefit and loss accounts, balance sheets and expenses;
• Sales tax reporting
• 1099 Supervision of contractors
• Backup of data and security
• Access to account for two accountants
• Access to the iOS and Android QuickBooks software
• Options for inclusion with other QuickBooks products and third-party software
• Customer care on the internet

FreshBooks Features

As a web-based accounting program with three key plan solutions, FreshBooks is developed to address small business owners’ needs. Specifically, FreshBooks caters to service-based companies, self-employed practitioners, and, overall, small business owners searching for significant invoicing capability within their accounting solutions. FreshBooks market their software on a monthly basis, with each package providing more features and fewer restrictions. Overall, FreshBooks differentiates their plans not only on the grounds of functionality but also, most importantly, on the number of billable customers that you can handle.

However, whichever schedule you want, you should anticipate FreshBooks apps to include:

• Invoicing tools for customizing, generating, and delivering invoices to clients
• Link to your electronic import company bank account
• Entry and monitoring expenditures for tax categories and multi-currency capabilities
• Ability to generate and submit customized estimates, enable clients to approve estimates electronically, and quickly translate them to invoices.
• Time monitoring based on customer or project; billing clients dependent on the hour tracking;
• Project management of schedules, timelines and file sharing
• Allow credit cards and other purchases using FreshBooks Payments or Stripe; accept ACH transfers; automatically report all payments and expenses;
• Bank reconciliation capabilities and primary financial records such as general ledger, benefit and loss declaration, chart of accounts, balance sheet, and more
• Ability to connect client details to internal notes and maintain client contact through relationship feeds
• Customizable workflows and over 200 third party integration choices
• Access to the corporate accountant
• Safe SSL encryption data management
• Mobile applications for iOS and Android smartphones
• FreshBooks team customer support via phone and email

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Pricing & Plans

Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks are inexpensive accounting resources for small companies and startups, although their price depends on the scale of the company and the functionality you require.

Quickbooks Pricing & Plan

QuickBooks Online Pricing

As you may have found, FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online have much of the same general functionality. However, another significant distinction to remember between FreshBooks and QuickBooks is that when it comes to pricing—QuickBooks differentiates their plans depending on features and customers, while FreshBooks, as we mentioned, even splits down their plans based on the amount of billable clients. Through QuickBooks Online, you would be able to connect an infinite amount of clients to your account, regardless of any of the four plans you have.

QuickBooks’ simple package, Basics, begins at $25/month and checks all boxes for small business accounting needs, providing core features for monitoring revenue and expenditures, collecting and arranging receipts, paying, receiving payments, and reviewing key statistics and measurements. The key drawback of QBO’s Basics is access for just one person.

If you wish to monitor time and inventory and view further reports, including for project profitability, you may need to pay for the Plus package, which is accessible at $70 a month.

The highest QBO package, Advanced, is available for $150 a month. It allows you access to functionality such as batch invoices and expenditures, electronic receipts and alerts, management reports and areas, and personalized reporting fields.

You may still apply payroll to every plan as an add-on that ranges from $45 + $4/employee/month to $125 + $10/employee/month based on the features you require.

With these initial differences in mind, let’s explore the four choices for the QuickBooks Online Plan.

QuickBooks Quick Start Schedule Online

The first QuickBooks package to deliver is the Easy Start Plan. This is the most simple and most economical of all four options, valued at $25 a month. However, if you buy a QuickBooks Online membership right now, you can take advantage of QuickBooks’ limited time discount. That being said, the Easy Start Schedule contains the following features:

• Track revenue and spending
• Capture and schedule receipts
• Maximize tax-deductible
• Invoice and acknowledge payment
• Track a mile
• Submit estimations
• Sales Track and Sales Tax
• Manage 1099 of the contractors

In addition, with the Easy Start package, as well as all of the QuickBooks Online options, you have the option to connect with QuickBooks Self Service or Full Service Payroll. The Self-Service Payroll add-on would cost $35 a month plus $4 per employee per month. On the other side, the Full-Service Payroll add-in would cost $80 a month, plus the same per employee per month.

Online QuickBooks Basics Schedule

The next QuickBooks Online Package, Basics, will cost $40 a month, with a limited time option to get 50% off the first three months. As we described earlier, QuickBooks provides multi-user support at the expense of their multiple plans, so the Basics package allows you access for up to three users without having an extra per-user per-month charge.

In addition to all the functions of the Basic Start Schedule, the Fundamentals Plan often includes:

• Control of bills
• Tracking time by customer or employee
• QuickBooks incorporation alternative with TSheets
• Up to three users with customizable levels of access

Online QuickBooks Plus Schedule

The third package, QuickBooks Online Plus, would cost $70 a month. If you take advantage of a limited time offer, you can get 50% off the first three months.

