What's your favorite part near being a small business owner?

Here are some things you lot probably didn't say: preparing invoices, filling out expense reports, paying bills, or tracking your working hours.

Unfortunately, freelancers and agency owners can't escape these irksome bookkeeping tasks. Only cloud-based accounting software tin make them a lot easier.

But which online accounting software should y'all choose?

QuickBooks is the well-nigh well-known bookkeeping software on the market, only it has a lot of competitors. Is it the best solution for a pocket-size business similar yours? This article compares QuickBooks to another popular option, FreshBooks.

Keep reading this all-encompassing Freshbooks vs QuickBooks post to determine the meliorate option for freelancers and agencies.

QuickBooks Overview

The well-nigh significant player in the game (at least in North America) is QuickBooks.

QuickBooks was adult by Intuit, a software giant that owns financial products similar TurboTax and Mint.

Intuit has been around since 1983, and it released QuickBooks in 1992. QuickBooks Online (QBO), the cloud-based version of the product, came out in 2001.

Today, QuickBooks products, including online and desktop versions, have a 76% marketplace share in the US.

A map of the market share Quickbooks has
QuickBooks global market share. (Source: Codat)

This article will focus on QuickBooks Online. Features of QBO include:

  • Invoicing
  • Income and expense tracking
  • Bill management
  • Mileage tracking
  • Fourth dimension tracking
  • Inventory management
  • Profit and loss reporting
  • Automatic online banking

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FreshBooks Overview

FreshBooks was first released in 2003. Mike McDerment was running a iv-person design agency and was frustrated past the bachelor invoicing solutions. And then he created a meliorate ane.

FreshBooks still has a strong focus on self-employed individuals. Although it only has a 4% market share in the US, information technology has a positive reputation with freelancers and modest businesses.

Features include:

  • Invoicing
  • Income and expense tracking
  • Time tracking
  • Image and file sharing
  • Credit carte payments and banking company deposits
  • Report generation
  • Mileage tracking

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks Pricing

You're looking for the best bookkeeping software for your business organization.

But as a freelancer or small business owner, you too have to exist price-conscious.

FreshBooks Pricing Plans

  • Lite: $xv/calendar month
  • Plus: $25/month
  • Premium: $50/month
  • Select custom pricing

You can relieve some money if you choose almanac billing rather than monthly. There'south as well a 30-twenty-four hour period costless trial — no credit bill of fare required.

The about crucial difference in the plans is how many billable clients you can accept. The Calorie-free programme merely lets you lot invoice five clients, while the Plus plan lets you invoice l. Premium and Select let unlimited clients.

QuickBooks Pricing Plans

  • Unproblematic Commencement: $25/month
  • Essentials: $50/month
  • Plus: $eighty/calendar month
  • Advanced: $180/month
  • Desktop Pro Plus: $349/year

These prices assume you exercise a xxx-mean solar day costless trial. If yous choose to forgo the trial, y'all can get fifty% off for three months.

QuickBooks doesn't limit your clients as FreshBooks does. However, it limits the users you tin have on your account. With Simple Start, yous but become one user. The Essentials program includes three users, Plus lets you have five, and Avant-garde allows 25.

Time tracking and inventory direction are two of the more than significant features missing from the Uncomplicated Start plan. You lot'll need to have the Essentials plan or college to rails time. For inventory management, you'll need at least Plus.

And then which plan has better pricing?

If you're a freelancer or agency owner who just bills v clients, FreshBooks Lite volition likely offer all of the features you need, and it's the cheapest plan by far.

Even if yous bill 50 clients, FreshBooks Plus is every bit cheap as QuickBooks Simple Start, and FreshBooks Plus will requite you the power to rail your time.

If yous have more than 50 clients, you lot'll have to become FreshBooks Premium for $50 per month.

At this betoken, if you don't need time tracking, QuickBooks Elementary Start is the more affordable option. FreshBooks Premium and QuickBooks Essentials plans are the same cost if you need time tracking.

QuickBooks Self-Employed

There'south also a version of QuickBooks called QuickBooks Self-Employed (QBSE) for $fifteen/calendar month. This is technically split up from QBO, although information technology's too a cloud-based product.

