FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: Price, Features & Who’s Best in 2020

Deciding which accounting software to use for your business can be a bit overwhelming. FreshBooks has great invoicing and payment processing at a low cost. However, QuickBooks has an enormous network of independent accountants and bookkeepers certified by Intuit as QuickBooks ProAdvisors. In this article, we compare the pricing and features of FreshBooks vs QuickBooks.

When to Use QuickBooks Online

We rate QuickBooks as the best accounting software for small businesses because it offers more features than FreshBooks, including the ability to track unpaid bills and reporting on the accrual basis of accounting. In addition, QuickBooks has a large network of QuickBooks ProAdvisors who, with your permission, can access your online books to help solve problems and keep your books straight.

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When to Use FreshBooks

If you don’t need to track unpaid bills and have only one or two users, FreshBooks may be a great alternative to QuickBooks. FreshBooks offers excellent invoicing capabilities and a robust time and expense tracker. With FreshBooks, you can create and send customized invoices, send automatic payment reminders to customers, offer early payment discounts, and charge late fees automatically.

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FreshBooks vs QuickBooks at a Glance

Is FreshBooks or QuickBooks Right for You?

FreshBooks Pricing vs QuickBooks Pricing

Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks offer a plan for every budget. The lowest-priced plan for both products is $15 per month. FreshBooks Premium is $50 per month while QuickBooks Online Plus is $70 per month. QuickBooks Online Advanced, designed for larger businesses with more complex needs, is priced at $150 per month. While FreshBooks’ monthly price is lower than QuickBooks’ for comparable plans, FreshBooks charges $10 per additional team member while QuickBooks includes a set number of users under each plan.

FreshBooks and QuickBooks are both good at streamlining the invoicing and payment process. However, QuickBooks Online (QBO) also manages 1099 contractor reporting, tracks unpaid bills, and can produce reports using the accrual basis of accounting.

QuickBooks Online Pricing

The five QuickBooks Online plans vary by the number of users and features included. QuickBooks Self-Employed is only $15 per month, but includes only one user and cannot accommodate the QuickBooks payroll add-on. You will need to purchase at least QuickBooks Online Essentials if you want to manage unpaid bills and QuickBooks Online Plus if you need to track inventory. QuickBooks Online Advanced offers 25 users, a dedicated support manager, and enhanced reported with Fathom.

QuickBooks Online Pricing & Tiered Features

The QuickBooks Online pricing plans are:

QuickBooks Self-Employed

QuickBooks (QB) Self-Employed is ideal for self-employed people who report their business income on schedule C, such as Uber and Lyft drivers and freelancers. It allows you to track your income, expenses, and mileage, and transfer your data to TurboTax to prepare your tax return. QB Self-Employed does not print checks, so you will have to do that by hand.

QuickBooks Online Simple Start

QuickBooks Online Simple Start is ideal for a service-based business with only one user. Since QBO Simple Start does not track unpaid bills, you will have to manually track your bills until you are ready to pay them by printing or writing a check by hand.

QuickBooks Online Essentials

QuickBooks Online Essentials is ideal for a service-based business with no more than three users. With QBO Essentials, you can enter your bills as soon as you receive them. You can then generate a report of all your outstanding bills and choose the ones you want to pay by printing or writing a check.

QuickBooks Online Plus

QuickBooks Online Plus is ideal for a product-based business with five or fewer users that needs to track inventory. Also useful for product-based businesses, QBO Plus can generate purchase orders to send to suppliers and can also track income and expense by location.

QuickBooks Online Advanced

QuickBooks Online Advanced is required for any business needing more than five users. In addition to allowing more users, QBO Advanced can customize user access to help facilitate proper segregation of duties at larger businesses. While all QBO plans come with unlimited customer support, QBO Advanced has a dedicated support manager.

FreshBooks Pricing

The three FreshBooks plans vary by the number of billable customers allowed and by the features included. While FreshBooks Lite is only $15 per month, it will only allow up to five customers and will not generate a balance sheet. The Plus plan will allow 50 customers for $25 per month and the Premium plan will allow 500 customers for $50 per month.

FreshBooks Pricing & Tiered Features

It’s notable that none of the FreshBooks plans include the last four features in the above table. These are generally useful features, but if you don’t require them for your business, FreshBooks might be a great value for you.

The FreshBooks pricing plans are:

FreshBooks Lite

The FreshBooks Lite plan is ideal for a service-based business that invoices less than five customers a month. This plan will work if you typically get paid at the same time you provide services, and rarely extend payment terms to customers. Since accounts payable is not available, you will need to track your unpaid bills by hand.

FreshBooks Plus

The FreshBooks Plus plan is ideal for a service-based business that needs to invoice no more than 50 customers a month. Similar to the Lite plan, you will need to track your unpaid bills by hand. FreshBooks Plus will automatically generate recurring invoices to your customers.