With QuickBooks Online Plus, you will have links to all the functionality of the previous proposals, as well as:

• Up to 5 users
• Monitoring the viability of the project
• Tracking of inventory

Among these extra features, possibly the most important is product management—which FreshBooks does not provide in all of their plan solutions.

QuickBooks Advanced Online Strategy

At the end of the day, QuickBooks Online Advanced is the last plan option. This package, like FreshBooks Premium, is the most costly with the most features. That being said, QuickBooks Online Advanced costs $150 a month and $75 for the first three months with the new limited-time discount.

In addition to all the capabilities of the lower-level programs, the Advanced Package would also include:

• Bill is paying
• Up to twenty-five users
• Smart Fathom-powered reporting
• Accelerated billing
• Custom permissions for users
• Premium customer service and preparation for the inclusion of the Focus Circle
• Increased custom fields

Freshbooks pricing and plan

Price of FreshBooks

As you can see, FreshBooks delivers an incredible collection of features—giving company owners the opportunity to complete their main payroll and accounting activities, as well as handling time, customers and ventures. With all this in mind, let’s begin our analysis of FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks by reviewing the three FreshBooks plans’ prices.

As we discussed earlier, it is necessary to note that FreshBooks differentiates their plans based not just on the functionality included but also on the number of clients accommodated in your account. In comparison, FreshBooks allows you to pay an extra charge per user account—irrespective of any of their three options you choose—whereas QuickBooks Online provides a range of plan-based users. Also, for a limited time only, FreshBooks promises 70% off for the first 3 months when new customers miss the 30-day free trial deadline.

Lite Strategy for FreshBooks

The first FreshBooks package to sell is the Lite plan. This package will pay $15 a month if you buy the software every month and $13.50 a month if you choose the yearly plan. For the Lite package, you would only be allowed to handle five billable clients on your budget. However, you can still have the following capabilities:

• Unlimited custom invoices
• Unlimited cost admission
• Accept online credit card and ACH purchases
• Automated import of bank
• Unlimited monitoring of time
• Unlimited estimations
• Reporting of tax period
• Custom functionality and workflow of over 200 integrations

If you choose to connect staff members to your FreshBooks account—no matter which of the three plans you choose—you would need to pay an extra $10 a month per team member.

Plan for FreshBooks Plus

The next FreshBooks package, the Plus plan, will handle up to 50 billable customers. This package would pay $25 a month for a weekly plan and $22.50 a month for an annual plan. With FreshBooks Plus, you will have links to all the functionality of Lite as well as:

• Unrestricted ideas
• Automated persistent invoices
• Double-Entry Accounting Study
• Scheduled late charges
• Automated late payment alert
• Customer Owner

Once again, if you want to recruit staff members, you’re going to have to spend $10 a month per team member. In addition, the Plus package offers you the option to use an advanced edition of the FreshBooks payment for an extra $20 a month.

Premium Strategy for FreshBooks

Finally, the FreshBooks Premium package provides the most features at the maximum expense. The Subscription Plan is $50 a month for a monthly contract, or $45 a month for a yearly plan. For the Premium Package, though, you would be required to handle 500 billable clients and gain access to all the prior two options’ functionality.

In comparison, like the Plus package, FreshBooks Premium offers you the opportunity to use FreshBooks Payments Advanced for an extra $20 a month. Once again, it will cost you $10 a month per team member to connect users to your FreshBooks Premium account.

That being said, while these are the key choices for the FreshBooks package, it is worth mentioning that FreshBooks still provides a Select plan that accommodates more than 500 clients and is accessible on a quotation basis through collaborating directly with the FreshBooks sales team.

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Reporting

You just know how critical reporting is to your company. If you have the financial records you like, do you really care how many more details are available, or do you want as many reporting opportunities as possible?

Both accounting firms provide a lot of reporting. FreshBooks has information on benefit and loss, income tax summaries, consumer balances, fees received and expenditures. The dashboard is comprised of the most important graphs and maps, covering outstanding sales, monthly recurring revenues, gross earnings, income sources, costs and unbilled time. FreshBooks provides a total of 14 reports with minimal customization features, but you can export certain reports to Microsoft Excel for customization on request. FreshBooks does have a fun report management screen where you can save your favorites for quick future access, but files are restricted to financial results and simple management reports. Reports can also be stored as a PDF format.

QuickBooks users can find the Reports Center on their navigation menu for a quick way to locate the basic default report templates of the app or to configure new ones. The ‘Management Reports’ segment helps users to build professional copies with a cover sheet, a table of contents, a preliminary page and a final note. Preset templates contain accounting logs, balance sheets, cash flow analyses, open invoices, consumer accounts, income tax reports and schedule overviews, as well as profit and loss reports collected by month, class, customer and year-to-date. QuickBooks Online contains over 50 regular reports in a number of categories. You can also build and save personalized reports in this alternate FreshBooks, export reports to Excel for more customization, or save some reports as PDF files.

