5 Best FreshBooks Alternatives (Free & Paid)

QuickBooks Online generally has a more developed feature set than FreshBooks, but its biggest strengths lie in inventory management and its extensive network of QuickBooks Online ProAdvisors. Unlike FreshBooks, QuickBooks Online allows you to manage and track inventory and COGS, making it suitable for most businesses, including those with inventory.

While FreshBooks is a popular software, it’s not as widely used as QuickBooks Online. The vast network of QuickBooks Online ProAdvisors means that you have easy access to professional help if needed. QuickBooks Online ProAdvisors are well-versed in the platform and can provide expert guidance and assistance.

Standout Features

• Mobile app: QuickBooks Online’s mobile app can send invoices, accept payments, capture receipts, track mileage, and view reports. We included it in our guide to the best mobile accounting apps.
• Location and class tracking: You can set up tags to track your income and expenses across different departments, properties, or business locations. This feature can be useful in determining which department brings the most money to your business.
• Project accounting: You can set up projects to include income, expenses, and wages, and create project estimates. You can easily track time and add it to an invoice later.
• Inventory management: Plus and Advanced subscribers can access inventory management features, including tracking stock items and quantities, updating inventory quantities automatically, and setting up alerts to see whether you need to replenish your stock.
• A/R management: QuickBooks Online can automatically calculate sales tax for every sale based on the customer’s address. It also lets you issue credit memos to customers and review the summary of customer transactions.

Use Cases

• Businesses charging sales tax: Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online let you add sales tax to your receipts, estimates, and invoices. However, QuickBooks Online is better since it can automatically calculate sales tax rates based on the transaction address, saving you time if you ship goods to multiple states.
• Businesses with inventory: Unlike FreshBooks, QuickBooks Online allows you to track COGS, making it ideal for managing inventory items.
• Businesses seeking specialized bookkeeping assistance: QuickBooks Online is more popular than FreshBooks and has a vast network of CPAs and bookkeepers who are knowledgeable and certified as a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. In QuickBooks Online, you can either sign up for QuickBooks Live or find a QuickBooks ProAdvisor.
• Startup businesses: We ranked QuickBooks Online as our overall best startup accounting software because of its scalability. From its Simple Start to Advanced plans, it allows you to add advanced accounting features as your business grows.

QuickBooks Online excels in many categories, including general features, banking, A/P and A/R management, inventory, and mobile accounting. It took a slight hit in project accounting as you have to purchase the highest plan to compare estimated and actual project costs, something you can do in any FreshBooks plan.

Meanwhile, QuickBooks Online fell short in pricing as it’s a bit expensive, especially compared with similar software. It could also improve customer service by offering email and direct access to phone support, even in the lower plans. For now, you can only place a direct phone call to an agent in the Advanced plan. If customer support is important to you, I recommend Zoho Books, which offers phone support in all plans.

I believe Zoho Books is the best alternative to FreshBooks for freelancers and self-employed individuals for several reasons. It offers a free plan for those who earn less than $50,000 annually—a common scenario for part-time freelancers and self-employed individuals. The free version also allows you to manage an unlimited number of clients and send up to 1,000 invoices, which I believe accommodates the typical workflow of freelancers.

However, if you earn $50,000 or more a year, you’ll still find Zoho Books’ entry-level plan more affordable than FreshBooks. FreshBooks’ Lite plan costs $17 monthly and includes only one user, with the option to set up additional seats for an extra fee. In contrast, Zoho Books’ Standard plan is $15 monthly and already includes up to three users. It should be adequate if you primarily need to bill clients and track income, expenses, and sales taxes.

Another reason Zoho Books is a good substitute for FreshBooks is its powerful mobile accounting app, which offers many accounting features, including those unavailable in the FreshBooks app, such as the ability to categorize expenses from bank feeds and view reports. Most freelancers are on the go, and if you’re one of them, Zoho Books’ app is handy.