QBSE is very bones, and its invoicing capabilities are limited. Information technology's good at providing tax help but lacks the accounting features that most business owners need.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks Features

QuickBooks and Freshbooks have many like capabilities only with some critical differences.

Let's take a look at the major features you'll desire to consider in your accounting software decision.

Invoicing

FreshBooks invoicing is straightforward to apply.

Y'all can beginning with a customizable invoice template and choose your invoice logo, colors, and fonts.

Example of a Freshbooks invoice
FreshBooks invoice.

FreshBooks can automate a lot of the tedious work of invoicing, like setting up recurring invoices or sending reminders about late payments, and applying tardily fees.

Invoices tin can pull information directly from the fourth dimension-tracking feature if you mark your hours as billable.

For the nigh office, QuickBooks Online offers similar invoicing features. Invoices are customizable and have a variety of automation options.

FreshBooks invoicing is a lilliputian more user-friendly for someone without much accounting software experience. QBO, on the other hand, is ameliorate equipped for the needs of larger businesses, like bulk invoicing.

While QuickBooks can automatically add time tracking data to invoices, that feature will just be available if y'all take the Essentials program.

Both solutions are great invoicing software, only FreshBooks has a slight edge for freelancers due to ease of use and the integration with time tracking.

Expense Tracking

QuickBooks and FreshBooks offering very similar expense tracking.

Both can connect with your bank accounts and credit cards so that your books tin can be automatically updated with your most contempo spending. QuickBooks can also connect to your PayPal account.

You tin can add together expenses to both QuickBooks and FreshBooks by taking a picture of a receipt. Both platforms can categorize your expenses into tax-friendly categories.

If yous mark your expenses equally billable, y'all can pull them into a client invoice on FreshBooks or QuickBooks.

Unless the PayPal integration is essential for your business, there'south no clear winner here.

Customer Payments

The last thing you lot want is for your customers to struggle to pay you.

Luckily, both QuickBooks and FreshBooks make customer payments easy. They both take credit cards, depository financial institution transfers, and PayPal. Both allow you to send your client an email with a link to pay the invoice.

They both charge transaction fees for collecting payments. The amounts are similar:

  • FreshBooks: two.9% + $0.30 on all credit card transactions, except for American Express, which is 3.v% + $0.xxx. 1% on ACH transfers.
  • QuickBooks: two.9% + $0.25 per transaction for online credit cards, 2.iv% + $0.25 for swiped credit cards, iii.4% + $0.25 per transaction for keyed-in cards. one% per transaction for ACH transfer.

QuickBooks has a sleek portal for online payments.

The QuickBooks online payment portal
QuickBooks online payment portal.

Nevertheless, FreshBooks wins for online payments thanks to its Checkout Links feature. Checkout Links are unique payment links that let yous collect online payments without an invoice.

The ease of adding these links to your website or social media puts information technology ahead of QuickBooks regarding online payment.

QuickBooks has better options for collecting in-person payments. Yous can even go a QuickBooks mobile credit carte du jour reader for an additional fee.

FreshBooks also offers some telephone and in-person payment options through an Advanced Payments addition, but QuickBooks is still the stronger solution for brick-and-mortar businesses.

Inventory Management

FreshBooks didn't have any native inventory management features until recently, although information technology did integrate with a couple of 3rd-party inventory direction applications.

That changed in 2020.

Now FreshBooks offers elementary inventory tracking. Yous can go along an updated listing of your inventory, and when you invoice for an item, its stock corporeality will reduce automatically.

QuickBooks inventory management goes beyond tracking with excellent reporting and analysis. You can easily see your best sellers, total sales, or taxes. Yous can also get depression stock notifications if an item is running out.

QuickBooks is the improve choice for managing inventory.

Time Tracking

Every FreshBooks plan offers unlimited time tracking for the whole team.

You tin can record billable hours for a specific client and automatically add that fourth dimension to the client invoice.

A screenshot of FreshBooks time tracking
FreshBooks time tracking.

The more expensive QuickBooks plans also offer fourth dimension tracking. However, FreshBooks time tracking was designed for freelancers, while QuickBooks is ameliorate for larger sales teams.

For freelancers who need time tracking, FreshBooks is a clear choice.

Reporting

Reports let yous dig into the details of your transactions or become a big-picture view of your company's finances.

