FreshBooks – Login to FreshBooks Dashboard I Customer Support
Pros & Cons
- Excellent user experience
- Context-sensitive settings
- Some unusual yet helpful features, like retainers
- Projects and time tracking
- Great mobile apps
- Extra costs for team members, 1099s
- Weak inventory tracking
FreshBooks Specs
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
| Desktop App | |
| Create Quotes | |
| Create Estimates | |
| Convert Quote to Invoice | |
| Pop-Up Timer |
More Specs
FreshBooks started as a simple invoicing program but has grown into a full-featured, double-entry accounting application primarily for service-based small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). It offers the best interface of all the accounting applications we’ve tested, and the latest version includes enhanced reporting, time tracking, and performance features. FreshBooks is an Editors’ Choice winner due to its creative, customizable financial management tools and top-notch design, alongside Intuit QuickBooks Online, a more comprehensive accounting solution for both product- and service-based businesses.
How Much Does FreshBooks Cost?
FreshBooks offers four single-user plans, which have gone up in price since last year: Lite ($19 per month) is for sole proprietors and gig workers, Plus ($33 per month) adds recurring invoices and client retainers, Premium ($60 per month) lets you send an unlimited number of invoices to an unlimited number of clients, and Select (custom pricing) provides premium phone support. A free 30-day trial is available for the first three tiers. You can set up all the plans to work with Gusto or SurePayroll for payroll.
Additional team members (Admin, Contractor, Employee, and Manager) cost $11 per month each, though accountants can get access for free with all but the Lite plan. The additional per-person fees seem excessive, considering that competitors include multiple users in their subscriber fees.
FreshBooks’ most serious competition is QuickBooks Online Plus ($99 per month for five users), which has more cutting-edge capabilities. Other accounting apps charge less than that, including Zoho Books Premium ($70 per month for 10 users), Xero ($20 to $80 per month for unlimited users), and Patriot Software Accounting Premium ($30 per month for unlimited users). Wave Pro is the least expensive full-featured accounting app at $16 per month.
Similar Products
Our Current Picks for The Best Accounting Software for Small Businesses in 2025
Getting Started With FreshBooks
FreshBooks has an engaging setup process. Like its competitors, it asks questions about your business and customizes the experience based on that information. It also encourages you to set up your online bank connections early so you can start getting feedback right away. You can get answers to your questions via phone, chatbot, and email.
Once the setup is complete, the app drops you into the dashboard. Six charts here provide a quick overview of key elements of your finances. You can now customize this page to display less content if you want. It would be nice to see a list of account balances here, which some competitors, such as Zoho Books, offer. However, you can drill down into the text and graphics to see underlying transactions and forms.
How Are FreshBooks’ Sales Tools?
FreshBooks’ accounts receivable tools are stronger than its accounts payable ones. Client records contain extended contact information, but they’re not as fleshed out as what you get from even the less expensive Wave Pro. This is one area where the site provides context-sensitive settings, which allow you to easily personalize settings for each client. Once you enter data for client records or upload a simple CSV file, FreshBooks generates a dedicated page for your customers with all the transactions you’ve created for them, along with a chart that shows outstanding revenue.
(Credit: FreshBooks/PCMag)
FreshBooks has most standard sales forms, like invoices, quotes, billable time records, and statements, but no sales receipts or sales orders. It does include some unusual ones, like retainers and proposals (quotes that you can dress up and formalize). The software can automatically convert completed forms into related ones—estimates into invoices or assigned to projects, for example. Form customization options are much more limited than in QuickBooks Online. You can choose from three templates, add a logo, and change fonts and colors.
Invoices have always been the heart of FreshBooks. The forms lack some of the options that QuickBooks Online has, but most small businesses should do fine with what’s there. You can make invoices recurring and automatically assess finance charges (QuickBooks Online requires a separate invoice for them). You can save them as PDFs and accept online payments through FreshBooks Payments (Stripe), as well as set up automatic reminders.
(Credit: FreshBooks/PCMag)
Bills and Expenses in FreshBooks
Vendor records look and work like client records, and they have about the same level of detail. Like with most competing sites, you can designate vendors as 1099 recipients, though you need an add-on like Yearli or one of FreshBooks’ payroll partners to actually create and file 1099 forms. Most competitors, including Patriot Software Accounting Premium, build in these capabilities.
Get Our Best Stories!
All the Latest Tech, Tested by Our Experts
Sign up for the Lab Report to receive PCMag’s latest product reviews, buying advice, and insights.Sign Me Up
By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
As with invoices, you can enter bills and expenses manually, assign them to clients and projects, and make them recurring. There are multiple ways to get them into FreshBooks. For example, the app looks for expenses that could be bill payments while you’re importing transactions and helps you match them. You can also email or upload scanned copies of them or snap photos of receipts with your smartphone. FreshBooks relies on optical character recognition (OCR) to extract all the details it can from the expenses and bill receipts and uses the information to complete forms. This worked fine in my testing. The mobile app even allows you to take photos of long receipts in multiple scans. 
(Credit: FreshBooks/PCMag)
Can You Track Inventory With FreshBooks?
FreshBooks works better for service-based businesses than product-based ones because its item-tracking tools are very basic. Item records contain only fields for a name, description, income account, rate, and sales taxes. FreshBooks does track inventory, though, and warns you if you try to add more items to an invoice than you have in stock. Service records have almost the same fields (minus inventory, of course), but you can mark them as billable to clients and projects. QuickBooks Online is much stronger in this area, supporting comprehensive item and service records and inventory management.
Time Tracking and Projects With FreshBooks
You can assign transactions (including billable time, which is easier to record than it used to be) to projects you’ve created in FreshBooks. These appear on each project’s page, which provides a thorough overview of your work so far. You can set a budget and check its status on the page’s progress bar. This page shows lists of the time and services that have gone into the project and alerts you to your deadline and any unbilled time or expenses.
You can wait until you’re finished to have FreshBooks create a final invoice, or you can bill in smaller increments. The service also calculates your project profitability and lets you invite team members to participate. Both FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online do an excellent job here.