Standout Features

• Inventory tracking: Zoho Books has complete features for tracking inventory. It allows you to track inventory on hand and the COGS, adjust the inventory costs and categorize expenses based on vendor details, product details, and stock-keeping units (SKUs).
• Mobile accounting: Mobile accounting is one of Zoho Books’ biggest strengths. Its powerful mobile app can perform several accounting tasks, including accepting online payments, invoicing customers, recording bills and bill payments, and viewing financial reports.
• A/P management: Zoho Books has many useful accounts payable features, including the ability to enter, manage, and track purchase transactions. It also lets you convert purchase orders to bills, set up recurring payments, and add payment reminders so that you can track bills to be paid easily.
• Banking and cash management: You can import transactions by connecting your bank account or manually importing bank statements. You can also manually enter a statement balance when reconciling your account, a surprising rarity among the software that we have reviewed.
• Reporting: Zoho Books has an excellent selection of financial and accounting reports, including a general business overview, P&L and cash flow statements, general ledger, balance sheets, trial ledger, A/P and A/R, and inventory reports.

Use Cases

• Freelancers and self-employed individuals: Unlike FreshBooks, Zoho Books has a free plan that’s optimal for users with annual revenues below $50,000. It lets you create and send professional invoices, track time and project expenses, and manage all your clients in one place—making it our overall best accounting software for freelancers.
• Ecommerce businesses seeking integrated management software: Zoho’s suite of other 40 apps, such as Zoho Inventory and Zoho Commerce, integrates with Zoho Books, which automates the different aspects of your ecommerce business. Zoho Books made the list of our top ecommerce accounting software.
• Growing businesses: Zoho Books has six pricing tiers that can scale up to 15 seats. For businesses with multiple users, you can add extra seats for only $3 monthly. With FreshBooks, you have to pay $11 for each additional user.
• Businesses that manage international customers: Another feature that makes Zoho Books unique is that you can send invoices in different languages and select the appropriate currency based on your customer’s or business location.

Like QuickBooks Online, Zoho Books stands out in many feature-related categories, including inventory management, A/P and A/R management, project accounting, and reporting. It even beat all the other software on this list in mobile accounting. However, while it does have a free plan, I deducted a few points for pricing because you have to upgrade to the higher-tiered plans to enable essential features like project accounting and inventory management.

Zoho Books also earned a low score for ease of setup because I didn’t find the setup checklist and onboarding wizard intuitive enough. Additionally, while I appreciate Zoho Books’ phone support, I couldn’t award more points for customer service because it can be difficult to find a bookkeeper proficient in the program. If you want easy access to bookkeepers, then QuickBooks Online is the better choice.

Unlike FreshBooks, Xero supports unlimited users in all its plans for free—making it suitable for companies with multiple accounting team members. Additionally, it has a built-in fixed asset manager that allows you to track assets, calculate depreciation for fixed assets, and record the sale of assets, among others. FreshBooks currently doesn’t have this feature.

Standout Features

• Fixed asset management: What makes Xero stand out from its competitors is its fixed asset manager, which lets you record and track fixed assets (such as vehicles and equipment) and set up depreciation entries. You can also account for gain or loss from the disposal of a fixed asset.
• Inventory management: You can create and track inventory, monitor inventory levels, add items to invoices, and track COGS.
• Network of Xero advisors: You can access Xero-certified independent accountants and bookkeepers or accounting firms in Xero’s Advisor Directory. Aside from Xero advisors, Bookkeeper360 also offers assisted bookkeeping services for Xero users. Read our review of Bookkeeper360 for more details.
• A/P management: From vendor creation to payment recording, Xero can assist with keeping your billing system organized. It also has an outstanding PO system to convert POs into bills, track unpaid bills, record e-payments, and apply vendor credits.

Use Cases

• Businesses that don’t want to restrict the number of users: All Xero plans are good for unlimited users, which is ideal for large teams. FreshBooks offers decent features at its highest plan but becomes expensive if you need more users; the $11 monthly add-on per seat can be heavy if you need more people with access to FreshBooks.
• Ecommerce businesses: Xero’s inventory tracking feature is ideal for ecommerce businesses because it calculates your COGS automatically and allows you to monitor customer payments and orders, making it suitable for online transactions.
• Project-based businesses needing to assign inventory to projects: Xero and FreshBooks both offer excellent project management features, but only Xero allows you to assign inventory items to projects. This is crucial if you often need to purchase and manage various construction materials and equipment as part of your operations.

Xero’s top scores come from general features, inventory, A/P and A/R management, project accounting, reporting, and integrations. However, it didn’t do well in other areas, like ease of use and setup and customer support. Like Zoho Books, Xero is challenging to set up, as there’s no streamlined onboarding tool. Also, the dashboard isn’t that customizable, especially compared with QuickBooks Online. Additionally, Xero doesn’t offer live support, such as phone and live chat.

