Freshbooks is a popular accounting and invoicing software for small businesses. Many small businesses love Freshbooks for its excellent invoicing features, tools like time tracking and the modern, easy-to-learn user interface. Still, Freshbooks doesn’t work for everyone. It comes with potentially high costs and limits on the clients you can bill ― and it may not have all the features you want in accounting software.
So if Freshbooks isn’t quite right for your business, you might prefer one of the best alternatives to FreshBooks instead.
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Similar to Freshbooks, all its competitors all offer core accounting features like income and expense tracking, invoicing, tax help and basic reporting. So as you choose accounting software, think about features your business needs (like inventory management or mileage tracking) and features that will make your life easier (like automation or robust customer support).
| Starting price | Accounting automation | Inventory management | 24/7 support option | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| QuickBooks Online | $15.00/mo. | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Wave Accounting | $0.00 | Yes | No | No | |
| Xero | $13.00/mo. | No | Yes | Yes | |
| Zoho Books | $0.00 | Yes | Yes | No | |
| Sage Accounting | $7.00/mo. | No | Yes | No | |
| Oracle NetSuite | Custom | Yes | No | Yes |
Plan pricing and details up to date as of 6/16/2023.
Rippling automatically syncs all your business’s HR data, like hours, leave and absence, with payroll. You never need to fill out spreadsheets and upload to another system— we pay your employees and HMRC directly.
Let’s take a closer look at six of our favorite platforms similar to Freshbooks. We’ll dig into standout features, pros, cons and pricing to help you find the right Freshbooks alternative for you.
QuickBooks Online has a lot in common with FreshBooks ― from the similar name to their cloud-based accounting platforms. But compared to FreshBooks, QuickBooks Online has much more powerful reporting features. All QuickBooks plans give you basic reports like profit and loss statements and balance sheets. Higher-tier plans give you more specialized analysis, like inventory reports and profitability reports.
Plus, power QuickBooks users can create customized reports and display them on attractive dashboards. Or you can sync your QuickBooks data with Excel for even more power and customization. It all adds up to an accounting software that makes it wonderfully easy to view, manage, and make decisions using your accounting data.
QuickBooks Online has four different plans, from basic accounting to enterprise-level tools:
You can also add bookkeeping services for an additional cost.
For more information, read the full Quickbooks review.
If your accounting needs include lots of receipts, bills, bank statements or other documents, then take a closer look at Xero. Sure, other accounting software offers receipt capture. But often that feature is limited to a higher-tier plan or priced as an add-on. Xero, on the other hand, includes data capture through Hubdoc on all plans. Scan, email or take a photo of your document, and Xero will add that information to your accounting.
Xero also helps you manage your uploaded documents. It offers cloud file storage so you can find documents without digging through papers. You can even set up automatic backup so you never lose important document data. The highest-tier plan also lets you submit and reimburse expenses with your scanned receipts. So for document-heavy businesses, Xero may do more than FreshBooks to help you simplify and organize.
Xero has three plans:
You can also add payroll (through Gusto) for an extra $40 per month.
For more information, read the full Xero review.
Like FreshBooks, most accounting software makes it easy to send invoices ― but Zoho Books goes a step further. It lets you manage incoming invoices with its excellent vendor management tools. You can set up vendor portals, where vendors can manage transactions, add invoices and even add comments to documents. In other words, vendors can take care of all their business in one place, meaning fewer emails to handle.
Zoho Books offers great customer portals too, where clients can pay invoices, view quotes and update their personal information. You can also use your customer portals to collect data, like asking for ratings and comments. Zoho Books streamlines your relationship management so you can spend more time on other accounting matters.
Zoho Books offers six different plans, with prices from free to pretty expensive:
You can also pay an extra $2.50 per month to add another user on any plan.
If your business operates in more than one country, you’ll want specialized features for handling different currencies in your accounting. And that’s what Sage Accounting delivers ― at a lower price than other accounting platforms. For just $25 per month, you get all the tools you need to handle multiple currencies. Create invoices in different currencies, monitor exchange rates, and view your bank accounts in any country.
Other accounting platforms tend to offer multi-currency accounting only on premium, top-tier plans. But with Sage Accounting, you don’t need an enterprise-level budget to balance the books across currencies. So even smaller startups that happen to buy or sell across national lines can get all the accounting tools they need.
Sage Accounting has just two plans:
While Sage does offer a free three-month trial of AutoEntry receipt capture, you have to pay extra for that feature in the long run.
For more information, read the full Sage review.
While FreshBooks does let you customize an enterprise plan for your business, few accounting platforms have the scalability of Oracle NetSuite. It’s an incredibly powerful enterprise accounting software that includes a core accounting platform plus optional modules for things like payroll, human resources and global business management. So whether you need just accounting or advanced extras, Oracle NetSuite can meet your needs.
Plus, NetSuite scales even further with SuiteApps ― integrations that offer more functionality. With apps for taxes, shipping, lease accounting, contract management and more, you can customize NetSuite to work for any industry. Likewise, NetSuite can accommodate multiple languages, tax laws and currencies, making it ideal for businesses expanding across the globe. If you think your business will outgrow FreshBooks, you may find a better fit with Oracle NetSuite.
NetSuite charges an annual fee. Your business’s fee depends on what modules you want and how many users you have. You’ll need to set up a consultation to get a quote for your business.
Freshbooks is a worthwhile accounting software for businesses that need a full suite of invoicing tools on top of accounting essentials. Freshbooks eliminates the need to find a separate payment processor or manually create and monitor invoices. That makes it a real time saver for freelancers and other B2B businesses.
That said, you may want to look elsewhere if you have a large number of clients, since Freshbooks limits how many clients you can bill on some plans. Likewise, Freshbooks may not be worth it if you need to add multiple users, as the costs can add up quickly.
Plenty of business owners use and rave about Freshbooks. But you’ll need to compare its pros and cons to the benefits and drawbacks of its competitors to decide if Freshbooks is a good choice for you.
Freshbooks offers four plans for its accounting software:
You can add more team members to any plan for $11 per user per month, and you can get an advanced virtual payment terminal for an extra $20 per month. You can also get Gusto Payroll as an add-on.
Freshbooks has regular sales with deep discounts (like 50% off your first free months). And you can always save 10% by choosing annual billing instead of monthly payments.
You may need an alternative to Freshbooks if you want to add multiple team members to your accounting software without paying too much ― or if Freshbooks doesn’t have an accounting feature you need.
For more robust accounting reports, check out QuickBooks Online as an alternative. Or if you need something cheaper than Freshbooks to fit your budget, Wave Accounting’s free software may be the best choice. Xero accounting makes it easier than Freshbooks to capture and manage financial documents, while Zoho Books makes it easier to manage customer and vendor relationships. Expanding businesses may prefer alternatives like Sage Accounting for multi-currency accounting or Oracle Netsuite for enterprise-level accounting tools.
Before writing our review of Freshbooks and its competitors, we dug deep into each software. We looked at customer reviews and complaints, analyzed prices, compared features, reviewed demos and evaluated factors like customer support and plan options.
Rippling automatically syncs all your business’s HR data, like hours, leave and absence, with payroll. You never need to fill out spreadsheets and upload to another system— we pay your employees and HMRC directly.