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Third-party integration

Older accounting software programs were often filled with any function and feature you could think about, culminating in a bulky, overpriced program.

Today’s web systems are simplified, providing comprehensive accounting capabilities when connecting with a wide variety of software built to connect you with the resources you need.

For example, instead of providing a CRM feature, the product offers convergence with CRM applications, reducing bloating, and holding costs within small business owners’ control.

FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online both provide strong integration solutions, which will significantly improve product versatility.

Quickbooks Integration

QuickBooks Online lets you link to applications from inside the program. You can scan for an app, explore common apps, and view some suggested apps by clicking on the Apps feature. There are applications of several types, from online payment apps such as Stripe and PayPal and Bill Pay for QuickBooks, which helps you pay bills from QuickBooks Online. QuickBooks provides over 400 native integrations for payment apps, the bank, CRMs, e-commerce, and several more software categories to provide optimum access and leverage over the financial details and sales processes. There are also various CRM and time-tracking applications that you can conveniently link to.

Freshbooks Intergration

FreshBooks still has several integrations, although these serve freelancers and small companies. FreshBooks provides connectivity with more than 200 applications, including Gusto Payroll, Online Payment Recognition Strip, and Avalara Tax for fast tax management. Integrations with e-commerce, inventory, CRM, and time-tracking software are also available. In addition, you can connect to more than 1,500 Zapier applications.

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Ease of use

Quickbooks Ease of Use

One issue with accounting systems is that all of them are challenging to use and difficult to understand. On the other hand, Quickbooks is built to be intuitive and simple to comprehend, particularly among company owners who lack an accounting or financial history. Quickbooks offers a range of ready-to-use models that company managers may use to build invoices, spreadsheets, maps and business strategies. The program also allows it easier to tailor these papers’ look and sound, making them less of a cookie-cutter presentation and letting them stick out in the crowd. The opportunity to design invoices may be especially helpful, and business owners can include not just their company logo but even comprehensive details on - line item. This makes it easy for consumers to consolidate their invoices and compensate them on schedule.

Freshbooks Ease of Use

FreshBooks also offers a customized invoice interface and an online invoice click-to-pay button. Invoices gather data directly from the time-keeping function, as long as you mark your hours as “billing.” Automations provide regular invoices and automated billing dates, as well as follow-up emails for late payments. Users like FreshBooks are quick to use and save time on recording, billing, and billing costs. People really like that they don’t need to be accountants to understand how to use the app effectively. Overall, consumers seem to like the FreshBooks product. FreshBooks has an A+ ranking on BBB and gets 4.5/5 stars on GetApp (based on more than 2,800 reviews), 4.6 stars on G2 Crowd (based on 241 reviews), and 8.4/10 stars on TrustRadius (based on 130 reviews). FreshBooks also includes consumer testimonials on its page and on the YouTube channel.

Quickbooks vs Freshbooks: Customer support

The tech product paradigm is a lot different than it was 20 years ago, with many of today’s apps needing no preparation or assistance. Computer firms now provide their users with a variety of useful tools, such as information bases and in-product support options, but often you also need to pick up the call and speak to someone else. Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online provide their customers live service solutions.

QuickBooks

QuickBooks Online provides a range of service services for its customers, including the following:

• Link to the service agent by phone
• Link to a service agent via email
• Link to a service agent with a post
• Articles featured
• Aid in-product
• Options for product training
• Researchable Information Base
• Group of Apps

Freshbooks

FreshBooks customers have access to both mobile and e-mail assistance during extended business hours, with a toll-free number open to subscribers. In addition, FreshBooks has the following support resources:

• Support in-product
• Messaging in-product
• FAQ’s
• Researchable Information Base

Conclusion

At the end of the day, you can only determine which accounting software is right for your small company. Considering all we mentioned in our QuickBooks vs Freshbooks contrast, there is no question that one of these strategies will fit your company well.

As we have described, though, when it comes to FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks Online, the platform that is right for your company would mostly rely on the kind of business you operate and what sort of accounting needs you have. For eg, if you’re a professional photographer trying to control your money, monitor your time, and bill customers, FreshBooks might be best suited to fulfill your needs. On the other side, if you need full-service accounting software for a small retail company, you could find that QuickBooks Online suits best.

At the end, the choice is up to you. And—if you’re still not sure which platform is correct for your business—consider signing up for a 30-day free trial of both systems, checking each framework, and contrasting FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks Online for yourself.