QuickBooks vs. FreshBooks: How to find the right accounting software for your business
Choosing the right software for your business can be challenging. It takes time to figure out the right balance of functionality, monthly cost, and usability.
Here is our video and head-to-head comparison assessment to decide if FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks is right for you.
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Features:
Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks have some really good features. The size of your business will probably determine which accounting software you like more.
If you’re interested in planning tools, FreshBooks forecasting and budgeting features are top-notch. FreshBooks can do time tracking, invoicing, and expense tracking. They do have a limited amount of reports available as well. At this time FreshBooks is only set up for expense tracking.
QuickBooks can do income and expense tracking, payroll, and create and send estimates and invoices. You can also create reports such as profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance, and many more. If you are working with an accountant, these are all reports that they may need from you. Check with your accountant to see what accounting software they can accept.
Reports:
QuickBooks and FreshBooks both have a bank reconciliation feature that allows you to automatically syncs your bank to your credit card information.
QuickBooks includes a variety of reports with their product. Each group of reports includes sub-reports that drill down to the details you or your accountant would need for proper analysis:
- Accounts Payable
- Accounts Receivable
- Products and Inventory
- Expenses and Purchases
While this list is impressive, you’ll find that many of these reports only work with manual-entry and tagging, so you’ll need to keep detailed records as well.
FreshBooks reporting centers on profit margin, and their central dashboard shows your periodic input vs. output. Because FreshBooks works best as an invoicing and time tracking tool, the reports focus on payment collection and a couple of tax-related reports.
Platform:
For both QuickBooks and FreshBooks you can tackle your accounting tasks from almost anywhere. Data automatically syncs, allowing you to store your data across all devices. This way, if your laptop or desktop dies, you won’t lose anything.
Support:
FreshBooks is the clear winner here. Many customers have complained about their poor experience with the QuickBooks’ customer support team. There is no email support, and the support team usually takes a long time to resolve any issue.
In contrast, FreshBooks prides itself on its excellent customer support. FreshBooks also has a very resourceful support page and organizes weekly webinars to cover the fundamentals of the software. They have both phone and email support, and the customer representatives are friendly and helpful.
Pricing:
Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks have a three-tiered pricing system, but QuickBooks is relatively cheaper at $7.50/month. It also offers a free 30-day plan which is a great way to familiarize yourself with the tool and test some of the product features.
FreshBooks charges based on active clients as opposed to features so that you can get all the components of the software regardless of your subscription selection. The basic plan for FreshBooks (called Lite) starts at $15/month, and it allows you to create unlimited invoices, track expenses and time. However, you can only bill up to 5 clients.
Integrations:
QuickBooks boasts over 400 native integrations with payment software, your bank, CRMs, e-commerce, and many other software categories to ensure maximum visibility and control over your financial data and sales processes. FreshBooks includes many integrations as well, but they target more freelance and small business markets.
Our Final Scores:
Our scores are based on reputation, features and support
Final Thoughts
Quickbooks has been around a lot longer and has more bells and whistles geared toward small business owners, while FreshBooks is designed to get the job done for freelancers and service-based businesses. There are many more differences between QuickBooks Online and FreshBooks, but hopefully, this blog has given you an overview and helped you to decide which you would like to use!
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