FreshBooks Premium

The FreshBooks Premium plan is ideal for a service-based business that needs to invoice 500 or fewer customers monthly. Similar to the Lite and Premium plans, you will need to keep track of your unpaid bills outside of FreshBooks.

FreshBooks Select

Businesses using FreshBooks must choose the Select plan if they bill over 500 customers per month. The Select plan improves upon the lower-tier plans by providing a personal account manager and lower credit card transaction rates.

FreshBooks Features vs QuickBooks Features

Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online are packed with time-saving features, but there are some important differences. Based on our minimum criteria, here is how FreshBooks matches up to QuickBooks Online:

Bank & Credit Card Integration

QuickBooks and FreshBooks have similar functionality to connect and reconcile bank accounts. They both allow an unlimited number of connected bank and credit card accounts. This is a huge time-saver since it eliminates manual data entry, but you still need to reconcile your bank and credit card accounts. Both programs provide assistance in performing the reconciliation by clicking on the cleared transactions from your account statement.

Manage Accounts Receivable (A/R)

FreshBooks and QuickBooks perform similarly at generating great, customizable invoices, complete with company logo, brand colors, and any fields and columns that you need. When a customer invoice is sent, both systems create an accounts receivable that tracks the amount owed to you. When you record payments received, the account receivable is eliminated or reduced. You can generate an accounts receivable report at any time to view the amounts owed to you.

Manage Accounts Payable (A/P)

QuickBooks allows you to enter bills along with their due dates or payment terms as soon as you receive them. When a bill is entered, QuickBooks generates an accounts payable that remains open until you pay the bill. You can generate a report of unpaid bills at any time. By tracking accounts payable, QuickBooks is able to generate financial reports on the accrual versus cash basis of accounting.

A major shortcoming of FreshBooks is its lack of accounts payable. You cannot keep track of your unpaid bills in FreshBooks. Bills are entered (or downloaded) as they are actually paid. Because accounts payable are not recorded, FreshBooks cannot report income on the accrual basis of accounting.

Give Other Users Access

QuickBooks Online includes a maximum number of users based on the version of QBO you select. There are no additional fees for users up to the maximum. QuickBooks Self-Employed and Simple Start both allow one user. QuickBooks Essentials allows three users and QuickBooks Plus allows five users. QuickBooks Advanced is designed for large businesses and allows up to 25 users. QuickBooks Online also allows your accountant to access your books, which does not count toward your maximum number of users.

All FreshBooks plans come with only one user included in the monthly price. Additional users can be added for $10 per user, per month under any of the plans. In addition, FreshBooks allows your accountant to view your FreshBooks account and export your transactions to the software of their choice. However, if you want your accountant to make changes directly in your FreshBooks, then you will need to register them as an additional user and pay the $10 per month.

Time Tracking

QuickBooks and FreshBooks both do a good job tracking time. With QuickBooks, you can keep track of the hours employees and contractors spend working on a project to bill customers later. The time tracking feature includes the ability to assign a particular activity to a project or customer and choose whether to bill your customers for the activity. Time tracking is available on QBO Essentials and higher plans. For additional functionality, you can purchase TSheets, a third-party add-on owned by Intuit.

FreshBooks has an excellent time tracking feature. This feature is available in all three pricing plans, and it is much more robust than time tracking in QuickBooks. You can track time manually or use the timer. It also allows you to invite employees, contractors, and clients who need to track their time, and it has detailed reports that you can run by project, client, employee, or contractor to keep tabs on the progress of each project.

1099 Reporting for Contractors

QuickBooks (except Self-Employed) allows you to keep track of payments made to 1099 contractors throughout the year. You need this information to issue the 1099 forms at the end of the year, which you can also do in QuickBooks. FreshBooks does not track 1099 payments or assist in filing Form 1099.

Budgeting & Forecasting

QuickBooks Online (Plus and Advanced) is one of the few accounting software programs that includes a budgeting and forecasting tool. FreshBooks does not. It’s beneficial to create a budget and start running reports to see how your actuals compare to what you expected to earn (income) and pay (expenses). This can be a critical tool in recognizing trends so you can make the right business decisions.

Inventory Tracking

With QuickBooks Online Plus and Advanced, you can keep track of the cost, quantities, and value of all products that you purchase for resale. This is important because you will always have up-to-date inventory and cost of goods sold figures to help you make informed business decisions. FreshBooks does not offer inventory tracking in any of its plans.

Automatically Send Payment Reminders

FreshBooks will automatically send payment reminders to notify your customers that an invoice is either coming due or past due. Payment reminders can be scheduled to go out before an invoice is due, after it is due, or both. QuickBooks Online does not offer this feature.

