FreshBooks

Billing clients and tracking spending is a breeze in Freshbooks. It takes little effort to learn and put into practice, and it can complete tasks quickly and efficiently. And the help desk is available whenever it is called for.

The features that make FreshBooks such a superb invoicing and accounting application for small businesses may not be sufficient for larger enterprises. Not all small businesses can afford FreshBooks because it is more expensive than some comparable solutions.

Accounts payable and receivable automation.Financial reporting.

This is a review of Freshbooks Classic. They have just come out with a new version that I am not using due to a lack of addins at this early stage.

I use Freshbooks to invoice my customers for the time and materials I spend on their products. I have recurring invoices that automatically bill my customers on the first of the month for their monthly recurring services and any labor I may have spent on their project for for support.

Freshbooks definitely makes the invoicing process simple and easy. I don't have to worry about manually creating invoices each month. A big time saver. It also provides several different ways for the customer to pay their invoice including credit card and PayPal (PayPal is not an option in the new version of Freshbooks).

But Freshbooks doesn't make the time tracking simple. Since most of my charges are based off time spent working on customer products, I need a powerful Timer tool. Freshbooks does not supply that tool. They have a very rudimentary tool that is browser based. You click start, select your Project and Task, then press stop when completed. Life isn't that simple.

I may be working for one client when another calls on the phone. I would have to stop the existing timer, select a new project/task, start the timer again, then after stopping it, go through the whole process again to go back my original task. Awful.

Instead I had to purchase a desktop based tool called Chronomate that is so much more powerful. It even knows when I've stepped away from desk and forgot to stop the timer. It also uploads to Freshbooks so I don't have to manage anything. Bliss. Of course the developer isn't maintaining it anymore so it doesn't work with the new version of Freshbooks. Crud.

Because of the lack of a decent time tracking tool I won't be updating to the new version of Freshbooks anytime soon.

FreshBooks has been great. We've been able to automate so much of our business. We've also saved a LOT of money by not having to hire an accountant because FreshBooks does all the work for us. We just put in the details and it spits out what we need every month and to do our taxes.