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FreshBooks Review 2023: Is FreshBooks Good For Invoicing & Bookkeeping?

FreshBooks is ideal for small businesses that want a basic, easy-to-use accounting solution and don’t need complex accounting features or multiple users.

    Matt Sherman
  • UPDATED

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FreshBooks

Total Rating4.0
Pricing Fair
Features Fair
Customer Service Excellent
Integrations Good
Reviews Excellent

Accounting Method

Accrual Only

Pricing

$17 - $55/month

Business Size

Smaller to mid-sized businesses with a limited number of users

FreshBooks At A Glance

  • Cloud-based accounting software for smaller to mid-sized businesses
  • Excellent customer support
  • Impressive number of integrations available

Matt Sherman

Matt Sherman

Lead Staff Writer at Merchant Maverick
Matt has been helping small businesses make decisions since 2017. He has written reviews and articles across many different channels but specializes in the point of sale, payroll, and small business insurance categories and has been quoted in articles for Fox Business, Forbes, and other publications. Prior to joining Merchant Maverick, Matt was a journalist and editor for 14 years for a pair of weekly newspapers. He is a graduate of the University of Oregon and currently resides in Gladstone, Oregon.
Matt Sherman
View Matt Sherman's professional experience on LinkedIn.



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FreshBooks


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The Merchant Maverick Seal of Approval 🏆

FreshBooks


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After hours of in-depth research and evaluation, we can confidently recommend this brand to our readers. Get started today and see FreshBooks for yourself.

Sources

To learn more about how we score our reviews, see our Accounting Software Rating Criteria.

54 Comments

Responses are not provided or commissioned by the vendor or bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved or otherwise endorsed by the vendor or bank advertiser. It is not the vendor or bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.

    KC Burrows

    Organization Name: All Points Locksmith Service

    We have been using Freshbooks for our small locksmith business for over 7 years now. Over a year ago we were forced to migrate from the Classic FBs to the new one without any notice or choice in the matter. We were given the option to “check out” the new version, which we never did because we were very happy with the Classic version but were never notified that the Classic would be discontinued – they just switched us over one day & that was that.The new version SUCKS. They took away so many basic accounting features. I can no longer do a negative line entry on a vendor invoice, there is no account to record a company Visa payment that we made, they want you to use the bank reconciliation feature to do this – which a contact of mine says is a nightmare (her company’s personal experience). They have removed features from us that I used to be able to do with the Classic version:I cannot add accounts or modify / rename accounts within our chart of account list, it HAS to be done by our accountant. I cannot do my own journal entries, they also need to be done only by our accountant. I cannot even do a CREDIT NOTE from a vendor. And after being on hold for over half an hour regarding this issue with support, the young lady who took my call did not even know what a credit note was! Needless to say, she is forwarding my issue to someone in their accounting support group.On the invoicing side, when you create a credit note to a customer’s account, say for a return or a overpayment, yes it lists it as a credit. HOWEVER, a BIG issue is in processing their payment on which they have taken said credit note. The ONLY option is to deduct the credit amount from an outstanding invoice, rather than traditionally where the payment would be recorded / processed as follows:inv. $$$inv. $$$Inv. $$$CN ($$$)Clean & simple! Not with the new FBs. I am so frustrated with this company now. The “developers” do not seem to have any idea as to what basic accounting needs are, that the Classic FB provided & as many others have stated, FB has been destroyed. And it is a shame because we really liked the Classic.

    1

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Steve Kumar

    Organization Name: Web Promotion

    It was all good until they made a awful changes. The new version has become a disaster to our billing department. We are now switching to other invoice service provider – we were forced to use something functional.

    1

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    FreshBooks Support

    Organization Name: FreshBooks

    Hey Steve, thank you for taking the time to share your review of FreshBooks.

