FreshBooks
Invoicing-first cloud accounting for freelancers and small service businesses, with double-entry books and expense capture.
- Starting price
- From $23 / month
- Free trial
- Free for 30 days
- API
- Yes, a JSON API with OAuth2, plus more than 100 integrations
Overview
FreshBooks is cloud accounting software built around invoicing for freelancers and small service businesses. It creates invoices that pull in tracked time and expenses and calculate taxes, sends estimates and proposals, and accepts online payments with reminders. Since moving from single-entry to double-entry accounting it posts invoices, expenses and bank reconciliation as journal entries to the chart of accounts and general ledger, with bank reconciliation by connection or CSV upload. Payroll is a paid add-on, and the software is sold in four plans.
Our take
FreshBooks suits a freelancer or small service business whose accounting starts with billing clients for work done, and who wants the books to follow from the invoices rather than the other way round. The pricing model deserves a close look: the lower plans are capped by the number of clients you bill, so a business with many small clients can outgrow a plan long before its revenue or team does. A business that mostly sells products rather than billed time gets less from the invoicing-first design and may be better served by a general-purpose accounting suite.
Key Facts
| Category | |
|---|---|
| Starting price | From $23 / month Lite plan at its regular monthly price, for up to five billable clients. |
| Free trial | Free for 30 days |
| API | Yes, a JSON API with OAuth2, plus more than 100 integrations |
| Hosting | Cloud (SaaS) |
Screenshots
Placeholders. They are replaced as soon as the vendor sends material, and both open the same short form.
Features
- Invoicing and quotes
- Yes, professional invoices that auto-add tracked time and expenses and calculate taxes, plus estimates and proposals
- Bookkeeping and bank feeds
- Yes, double-entry accounting with a general ledger and bank reconciliation via bank connection or CSV upload
- Expenses and receipts
- Yes, mobile receipt scanning, bank imports and automatic expense categorization
- Tax and compliance
- Yes, sales tax applied to invoice line items, posted to a Taxes Payable account, with tax reports
- Payroll
- Available as a paid add-on at $40 per month plus $6 per user per month
- Reports and exports
- Yes, financial and accounting reports, including profit reports and the general ledger
- Integrations and API
- Yes, a JSON API authenticated with OAuth2, plus more than 100 integrations
Integrations
- PayPal
- Stripe
- Affirm
- Afterpay
Deployment and Support
- Deployment
-
- Cloud (SaaS)
- Browser-based
- Support
-
- Email helpdesk
- Phone
- Onboarding
-
- Documentation and knowledge base
- Guided onboarding
- Company size
-
- Freelancers
- Small and mid-sized
Pros and Cons
Strengths
- Invoices automatically pull in tracked time and expenses
- Double-entry accounting with bank reconciliation and a general ledger
- JSON API with OAuth2 and more than 100 integrations
- Unlimited billable clients from the Premium plan
Limitations
- Plans are capped by billable client count on the lower tiers
- Payroll is a paid add-on rather than part of the plan
Pricing
-
Lite
$23 / month
Up to five billable clients; invoicing, expense tracking, estimates, payments and tax reports.
-
Plus
$43 / month
Up to fifty billable clients; adds proposals, accounting reports, receipt scanning and accountant access.
-
Premium
$70 / month
Unlimited billable clients; adds project profitability, bill receipt scanning and automated client emails.
-
Select
Not stated
Custom pricing; adds lower card fees, data migration, two team members, dedicated phone support and removes FreshBooks branding.
Alternatives and Comparisons
FAQ
- What plans does FreshBooks offer?
- FreshBooks is sold in four plans: Lite, Plus, Premium and Select. Lite covers up to five billable clients, Plus up to fifty, and Premium unlimited; Select is custom-priced and adds features such as lower card fees, data migration and dedicated phone support.
- Does FreshBooks include payroll?
- Payroll is a paid add-on, priced at $40 per month plus $6 per user per month, rather than being part of the standard plans.
- Does FreshBooks have an API?
- Yes. FreshBooks offers a JSON API authenticated with OAuth2, along with more than 100 integrations.
What users say
Reviews
-
0 reviews
- Ease of use
- Not rated yet
- User interface
- Not rated yet
- Onboarding
- Not rated yet
- Support and service
- Not rated yet
- Value for money
- Not rated yet
- Features
- Not rated yet
No reviews yet. Nothing has been published here yet, and no score is shown. How a review is checked before it appears is described below.
How we check reviews
Reviews are not published yet. The form on a tool's page works and reaches us, but nothing from it appears on this site, so no score here is based on a review. The rules below are the ones that will apply once reviews go live.
Every review is read by a person before it appears. We require a working email address and use it to come back to the author, so a review has a reachable sender rather than being anonymous. We publish positive and negative reviews alike, we pay nothing and offer nothing for a review, and we accept none that was bought or incentivised.
What we cannot do is verify a purchase. There is no shop here and no account, so whether the author really used the tool rests on what they tell us, plus the plausibility of what they write. We say so rather than implying a check that does not exist.
A vendor cannot have a review removed, cannot buy one, and cannot have one changed. Paid placement and a paid listing have no effect on which reviews appear or on any score.
Share your experience
Write a Review
Last verified:
Ready to take a closer look at FreshBooks
The link goes straight to the vendor. Some links on this site are affiliate links.
Visit FreshBooks