Freshbooks Vs. QuickBooks: Which one is Better
After researching different accounting software available on the market, you may find out that FreshBooks and QuickBooks are the most preferred by individuals or businesses. These two are excellent choices, but how do you know the most suitable for your business? This post makes a broad comparison between the two to help you make an easy verdict.
Quick Summary
The most common misconception about FreshBooks and QuickBooks is that they serve the same purposes. While their names may force you to believe that these two applications have similar functions, it’s crucial to compare their features before choosing either of them. Besides, they may have many similar characteristics but function differently. For example, QuickBooks offers a robust accounting solution for a business of any size, while FreshBooks will allow tracking of invoices for solo entrepreneurs and small businesses, according to Business News Daily.
In case you run a company that sells products and requires a scalable accounting software, consider using QuickBooks. However, if you run a service-based business or freelancing, consider FreshBooks, which is suitable in tracking your revenue or expenses for minor reports. But this does not mean these two software systems are mutually exclusive since FreshBooks provides features that QuickBooks doesn’t, and vice versa. Nevertheless, there may be an overlap of both solutions in certain areas. Hence, a comparison of these two software solutions will be crucial in determining which one is the most appropriate for your business requirements.
FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Invoicing
FreshBooks feature a customizable invoice design template as well as a payment button for online-generated invoices. These invoices draw data from the software’s timekeeping feature once you’ve marked your working hours as billable. Other notable features include automatic invoicing for your billable hours, recurring invoices, and follow-up emails for late payments.
On the contrary, QuickBooks link up with external tracking applications such as TSheets or Google Calendar to track billable hours. QuickBooks invoice builder is robust, with lots of customizations to give you control over invoice designs before sending it to your customers. For instance, you can incorporate a click-to-pay button on the invoices to allow customers to pay directly from secured invoices. Additionally, it enables you to set reminders as well as recurring payments from the system.
FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Timekeeping
FreshBooks has a built-in tracking feature that allows for case- and project-based businesses where your workers can track project costs and billable hours. With an excellent dashboard and project view, FreshBooks allows you to manage your project and keep employees engaged in the appropriate tasks. As per the size of your workforce, you may import account data into your system after compilation.
QuickBooks accounting software, on the other hand, provides an extra additional add-on that helps track payroll for permanent or part-time workers. Otherwise, you may be forced to enter salaries as expenses and bill them by classifying your employees’ services as products. Probably, it may not be the best way to track your employees’ time, and you may want to consider other types of payroll software to tackle this.
FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Expense tracking
FreshBooks is designed to focus mostly on payment collection and invoicing, and you must purchase another accounting software for active expense tracking. However, it has some special expense features such as project time tracking, receipt tracking, and sales tax management.
However, QuickBooks has some advantages over FreshBooks since it can support credits and debits while keeping you acquainted with every step’s profit margins. Your accountant may require to use manual input while performing expense tracking. And this is mainly because this application is designed to display line-items rather than innuendo breakdowns.
FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Accounting
QuickBooks makes financial accounting and bookkeeping easy. With double-entry accounting capabilities, you can quickly balance your sheets and manage cash flow. These features don’t come cheap, and most people may find its many features challenging to learn. However, solid bookkeeping knowledge and skills can assist you in navigating the complex interface effortlessly. Once you have grasped the basics of QuickBooks, balancing your sheets can take less time than doing it manually. Most accountants use QuickBooks, and the software can afford you the opportunity to share data directly with them.
On the contrary, FreshBooks doesn’t offer accounting in fully-automated balance sheets. However, in case you need to put in some work, consider recording your data to fill out the balance sheets. This strategy is time-consuming, especially if you have many projects and client data at hand.
FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Integrations
QuickBooks has more than 400 native integrations, including e-Commerce, CRMs, banking applications, among others, to allow maximum control over your fiscal and sales data. Other essential tools include PayPal and ReceiptBank that help keep your transactions up-to-date with the required details, according to Tamara Scott’s post on Technology Advice.
FreshBooks also has various integrations, but they are limited to small businesses and freelancers. It can allow you to connect to tax filing and human resource tools that help efficiently manage payroll, tax, and invoicing. Besides, you can use FreshBooks to track payments using your Moodle course integration or link to Zapier to organize many different actions.
FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Inventory tracking
QuickBooks inventory comes alongside its accounting software. Hence, you can input payments made to suppliers, create future orders per inventory output, and manage inventory on hand. With these features, you can handle small to medium-sized retail businesses or large enterprises with complex accounting processes. On the contrary, FreshBooks lacks any inventory features.
FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks: Reporting
QuickBooks features different reports, most of which reflect what you would need for your accounting needs. Each reporting category involves sub-reports that dig deeper into details required by your accountant for practical analysis. They touch on vital aspects such as accounts payable and receivable, products and inventory, expenses and purchases, sales tax, and employee reporting. But, while this list may seem impressive, most of these reports will only work with manual tagging and entry. Therefore, it’s crucial to keep detailed records to have full access to any of these.
FreshBooks Reporting focuses mostly on profit margin, with a central dashboard displaying routine input vs. output. While FreshBooks is an excellent tool for tracking business invoicing, its reports concentrate more on payment collection and tax matters. It contains filters to assist you in creating more refined reports that are time-based to allow you to stay updated on payments due.
Conclusion
As you can see, each of this accounting software has its strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, when choosing the right one for your business, you must compare them thoroughly, as we have done above. We hope this post has given you more insight when choosing between QuickBooks and FreshBooks.