    I’m sorry to hear that you’ve experienced issues with the new FreshBooks. If you’re not working with someone already, our Support Team would be more than happy to assist however possible. The contact details for our team can be found here: https://www.freshbooks.com/contact. ^DM

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Casper Voogt

    I have been with Freshbooks for about a decade and for most of that time would have given it five stars. A few months ago my account was moved to the new Freshbooks. That was a rocky move. We experienced all kinds of issues with data not updating fast enough. For example, I would create an invoice for a project’s unbilled time, but the project’s unbilled time stats would not update… sometimes for hours. With dozens of often very similar invoices to send, this can lead to accidental double invoices for customers. I have emailed their support many times about this over the past few months, and it just does not seem to get fixed. I do love the new Freshbooks UI and feature set, but this slowness in updating project and other data makes it difficult to use, and difficult to trust that the information it is showing me is reliable. As I write this, I am checking on some Freshbooks projects that I invoiced 40+ minutes ago, and they still show as if they have not been invoiced… they still show as having unbilled hours. This is simply unacceptable for financial software. Hopefully it will update itself some time this week.

    3

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Steve

    Organization Name: MLXLLC

    They sucked right out of the box. Their ad pushes you to their free trial and 60% off the first 6 months offer, but those are not one-in-the-same. Once my trial started, I set up all my accounts, but then when I decided to pull the trigger and subscribe, they take away the 60% offer. Lie to me right away and I’m gone. Now, all my customer data is in their system, and I have to spend more time removing it. Horrible customer service and the wound up just deleting my support ticket. Find another solution with better support and business policies.

    1

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Jeannie Johnston

    Organization Name: SoMo Transactions

    I have been pleased overall with Freshbooks however, since I believe customer service is everything, I had to give them 3 stars. I run a small business that has been trying to navigate finances amid COVID and recently needed to upgrade to premium because Freshbooks only allows you 50 clients with my current plan. I saw online they were offering 70% off (for a limited time) of the premium plan to new users so I called and asked if I could have this applied if I upgraded to the premium plan. I was told that was only for new users (I’ve been a customer for years with them) and the best they could do was offer me 25% off of next month’s bill. Very disappointed.

    3

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    FreshBooks Support

    Hey there, thank you for taking the time to share your review of FreshBooks.

    I understand that COVID has been financially challenging for many small businesses, and I appreciate the honesty of your feedback. I’d be happy to get you in touch with a member of our Customer Success team, who’s worked with other customers like yourself who have been impacted by COVID. Feel free to reach out to our Support Team at 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST or [email protected], and we can get you in touch with Customer Success. ^DM

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Dan Mcewen

    Organization Name: Mcewenservices

    Bank connection is a common and persistent problem. We have not been able to use this feature for a total of three months this year alone. FreshBooks reply to complaints quickly but are unable to fix it. Disgraceful and misleading business practice

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    FreshBooks Support

    Hey there, thank you for sharing your review of FreshBooks.

    I can certainly appreciate that Bank Connection issues can be frustrating. Bank Connection problems can have a variety of underlying root causes, so sometimes resolution can take some time. However, we here on the Support Team are here to help you through these issues however we can!

    If your bank is unable to connect to FreshBooks for whatever reason, a workaround for getting your Expenses into your FreshBooks account would be our CSV Import feature, which you can learn more about here: https://support.freshbooks.com/hc/en-us/articles/360001651111-How-do-I-import-Expenses-from-a-file-

    If there’s anything specific for your account that you need assistance with, our Support Team can be reached at 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST or [email protected]. ^DM

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Dylan

    Freshbooks is a nightmare for developers, their api documentation is counter intuitive, they force you to use oauth while all other integrations can work with a single api key for each environment.Their old classic version was way easier to use, without any notification they just moved us to the new version. Really hate this new api and system. Very interested in alternatives!

    1

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    FreshBooks Support

    Hey Dylan, thank you for taking the time to share your review of FreshBooks.

    If you have any specific questions on how to use the new FreshBooks API, you can reach out directly to [email protected] and our API Team would be happy to assist however they can. I have passed along your feedback from this comment about the API to our team, but if there is any other feedback or suggestions regarding the new FreshBooks, our Support Team would be happy to hear them. We can be reached at 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST or [email protected]. ^DM

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Naman Modi

    Organization Name: NamanModiDigital

    Great post on Freshbook. Very well written, and every point is explained beautifully. I want to add one more point, The dashboard of the fresh book is stylish as compare to other tools.