FreshBooks, every bit usual, offers an intuitive, convenient experience. You can generate seven FreshBooks reports:

  1. Invoice Details
  2. Expense Details
  3. Profit and Loss
  4. Crumbling Accounts
  5. Tax Summary
  6. Payments Collected

With QuickBooks, the reports bachelor to you depend on your plan. Just fifty-fifty Simple Start, the least expensive pick, offers dozens of reports.

An incomplete listing of QuickBooks reports available with Simple Get-go includes:

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  • Balance Sheet
  • Turn a profit and Loss by % of Total Income
  • Profit and Loss past Customer
  • Argument of Cash Flows
  • Sales by Client Summary
  • Transaction List past Vendor
A screenshot of the QuickBooks dashboard
QuickBooks dashboard.

While we appreciate the straightforward reporting that FreshBooks offers, we have to give this one to QuickBooks.

Integrations

FreshBooks and QuickBooks each offering an extensive library of third-political party integrations.

The platforms are reasonably evenly matched — the all-time solution will be the one with the integrations your business organisation needs.

Take a look at the complete list of FreshBooks vs QuickBooks integrations to decide.

A few popular FreshBooks integrations include:

  • Shopify: automatically sync your clients and orders to FreshBooks
  • Zoom: automatically pull your meeting minutes into FreshBooks and apply them for customer billing
  • Gmail: add together Gmail contacts every bit clients and create and email invoices directly from your Gmail account.

While QuickBooks offers:

  • Shopify: integrate your Shopify sales with QuickBooks
  • Amazon Business organization: rail Amazon Business organization purchases in QuickBooks
  • Fathom: brand use of budgeting, forecasting, and fiscal dashboards

Mobile

What if yous want to bank check your dashboards or update an invoice when you're away from your computer?

Mobile offerings of FreshBooks vs QuickBooks are reasonably the aforementioned. They both offer mobile apps for Android and iOS. They're roughly comparable, with features like invoice cosmos, expense tracking, mileage tracking, and dashboards.

I cool feature of the FreshBooks app is responding to your customer's questions and feedback from within the app.

Unless that feature is essential to you, QuickBooks and FreshBooks have an every bit potent showing in the mobile category.

Ease of Use

FreshBooks is known for being user-friendly. For proof that it lives upwardly to the hype, we can turn to software review sites G2 and Capterra.

G2 reviews rate QuickBooks 8.ane on ease of employ, while FreshBooks is rated 9.ii. On Capterra, QuickBooks gets a 4.one in the ease of utilise category. FreshBooks wins again with 4.v.

Both software programs have relatively intuitive interfaces, but FreshBooks is more beginner-friendly.

Scalability

If you're a solopreneur or have a small business and intend to stay small, FreshBooks has the features you need.

But an expanding business concern could outgrow it quickly.

If you lot envision having more than than a few employees or needing to invoice hundreds of customers, QuickBooks may be the winner.

Client Back up

FreshBooks provides back up by phone and email. QuickBooks offers telephone, alive conversation, and in-app support.

Both have extensive cognition bases.

To find out which application has superior customer support, we tin can go back to G2 and Capterra.

Once again, FreshBooks gets meliorate reviews on both sites. On G2, QuickBooks back up is rated seven.5 compared to 9.2 for FreshBooks. Capterra gives QuickBooks 3.ix and FreshBooks 4.four.

Other Features

There are far also many features in FreshBooks and QuickBooks to completely cover this article. The major differences are covered above, but depending on the needs of your business, you might want to consider a few more than things.

Multi-Currency

If you bargain with multiple currencies, y'all'll desire accounting software to handle that. FreshBooks has multi-currency features at all price levels. QuickBooks offers it starting with the Essentials plan.

Payroll

If y'all accept employees, yous might exist looking for payroll software. Payroll is available as a QuickBooks improver for a monthly fee.

FreshBooks doesn't offer payroll software, although it does integrate with some payroll tools.

Nib Paying

Both QuickBooks and FreshBooks let yous pay your visitor's bills using the software.

In both cases, you become this choice starting with the $50 per month programme — QuickBooks Essentials and FreshBooks Premium.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: Which One Should You Choose in 2022?

The all-time bookkeeping solution for your business organisation depends on your individual needs.

But for the typical freelancer or agency owner, nosotros think at that place's a articulate option betwixt FreshBooks vs QuickBooks.

