QuickBooks vs FreshBooks

QuickBooks and FreshBooks share many similarities, but each accounting software solution addresses different business needs. FreshBooks offers an intuitive user interface and straightforward features for small businesses and freelancers, whereas QuickBooks Online provides comprehensive accounting software for businesses of all sizes.

Comparing QuickBooks and FreshBooks based on features, pricing, integrations, and customer support will help you decide if either platform is right for your business. If you’re still not ready to make a decision, consider exploring our Accounting Software Guide to browse all solutions on the market.

Related: 5 QuickBooks Alternatives for SMB Accounting

Timekeeping

FreshBooks offers built-in time-tracking capabilities that are helpful for project- and case-based businesses where employees track billable hours alongside other project expenses. The dashboard and project views of these hours help you keep your entire project and individual employees on the right task at the right time. Depending on the size of your team, you’ll likely import this data into your accounting system once compiled.

QuickBooks Online offers QuickBooks Time for an extra cost that tracks time worked against payroll for full or part-time employees. Otherwise, you’ll have to enter payroll as an expense and bill it by categorizing the employee’s service as a product. It’s not the most efficient way to track employee time, so you’ll likely need to look into other payroll or time clock software to go along with this.

Just getting started? Check out the HR software that every startup needs.

Invoices

FreshBooks also includes customizable invoice designs and includes a click-to-pay button so customers can easily pay their online invoices. The invoices pull data directly from the timekeeping feature, as long as you mark your hours as “billable.” Automations include recurring invoices and automatic invoicing of billable hours, as well as follow-up emails for overdue payments. FreshBooks Payments allows the recipient to pay the invoice immediately via credit card, Apple Pay, and ACH.

QuickBooks connects to some outside time tracking apps like Google Calendar or TSheets to track billable hours and include these on your invoices. The invoice builder in QuickBooks Online contains numerous customization features, including adding your logo and changing colors, so you have control over the design of your invoices before you send them to clients. QuickBooks Payments includes a click-to-pay button on your invoice to let your clients pay directly from the invoice with a debit or credit card, Apple Pay, or ACH payment, and set reminders and recurring payments directly from the platform.

Need to streamline your accounting process? Learn about Invoice Factoring!

Inventory Management

QuickBooks Online’s inventory management features tie in with its accounting software, which means you can enter payments made to suppliers, track inventory on hand, and make future orders based on inventory output. These features support small-to-medium retail and manufacturing businesses with complicated accounting procedures. 

FreshBooks doesn’t include any inventory management features.

Read more: How to Choose the Best Inventory Management Software

Expense Tracking

QuickBooks supports both debits and credits, keeping you apprised of profit margins at every stage of your monthly accounting cycle. This may take some more manual entry on your part (or your accountant’s) because QuickBooks Online is designed to show line items only rather than some of the more nuanced breakdowns. 

To streamline monthly reimbursements, the mobile QuickBooks app also makes it easy to take pictures of and upload receipts.

FreshBooks mostly focuses on invoicing and payment collection, so you may have to purchase or connect to another accounting system anyway. That said, it does offer special expense features like receipt tracking, project time tracking, and sales tax management, which can be a big help for small business owners just getting started.

Accounting

QuickBooks Online makes keeping track of your accounting easy. Features like double-entry accounting keep your sheets balanced and help organize cash flow, but user mastery of these features doesn’t come easy to all. A common criticism of QuickBooks is that its abundance of features makes the software difficult to learn, especially for small business users who typically don’t have a dedicated accountant on-site. A healthy amount of accounting or bookkeeping knowledge will help users navigate the software.

Once you figure the system out, balancing both sides of your sheet will take much less time than doing it by hand. Your accountant likely uses QuickBooks Online too, so you can share data directly with them.

FreshBooks doesn’t provide accounting features in the form of fully automated balance sheets and the like, but if you want to put in some work, you can enter your own data to fill out balance sheets. This can be time-consuming, depending on how many clients and projects you run at a given time, so this process may not be the best option for small businesses.

Want all your accounting needs at your fingertips? Check out these Mobile Accounting Apps.

Integrations

QuickBooks Online boasts over 400 native integrations with payment software, business banking, CRMs, e-commerce, and many other software categories to ensure maximum visibility and control over your financial data and sales processes. Some other helpful tools like ReceiptBank and PayPal keep your transactions updated with necessary details.

FreshBooks includes over 100 integrations, but these target freelancers and small businesses. Freshbook’s integrations allow you to connect your app to human resources and tax filing tools for small businesses to round out the payroll-tax-invoicing circle. Track payments from your Squarespace website with an integration, or connect your FreshBooks to Zapier to process and organize actions in tons of other systems.

Reporting

QuickBooks Online includes a variety of reports with their product, and the majority of these follow what you’d need for accounting purposes. Each group of reports includes sub-reports that drill down to the details you or your accountant needs for proper analysis:

• Accounts payable
• Accounts receivable
• Products and inventory
• Expenses and purchases
• Sales tax reporting
• Employee reports (basic time and product or service reports)

While this list is impressive, you’ll find that many of these reports only work after significant manual entry and tagging by the user. You’ll need to keep detailed records to fully access each of these, so small businesses may want a different reporting tool.

FreshBooks shows reporting centers on profit margin, and their central dashboard shows your periodic input versus output. Because FreshBooks works best as an invoicing and time-tracking tool, the reports focus on payment collection, as well as a couple of tax-related reports. The software has filters to help you build more granular reports, and some of the reports are time-based to help you stay on top of your payments due.

Pricing

QuickBooks pricing includes four tiers that businesses can choose from to get the features they need. 

• The QuickBooks Essentials plan is perfect for small businesses because it includes three users and makes it easy to pay contractors. 
• QuickBooks Online Plus includes 5 users and adds inventory tracking. 
• QuickBooks Online Advanced is for bigger teams, so this version adds business analytics, a dedicated account team, and more. 
• QuickBooks Payroll is an add-on for all plans.

FreshBooks pricing also has four tiers.

• FreshBooks Lite seems to just be for freelancers as it only includes five billable clients.
• The FreshBooks Plus plan includes 50 billable clients, making it a great option for small businesses, especially since you can send unlimited estimates and proposals to help you win jobs. 
• FreshBooks Premium includes unlimited billable clients with the ability to customize email templates, send unlimited invoices, and track project profitability.
• FreshBooks Select is a custom pricing option that provides a dedicated account manager and specialized onboarding and migration services. 

Customer Support

QuickBooks does offer online customer support, but you have to be logged in to access it. However, users can also research topics in the knowledge base or ask questions in community forums to help them find the answers they need.

FreshBooks customer service offers a live chat option on their website, along with phone customer support 12 hours a day, five days a week. The website also has a searchable help center that covers a variety of common customer service topics. 

Read more: Benefits of Live Chat for Customer Service Teams

QuickBooks vs. FreshBooks: Which is best?

QuickBooks and FreshBooks are big names in the accounting software space, but each one is best suited to different types of businesses.

If you’re an independent contractor or small business owner looking for an easy-to-use solution, FreshBooks offers straightforward tools for invoicing, time-tracking, and more. QuickBooks has a longer list of native features and integrations, but the extra capabilities come at a higher price point than FreshBooks.

Still not sold on QuickBooks or FreshBooks? Visit our Accounting Software Guide to explore more accounting solutions.