Meanwhile, FreshBooks is perfect for freelancers and small businesses that want simplicity without sacrificing functionality. Compared to Xero’s app, it’s more user-friendly and offers a wider selection of features, including entering bills, live time tracking, and billing clients for time worked. Apart from FreshBooks’ user-friendliness for those who aren’t accounting experts, it also appeals to freelancers through its time tracking and client management tools. All plans offer unlimited time tracking and allow you to bill clients for the time you track. The FreshBooks app offers a convenient solution because of its invoicing on-the-go feature, which speeds up collections from clients.
- The size constraint also puts a strain on the addition of new team members.
- Xero offers more than 80 reports, including standard financial reports, and lets you add tracking categories to monitor performance in different areas of your business.
- Being able to create and send invoices on the go means no delays and no accounting headaches waiting for you.
- When setting up a FreshBooks account, you can start fresh, or transfer over existing data from any previous accounting software solutions like Xero, QuickBooks Online, Zoho Books, or Invoice2Go.
Otherwise, you can try FreshBooks for free for 30 days and choose a plan at regular prices. FreshBooks’ expense management tools are easier to use than Xero’s. They’re also available for all users, not only those who opt into the most expensive pricing plan.
These features are either not as robust with FreshBooks or are only accessible by upgrading to a more expensive plan. FreshBooks can be a good option for freelancers and contractors looking for an affordable, simple accounting software. There’s time tracking in all plans and phone support is available from 8 a.m. The first two plan tiers put a limit on billable clients, but not on invoices.
This cloud-based accounting solution is popular with contracting, legal, consulting, personal services, and creative agencies in large part because of its time-tracking feature. They also love their online accounting bookkeeping community which boasts a blog and community forum page. The good news is both Xero and FreshBooks cater to the needs of freelancers and small businesses to create customized, affordable options. For small business owners, these two products are a great match.
I would gladly pay someone to walk with me all day to account for my writing business but last I checked, no one was willing. Whereas Xero stands out in terms of users, billing, inventory tracking, and overall functionality and features. However, users often report Xero as a not-so-intuitive platform and may require you to invest in employee training. You can quickly mark your business expenses as billable, add a markup, and then automatically pull them onto an invoice for your client.
Instead of your server “living” in the back room of your business, it “lives” on a cloud like in the picture above. Before the advent of cloud technology, if you wanted to access your accounting data it involved traveling to your business to log in to view your financial journal entries to issue stock financial accounting records. Using the cloud, you can access this same accounting information in your pajamas on a Friday night at 11 p.m. If you are a small digital business owner like me, I’m willing to bet you are not super excited about shopping for accounting software.
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What Xero Offers
It also has a flexible pricing plan, which is cheaper than Xero if you only need one or two users. If you intend to expand your business, it has a custom plan to match your needs. Meanwhile, users who left Xero reviews said that the software is easy to set up and use, adding that it has a simple and clean user interface along with intuitive features. Some also praised its fixed assets manager and project accounting capabilities.
Easy to Use, Stellar Support, It’s a No-Brainer ✔ FreshBooks vs ✘ Xero
The FreshBooks mobile app allows you to create and send invoices, snap pictures of receipts, chat with clients, get important updates, and manage expenses on the go. Now, we bet you’ve come across the names FreshBooks and Xero in most, if not all, of your search results. Sure, they’re not well-known like accounting tool, QuickBooks, however they are both extremely viable options for your accounting solutions. Like most accounting programs, FreshBooks’ expense tracking automatically syncs expenses to your FreshBooks account and helps categorize expenses by tax category.
FreshBooks started out as invoicing software for small-business owners who wanted to bill clients quickly and efficiently. Still, it’s an extra step you’ll avoid with most other accounting tools. FreshBooks is an accounting software program geared toward small businesses and independent contractors. In addition to standard double-entry accounting and report functions, FreshBooks specializes in generating invoices. The ability to get paid on the go by converting an estimate and/or billable hours into an invoice makes FreshBooks a particularly appealing option for service-based businesses. FreshBooks and Xero offer easy-to-use software to send invoices, maintain your business’s books, and perform other accounting functions.
Award-Winning Customer Service
It showcases basic and advanced features like recording vendor credits and independent contractor billings. As a complete accounting software, we’re not surprised to see these features on Xero because they covered everything from vendor creation to billings management. You can set sales prices, create customers, email invoices, accept short payments, and manage customer accounts in both FreshBooks and Xero. This kept our costs comparatively low as we tested the platform at different team sizes.
With Zapier, you can create automated workflows that connect Xero and FreshBooks, allowing you to transfer data seamlessly between the two platforms. You can only use Xero online when working on https://intuit-payroll.org/ your laptop or desktop. Navigating from feature to feature is not difficult, but it has a small tick of having multiple access points to one feature, which can make the process feel repetitive.
FreshBooks customer service
You can group bank transactions into bulk to reconcile them all at once. Similar to FreshBooks, you can take a photo of receipts and track mileage on the go on the mobile app. Xero uses OCR technology to scan key information and auto-fills your claim which can then be submitted in one click, with the receipt attached. You can also set automatic reminders and their frequency — and everything can be done from the Xero mobile app. The built-in time tracker allows you to easily track your productivity and manage time for projects more efficiently.