AccountEdge is a desktop-based accounting software, making it ideal for businesses that prefer to work without constant internet access. Despite its low cost, it provides good accounting features comparable to FreshBooks and even exceeds them in some areas. For instance, AccountEdge has strong inventory tracking features that let you efficiently separate COGS from the cost of inventory on hand.

In addition to inventory, AccountEdge offers other essential features, like banking, A/P and A/R management, and basic project accounting. It also provides advanced reporting features, including tracking income and expenses by department.

Standout Features

• Advanced inventory management: You can track inventory by location, assign serial numbers to items for detailed tracking, and build items and kits.
• Banking and cash management: You can reconcile your bank accounts with or without bank feeds and process transactions like bank deposits and customer payments.
• Bill management: Directly from AccountEdge, you can enter and pay bills, easily track unpaid bills, enter vendor credits, and accept partial payments if needed.

Use Cases

• Businesses operating in areas with limited or no internet connection: You only need to install AccountEdge on your local computer, and you’ll be able to use it continuously without an internet connection.
• Businesses wanting to manage payroll internally: AccountEdge’s built-in payroll feature offers an affordable solution for businesses with in-house payroll needs. FreshBooks also offers payroll but via a third-party integration.

AccountEdge’s strengths lie in pricing, banking, inventory management, and reporting. It didn’t do well in A/R management because its invoices aren’t that customizable, and it could have done better in project accounting if users could create estimates. If invoicing and project accounting are crucial to you, consider QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books.

Additionally, AccountEdge earned a poor score for ease of use because of its outdated interface and lost points for customer support because you have to pay an extra fee to talk to an agent. Finally, its biggest weakness is mobile accounting, as it doesn’t have a mobile app. You may appreciate Zoho Books’ full-featured mobile app if you often work on the go.

If you need basic bookkeeping, consider Wave Starter. FreshBooks is expensive, especially for multiple users, so if you want to save money, use Wave’s free plan for basic accounting tasks, such as invoicing, income and expense tracking, and reporting. If you need multiple seats, you can upgrade to the Pro plan for $16 per month.

What I like about Wave is that its free plan is sufficient for most small businesses with basic accounting. For instance, it allows you to track unpaid bills and create and send recurring invoices—features typically found in premium software. Additionally, you can create and send unlimited invoices to your customers. Wave doesn’t offer much in terms of advanced features, such as inventory and project accounting. Customer support is also limited. However, its free version doesn’t disappoint.

Standout Features

• Invoicing: Despite limited invoice customization options, you can still create professional-looking invoices and send them to your clients. You can also generate recurring invoices if you have regular billing arrangements.
• A/P: This is Wave’s strongest feature. It makes it easy for you to track bills, purchases, and vendors. You can also enter bills and expenses before paying and then track them until paid.
• Receipt capture: For Starter users, you can add receipt scanning for $8 monthly. Alternatively, you can upgrade to Pro for only $16 per month, which already includes receipt scanning. Wave uses optical character recognition (OCR) technology for quick and efficient receipt scanning.
• Bookkeeping support: Available both in the free and paid plan, Wave provides bookkeeping support for only $149 a month through the Wave Advisor program. Wave’s bookkeeping service is more affordable than QuickBooks Live and Bench.

Best For

• Businesses seeking free basic accounting software: As our leading free accounting software, Wave Starter offers the essential features small businesses need most, like invoicing and income and expense tracking.
• Small-scale property managers: Wave is adequate for tracking rent income and expense for landlords with few properties for lease. It made our list of the best real estate accounting software.
• Freelancers looking to send invoices for free: If you only need simple invoicing for your clients, there’s no reason not to choose Wave’s free version over the paid FreshBooks.

Wave Starter aced our pricing criterion, but it didn’t do well in terms of features, which is understandable since it’s free software. It has decent basic accounting features but lacks many essential functionality, like project accounting and inventory management.

It received an excellent score for ease of use due to its simple user interface, but it fell short in customer service as it has no live support options in the free plan. You get access to live chat and email support only when you purchase an add-on in the free plan or you subscribe to the paid subscription. If customer support is important to you, QuickBooks Online or Zoho Books can be a better option.