Pros and Cons of QuickBooks

QuickBooks online dominates the marketplace for a reason.

QuickBooks Pros:

  • Scalable
  • Features for businesses of all sizes
  • Inventory management capabilities
  • Extensive reporting

QuickBooks Cons:

  • Lower toll tiers lacking important features
  • Less intuitive than FreshBooks

Pros and Cons of FreshBooks

FreshBooks has a well-deserved reputation as excellent accounting software for self-employed individuals.

FreshBooks Pros:

  • Easy to use
  • Bully client support
  • Affordable pricing
  • Time tracking

FreshBooks Cons:

  • Limits billable clients
  • Defective features for larger businesses

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks: The Verdict

For most freelancers and agencies, FreshBooks is the better choice.

It's toll-effective for minor businesses and offers everything well-nigh solopreneurs or agencies need. It's also known for user-friendliness — essential for people who want to spend their time running a business organization, not learning to be an accountant.

That said, for some pocket-sized businesses, QuickBooks will be the amend selection. For example, choose QuickBooks if:

You take an auditor who prefers QuickBooks.

QuickBooks is often the software of choice for accountants. Information technology's been effectually forever and is used by more businesses than any other solution, so they're used to it.

Some accountants volition only work with QuickBooks. In that case, it'southward probably best to go along with their preference.

Yous run a brick-and-mortar store and/or accept a physical product.

If your business concern sells a physical product, QuickBooks'due south inventory direction features could come in handy.

But keep in listen that you don't get those features unless you lot're paying $80 per month for QuickBooks Plus.

If that'south not an investment you want to make, FreshBooks offers bones inventory tracking with all plans.

You plan to grow a lot.

QuickBooks is the ameliorate solution for large businesses. If your aspirations go across running a small agency, QuickBooks is worth considering.

FreshBooks vs QuickBooks vs Alternatives

QuickBooks and FreshBooks aren't the only accounting software options for freelancers. Hither are a few more top choices:

Xero

Xero is a deject-based accounting solution offering a similar suite of features as QuickBooks and FreshBooks.

It isn't as pop equally QuickBooks in North America but has a significant market place share in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

Xero is known for its bonny and intuitive user interface. It's also a very scalable solution, with the to the lowest degree expensive plan starting at just $9 per month. Withal, Xero is generally more popular with mid-sized businesses than freelancers and agencies.

Wave

Some freelancers and bureau owners don't desire all the bells and whistles that QuickBooks and FreshBooks offer.

They just want a simple and efficient tool. Bonus points if it's free.

Moving ridge is an accounting app that fills that need.

With Moving ridge, you get essential tools for invoicing, expense tracking, online payments, and more than. Y'all won't find advanced capabilities similar time tracking and inventory direction.

At that place's no monthly fee, and most features are costless, only you will be charged transaction fees to use the Payments feature.

Sage 50cloud

Sage 50cloud is some other accounting solution aimed at small businesses.

Ane area where it stands out is its avant-garde inventory management features. If you take a large inventory, information technology might be a ameliorate solution than QuickBooks. Plus, you tin can get those features fifty-fifty with Sage 50cloud'south most bones program, which is cheaper than QuickBooks Online Plus.

Built-in Invoicing with Kinsta

FreshBooks and QuickBooks make accounting tasks a little easier. So can Kinsta.

Kinsta offers a per-user automatic invoicing system that gives you complete control over the recipients of your invoices. If you're managing multiple users on your Kinsta account, y'all can ensure all invoices are sent automatically to multiple e-mail addresses at the end of the month.

Y'all can access your invoices from within the MyKinsta dashboard.

Invoices on the MyKinsta dashboard
Invoices on the MyKinsta dashboard.

Brand managing your small business concern easier than ever earlier with help from one of these popular accounting software options 👩‍💻 Click to Tweet

Summary

Invoicing, bookkeeping, accepting payments, tracking expenses, and other accounting tasks don't have to be so tedious. QuickBooks and FreshBooks are solutions that can make running your ain business easier.

However, deciding between FreshBooks vs QuickBooks can exist tedious. We hope this article has helped you decide better.

They would both be solid choices, just we accept to recommend FreshBooks as the best accounting software for freelancers and agencies in 2022.


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