Set Up Multiple Businesses

FreshBooks allows you to set up multiple businesses under the same account, although you have to pay separately for each business. This means that you can access all of your businesses using one sign-in and just toggle between businesses as needed. Each new business will be eligible for a free 30-day trial and subject to the current pricing after the trial ends. QuickBooks Online allows you to access one business per account, which means you will need to create a new email and password for each business.

Payroll Processing

QuickBooks (except Self-Employed) has an integrated payroll service that can be activated with the push of a button. The service does cost extra, but it will help you generate paychecks, make required tax payments, and file quarterly tax returns.

While FreshBooks doesn’t offer its own payroll service, you can visit the FreshBooks Apps center and sign up for Gusto Payroll. Gusto will calculate payroll checks, process direct deposit payments, and pay and file payroll tax payments.

Accept Online Payments

Like payroll processing, QuickBooks also has its own credit card processing service—QuickBooks Payments. You can add this feature to any QuickBooks pricing plan; fees are between 2.4% and 3.4% plus 25 cents per transaction.

Similar to QuickBooks, you can accept online payments with FreshBooks. Stripe integrates seamlessly with FreshBooks so your customers can pay their invoices online. Visit the FreshBooks Apps center to connect your existing payment account or to create a new one.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: Ease of Use

Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks have very user-friendly interfaces. They both use simple language throughout the program so anyone without an accounting or bookkeeping background can use the software. Let’s take a look at the dashboard of each to give you a better understanding.

QuickBooks Online Ease of Use

The QuickBooks Online dashboard is divided into five main sections: left menu bar, outstanding invoices, total expenses, profit and loss, and sales. You can easily navigate to different areas of the program using the left menu bar. Instead of running a report, you can see your paid and unpaid invoices, total expenses, profit and loss, and total sales for any period of time.

A snapshot of the dashboard in QuickBooks is below:

The five main areas of the QuickBooks Online dashboard are:

1. Left Menu Bar: Similar to FreshBooks, you can access just about any task from the left menu bar, including create invoices, bank accounts, and reports.
2. Invoice: In this section, you can see the amount your customers owe you (accounts receivable), as well as the total amount of payments collected that you have deposited versus undeposited funds.
3. Expenses: See the total expenses for a selected time period along with the top three categories (e.g., Maintenance and Repairs, Job Expenses, Cost of Goods Sold).
4. Profit and Loss: Similar to FreshBooks, keep tabs on your profit and loss without having to run a report.
5. Sales: Keep an eye on your sales throughout the month and year so that you can spot trends and make adjustments as needed.

FreshBooks Ease of Use

Like QuickBooks, the FreshBooks dashboard provides you with key information such as your accounts receivable balance, total profit, and a left menu bar for easy navigation within the program.

Below is a snapshot of the dashboard in FreshBooks, along with a brief description of the information you will find there:

The four main sections of the FreshBooks Dashboard are:

1. Left Menu Bar: Like QuickBooks Online, you can perform most tasks from the left menu bar, such as create invoices, enter expenses, and create new projects.
2. Create New: Click the drop-down button and you can easily create new invoices, expenses, or enter time spent on a project.
3. Outstanding Revenue: Stay on top of customer invoices that have not been paid. The color-coded bar indicates overdue invoices (in red) versus invoices that are not yet due (in yellow).
4. Total Profit: Keep tabs on your bottom line without having to run a report. You can change the time frame to see your profit on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: Customer Service

Having the ability to get help when you need it is key. Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks offer a number of support channels that you can easily access. The best part is that unlimited support is already included in your monthly plan.

QuickBooks Customer Service

With QuickBooks, you can speak with a support rep via telephone. Unlike FreshBooks, QuickBooks also has a chat feature. You can access the link to start a chat directly from within your QuickBooks account. You also can search for your question on the QuickBooks learn and support page, which includes articles, how-to videos, and frequently asked questions (FAQs). QuickBooks Online Advanced has a dedicated account manager who makes getting answers much easier.

FreshBooks Customer Service

You can call or email FreshBooks for customer support, or you can access its extensive FAQ section with detailed instructions on how to do almost anything in FreshBooks. Similar to QuickBooks Advanced, FreshBooks Select has a personal account manager.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: Integrations

Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks integrate with hundreds of software programs. For example, if you have complicated inventory needs (that neither FreshBooks or QuickBooks can meet), you can visit the app center to locate a service that works with your chosen provider.

QuickBooks Integrations

QuickBooks integrates with over 600 software programs. Gusto, Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, and Square are just a few of the apps that integrate with QuickBooks Online. Unlike FreshBooks, QuickBooks has built-in payroll and credit card processing features. When you are ready to hire that first employee or accept online payments from customers, you simply turn that feature on—no app required, but additional fees may apply. Be sure to check out the complete list of QuickBooks apps.

