FreshBooks Review Cloud-Based Accounting Software

FreshBooks is one of many cloud accounting apps that have entered the market over the past few years. While cloud accounting has not grown as quickly as cloud solutions have in other industries, recent arrivals on the market show that the trend is upward. After Quickbooks Online, FreshBooks is the most popular cloud-based accounting software in North America, with nearly 5 million users. Our review will give you an overview of FreshBooks, its main functions, what we like and what we don’t.

The Interface and Useability

When it comes to usability and based on online reviews, FreshBooks has one of the cleanest interfaces. The navigation is right on top, and I have to admit that the designers have done a fantastic job.  The front page shows the recent activity and includes shortcuts that you can use to create invoices. In addition, the shortcuts allow you to record expenses, track time spent on projects, export financial reports and much more.

But enough with the way that FreshBooks looks! If you are a small business owner or an accountant serving a client, its functionality you may find interesting. So, what can FreshBooks offer to you?

Many software solutions, both cloud-based and self-hosted, can create invoices and track whether payments are due. However, a complete accounting package is a lot more.

Freshbooks is much more than just an invoicing solution. You can, of course, invoice your customers and receive and record payments. However, you can also perform other tasks such as expense tracking, report generation, tax calculation, and much more.  

You can connect FreshBooks with your bank or your credit card and start tracking and recording your expenses automatically. That’s something useful for the small business owners that do the bookkeeping. And prefer to spend more time running their business than recording transactions all day.

FreshBooks Time Tracking Feature Review

One of the most valuable features that FreshBooks offers is time tracking. I think it’s a fantastic tool since it allows companies that provide services, for example, to track how much time each member of a team spends on a project and compare the cost incurred to the revenue that the client generates. You can understand that this is crucial since accepting loss-making jobs can not be part of a long term strategy. Freshbooks also offers the opportunity to directly charge and invoice a client based on the billable hours spent on a project. That is a fantastic feature for accountants, designers, lawyers and many other professionals that sell services and charge by the hour.

Financial Reports and Taxes

Another essential feature that Freshbook offers is the ability to generate reports that you should include in the analysis of every small business owner. You can run monthly income statement reports, track sales and expenses, understand your margins, and see what costs you should be cutting.

Speaking of expenses, FreshBooks can also run an expenses report so that you can save them in excel files, plot graphs or create pivot tables to see how much you are spending and where.

Another report that you can generate is the ageing report. The debtor ageing report can tell you how much your clients owe to you and if there are amounts that are past their due date (and how long). You should be keeping track of such things, and you should never let your sales turn into bad debt. The best thing to do is invoice fast and cash in more quickly!

FreshBooks and Third Party Addons

In my opinion, what sets FreshBooks apart from other accounting cloud-based software is the ability to integrate it with third-party professional software. The list of supported addons is endless, but briefly, you can incorporate FreshBooks with CRM software such as HighRise or Batchbook, specialised time-tracking software such as ChronoMate, and marketing tools. MailChimp, workforce management tools, project management software, and the list goes on!

Finally, every business owner should consider (actually before looking into anything else) related to data security. FreshBooks is a cloud-based software that means that you have no control over storing your data on the FreshBooks servers. The goods news is that you can export your data. In addition, FreshBooks creates backups and holds them in different locations. They use RackSpace, a big name in the hosting industry, which boasts clients such as GE and Cisco. So you can be sure that they will safely store your data.

Conclusion

If you found this review useful you may wish to check out another of our accounting software reviews, comparing FreshBooks to some of its competition.

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