The names suggest that the two products serve similar functions; it has always been wise to compare the features of the FreshBooks vs QuickBooks before you settle for any of them. The two products share similar characteristics, but they tend to function differently. This is due to the tools not tracking the same thing.
FreshBooks commonly tracks invoicing for freelancers and small-scale businesses, while QuickBooks offer real accounting software suitable for all sizes of companies and are ideal for big companies.
This is not to mean that you should not make a comparison on FreshBooks vs QuickBooks, although the two products are not readily exclusive. FreshBooks does not contain some of the features offered by the QuickBooks, like double-entry accounting and bank reconciliation. Inventory tracking and job costing are as well not provided, but depending on your preferences these features may not be needed. It’s common for businesses with lots of sales transactions and inventory to settle for QuickBooks. Let’s have a closer look at each of the products.
Timekeeping – FreshBooks vs QuickBooks
FreshBooks offers an inbuilt time tracking ability that is of significant help to the case and project-based companies where workers track billable hours and project expenses. This helps you keep your whole project and employees on the right job at its proper time. Relying on the size of your employees, you will probably transfer this data into your accounting system once fully compiled
QuickBooks comes along with an additional feature that can track payroll for either part or full-time employees. If not the case you will be forced to enter payment under expenses and have it billed by categorizing the worker’s service as a product. It’s not the most advisable way to track your employees’ time for you will mostly be forced to look into other payroll or time tracking software to work along with this.
Expense tracking – FreshBooks vs QuickBooks
QuickBooks is designed to support both credits and expenses, ensuring you are aware of your profit margins at every move. This may need to be entered manually, because QuickBooks is designed to outline items rather than some elaborate breakdowns.
FreshBooks is commonly specialized on invoicing and wages collection, so you may have to include another accounting system. In spite of all that is supports unique expense features like sales tax management, receipt tracking and project time tracking.
Accounting – FreshBooks vs QuickBooks
QuickBooks are known to simplify tracking of your account. The double-entry accounting feature maintains your sheets balanced and keeps the cash flow organized, though these features are not accessible to many. Numerous features make QuickBooks hard to learn. A little bit of knowledge on bookkeeping should enable its users to navigate through the functions with ease. Once you learn the system, it will take you less time balancing both sides of your sheets.
FreshBooks does not support the fully automated balance sheets form of accounting. If you intend to enter some work, you could opt to enter your data and fill out the balance sheets. This may turn to be tedious considering the number of clients and projects you run at a specific time.
Invoicing – FreshBooks vs QuickBooks
Mostly FreshBooks comes along with customizable invoice style and support click-to-pay for online invoices. The invoices are designed to collect data from the timekeeping feature directly. Here you can have your hours as billable and will immediately reflect on your invoices. Automated features include automatic invoicing of hours that are billable and follow up emails for payment that is overdue.
QuickBooks connect to other time tracking software for it to track billable hours and have them included on the invoices the invoice builder found in QuickBooks has several customization features, so you are in apposition to control the design of the invoices before releasing them to customers. You could include a click-to-pay button to enable the clients to make payments directly from the invoice and also set reminders straight from the platform.
Pricing – FreshBooks vs QuickBooks
The pricing for FreshBooks vs QuickBooks is somehow similar though not identical. In the case of FreshBooks payment depends on the number of your clients, features and any added users. For QuickBooks, you pay for the users and features.
With the FreshBooks, with $19.95 every month, you access expense recording, estimates, time tracking, invoicing and reporting but only for clients not exceeding twenty-five in number. At times this could turn to be a problem because you might hit the limit when re-adding them for estimates.
With QuickBooks, payment is only made for users and features alone. They have no limit to the number of clients. Not minding the number of users you need, you will pay roughly $40 to get all the features. For basic functions; expenses, invoicing and estimates you will still have to pay $15 per month.
If some of the features you need are not available, you could also add a timekeeping, project management or HR application to your product. Adding of boosting tools will save a lot of your time and effort for your business during the end of the month and year reporting time. When the FreshBooks vs QuickBooks ideology does not suit your purpose, you could also consider settling for a combination of the two products.