FreshBooks Integrations

FreshBooks integrates with more than 80 software programs, such as Gusto for payroll, Stripe and PayPal for credit card processing, and Shopify and Square for ecommerce, just to name a few. Be sure to check out the FreshBooks integrations page for the full lineup.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: Lending Solutions

QuickBooks Capital is a lending solution available to small business owners who use QuickBooks. At the writing of this article, FreshBooks did not offer any lending solutions.

QuickBooks Online Lending Solutions

QuickBooks Capital provides loans to small business owners who use QuickBooks to do their bookkeeping. Small businesses can apply for loans up to $100,000 with terms up to 12 months. Unlike traditional lenders, Intuit has access to their customers’ data, which gives them insights into open invoices, cash flow forecasts, sales trends, and profitability over time. With this information, QuickBooks is able to customize a loan to meet the individual needs of a small business.

To apply for a loan through QuickBooks Capital, you must be prequalified. Log into your QuickBooks file to see if you have an invitation to apply for a QuickBooks Capital loan. It only takes a few minutes to apply, since most of the information is transferred from your QuickBooks file to the application. Generally, you can expect a decision within two to three business days, and funding takes place within 48 hours of approval.

FreshBooks Lending Solutions

FreshBooks does not directly make loans to users like QuickBooks. However, the software maker offers an add-on from Fundbox, a company specializing in invoice financing. Fundbox will access your FreshBooks account and automatically list your outstanding invoices in your Fundbox dashboard. When you need additional cash, simply select an invoice to receive an advance payment from Fundbox.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: Customer Reviews

Overall, both FreshBooks and QuickBooks have pretty decent customer reviews. Customers like how well the QuickBooks mobile app works, but feel the customer service could use improvement. FreshBooks customers like how streamlined the invoicing and payment process is, but feel like the program lacks key features you would expect in an accounting program.

QuickBooks Customer Reviews

On the positive side, QuickBooks customers said that the app works very well on all mobile devices and is generally very simple to use. On the negative side, customers feel the customer support team is inefficient and unreliable at times. As with many services, the quality of customer support is going to depend on the individual you speak with. The dedicated account manager who comes with QuickBooks Advanced might mitigate this problem.

FreshBooks Customer Reviews

On the positive side, FreshBooks customers said that the invoicing and payment processing features work well for small businesses. On the negative side, customers feel the program lacks some features that a small business accounting software should have, such as financial statement generation and bank reconciliation.

Check out our FreshBooks customer review page to learn what small businesses are saying about FreshBooks.

When to Use an Alternative Provider

If you just can’t afford to buy accounting software but you need a better way to track your income and expenses, try Wave. Wave is a free accounting software that you can use to manage accounts receivable, accounts payable, connect your bank and credit card accounts, and run detailed financial reports. You can read our in-depth review of Wave vs FreshBooks or visit their website to sign up for your free account.

How We Evaluated FreshBooks vs QuickBooks

When looking for an accounting software, there is a list of minimum requirements that most products should include. As part of our research, we looked at cost, ease of use and setup, invoicing capabilities, managing bills, giving other users access to your data, and the customer support options available.

We used the following criteria to conduct our evaluation of FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online:

• Cost: Offers a pricing plan that is affordable for most small businesses
• Ease of setup and use: Provides minimal setup time, and no accounting background required
• Manage accounts receivable: Allows you to create invoices and track customer payments
• Manage accounts payable: Able to enter and track unpaid bills and payments made
• Give other users access: Allows multiple users, including a tax preparer, access to data
• Customer support: Several support options available when you have a question

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) about FreshBooks vs QuickBooks

What is better than QuickBooks?

There are many capable accounting programs if you don’t wish to use QuickBooks. FreshBooks is very good, as discussed in this article. See our article on QuickBooks alternatives for other choices.

Does FreshBooks work with QuickBooks?

FreshBooks and QuickBooks are generally alternatives that you choose from rather than trying to use them both. However, FreshBooks does advertise that its top-tier program, FreshBooks Select, integrates with QuickBooks. This might be useful if a business owner wishes to use FreshBooks for invoicing, but needs QuickBooks for managing unpaid bills. Of course, it will be expensive since you need to purchase both programs.

What is the easiest accounting software to use for small business?

The answer is subjective, but both FreshBooks and QuickBooks are fairly easy to use without extensive knowledge of accounting or bookkeeping. See our article on the top accounting software for small businesses for other options.

Bottom Line

Now that we have compared the pricing and features of FreshBooks versus QuickBooks, it’s time for you to make a decision. If you want an accounting software that gives you the most bang for your buck, go with QuickBooks. You can manage every financial aspect of your business and have up-to-date financial statements anytime you need them.

For a limited time only, you can receive 50% off a paid QuickBooks subscription. Head over to their website and provide a few basic contact details to get started. See all of the features we have discussed for yourself and learn why QuickBooks is the most commonly used business accounting software.

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