How To Use FreshBooks: 5 Free Tutorials

With FreshBooks, you pay by the user, and each additional user that you invite is $10 per month. The exception is Accountant users, which are free. There are several benefits to having an Accountant user, which we’ll describe in more detail below.

To invite team members to FreshBooks from the dashboard, click on the Invite drop-down menu in the top right corner. You’ll then be able to view the different types of users that you can invite. Select the user type that you want to invite.

A. Admin: Full access to your FreshBooks account, including clients, invoices, and reports

B. Manager: Full access to your FreshBooks account, but can’t view financial reports, expenses, or the dashboard

C. Employee: Able to track time and expenses for assigned projects, but can only view their own information

D. Contractor: Able to track time and expenses for assigned projects, and can send you invoices

E. Accountant: Able to access reports, categorize expenses, and create journal entries, but can’t manage clients, track time, view projects, or send invoices or estimates

Inviting team members to join FreshBooks

If you click on the See Permissions link at the bottom of the Invite drop-down menu, you’ll be able to explore the permissions for each team member role in more detail.

FreshBooks Team Permissions for Accountants

For example, if you select Admin, you’ll then be prompted to enter the team member’s name and email address. The below window will then pop up, which allows you to customize the invitation subject and message. Once you send the invitation and the team member accepts it, they’ll be able to access your FreshBooks account with the permissions that you have established.

Inviting an Admin to join FreshBooks

To view your Chart of Accounts, click on Accounting in the left menu bar, and then click on Chart of Accounts.

Navigating to Chart of Accounts in FreshBooks

What is unique about FreshBooks is that you can’t adjust your chart of accounts as a typical user, even as the owner of the account. You need an Accountant user if you want to be able to make any modifications to your accounts. Fortunately, the chart of accounts that FreshBooks provides is very good and most small businesses won’t need to modify it.

Within FreshBooks, expenses are treated a little differently than other accounts—they’re called “categories.” As you record expenses, you can create new expense categories. This is the one exception to adjusting your chart of accounts as a regular user. But all of your other accounts—assets, liabilities, equity, and revenue accounts—can’t be modified as a regular user, only in the Accountant role.

FreshBooks Chart of Accounts

Connecting your bank account to FreshBooks is very important because it’s how you’ll record most of your expenses.

To connect your bank account, go to the cogwheel in the upper left corner of the dashboard, and then click on Bank Connections.

Navigating to Bank Connections in FreshBooks

In the image below, you’ll see that there is already a U.S. Bank account connected. To add an additional account, such as Bank of America, click on the appropriate bank or credit card name. If you don’t see your bank or credit card listed, click on the “Find your bank” link.

Bank Connections in FreshBooks

Before initiating the setup, you need to make sure that you have internet access to the account and can log in from its website. To do this, you’ll need your user ID and password. Those credentials are what you’ll use to connect the account to FreshBooks.

You’ll only need to enter the information once. Once it connects, your account’s transactions will flow over to FreshBooks and you’ll be able to categorize the expenses. We’ll discuss this more in our Expenses tutorial.

Setting up a bank connection in FreshBooks

Prior QuickBooks users can import their companies by exporting those QuickBooks clients to a comma-separated values (CSV) file. An alternative is to input your clients manually, but when you’re setting your company up, it’s much easier to import all of them at once. If you had a prior accounting software or even a spreadsheet with a list of your client names, you can import that into FreshBooks.

In QuickBooks, you export a list of your clients by going to the Reports tab and locating the Customer Contact report. Generate the report and export it to Excel. Once you open it in Excel, remove any rows leading up to the data, and then save it as a CSV file. CSV files are the only files that can be imported to FreshBooks.

Clients page in FreshBooks

Once you have a CSV file of all of your customers, you can import them into FreshBooks by navigating to More Actions in the upper right corner of the page. Click on Import Clients, which will take you to the screen below. Click the green Choose File button and select the file that you want to import.

Uploading a CSV file to add clients to FreshBooks

Before importing, FreshBooks is going to ask you to map the columns in the spreadsheet to the FreshBooks fields. To begin mapping, click the first drop-down menu next to First Name, and select the column name in your file that matches this field. Continue mapping each field—Last Name, Company, Email Address, and Phone Number. If your spreadsheet doesn’t already have this information separated out this way, then you’ll need to go in and do a little manipulation of your CSV file to ensure that you have all of the appropriate fields available.

Mapping Client files in FreshBooks

If you have a small number of clients, you can enter them manually. From the Clients page, click on the green New Client button in the upper right corner. You can then enter the client’s contact info on the next screen, as well as adjust their settings. These settings include currency and language options and whether you want to send reminders at customizable intervals, charge late fees, and attach invoices.

Adding a new client in FreshBooks

The last step in this tutorial is to import vendors. The process of importing vendors is very similar to that of importing customers, as discussed in the prior step. You can access your vendors by clicking on Expenses in the left menu bar and then click on Vendors. From the Vendor page, click on More Actions in the upper right corner, and then Import Vendors.

Navigating to Vendors in FreshBooks

Like your customers, you’re going to need to set this up in a CSV file. If you’re migrating from another accounting program, you’ll need to figure out how to export the vendors to a CSV file. It should have all of the same columns as FreshBooks fields, and all of the descriptions of each of those columns should be in the very first line of the spreadsheet. Once you have done that, click the green Choose File button, and then select the vendor list that you want to import.

Uploading a Vendor file in FreshBooks

Then, map the columns in the spreadsheet to the fields in FreshBooks just like in step 5. Note that you can leave any fields blank that you don’t intend to use in FreshBooks. Once all of the fields are mapped, click on Import Vendors. You’ll see them listed in the Vendor Center.

Mapping Vendor files in FreshBooks