    5

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Tee

    Organization Name: Janitorial Sevices

    I started a new business and needed an invoice program. I chose to use freshbooks because it was cheaper then quickbooks. Big mistake.!! Everything was going great until I had a Big client pay 5 invoices that totaled about $9,000. I waited two days and the money was never sent to my bank account. I called freshbooks and they told me to wait a couple more days and I should see the money. I never received the payments. I called freshbooks back and was told that the money was sent to my other bank account. I then told the freshbooks rep, ” I dont have another bank account. ” So then I was told well freshbooks doesn’t handle the payments, I have to contact We-pay and Stripe. However freshbooks cannot give out these companies phone#. So freshbooks has to email We-pay and Stripe and instruct them to call me. By the time all of this happened my money was long gone. The company Stripe did pay me $1000, because they said thats all they was responsible for. But We-pay never paid me anything and freshbooks acted as though they where not even involved, even though I pay them a monthly fee to take care of my invoices and payments. I really think It was an inside job. I think a worker from freshbooks changed my bank account information. Because in order for me to change my bank account information back to my original account I had to sit on the phone for hours with a rep. I had to get codes sent to my phone and then enter the codes into freshbooks to unlock my freshbooks online banking info. So I’m thinking how did an outsider do all of this. Without needing these unlock codes, without and alarms going up in the freshbooks,we-pay system. Because I put my phone# into the system the first day I set everything up. So why didn’t I get alerts to my phone when someone was trying to change my bank info. Dont use freshbooks, if you really have to, pick Stripe to handle any payments. Dont be like me, hurting during this pandemic. I took an $8000 lost and freshbooks rep talked to me like I did something wrong.

    1

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    detractor

    July 25, 2019To whom it may concern,This is a review of our experiences with Freshbooks that has been copied and pasted onto every platform where these types of reviews are appropriate. Our goal is to make this review as visible as possible, and to let people know why we are a DETRACTOR to Freshbooks as a business.We started with Freshbooks Classic back in 2016. As a small business, what freshbooks offered in terms of features and pricing was reasonable. At the time we were growing exponentially so soon we ended up with the need to add more and more users. This drove the price up significantly with Freshbooks as well, which we understood and considered to be a sunk cost.Now in 2017, Freshbooks announced that they were changing over to New Freshbooks, and while there are no hard facts to back this claim up, we strongly believe that New Freshbooks and their bank card syncing feature was not as built out at launch as it could have been, with potentially leaked data, as the moment we synced our bank card with New Freshbooks, we started receiving spam / phishing emails where they somehow knew the exact dollar amount within our banking accounts. We quickly reverted back to Freshbooks Classic following a realization that a lot of the features within New Freshbooks were not worth making the switch.Now, being back on Freshbooks Classic, because our monthly plan was suddenly considered a legacy plan, even when we restructured our administrative team to require less and less users, the price stayed the same. Each time we communicated with customer support, either by phone or email, would result with the same reply that if because we were on a legacy plan, instead of the price going down when removing users, it would actually be more expensive for us to switch to the newer plans, even with less users.Now due to most of us having a background in the telecommunications industry, this type of pricing seemed like something a company would do when it was a monopoly / oligopoly like the big three telecommunications company in Canada. After the third or fourth time of being told that when we paid for nine or more users (while only having four active users) was the best option, we decided to price out Freshbooks with another cloud based accounting software.To nobody on our team’s surprise, the other accounting software, had a far more built out platform. They also had way more features (including payroll) that were standard in both accounting and reporting than Freshbooks. They were also much cheaper by more than half. From the start of 2019, we’ve made the switch and decided to wind down operations with Freshbooks. Since Freshbooks bills in USD for some reason, we were paying upwards of CAD$ 150.00 a month for a service we essentially only needed for cloud storage, due to the fact that there was no direct option to export INVOICES. We decided to reach out to Freshbooks customer service back in May / June. After a long and strenuous phone conversation with the customer service representative (let’s call him MJ), as well as email correspondence, all parties involved agreed that we would downgrade the account to Freshbooks Lite option, which would provide us with access to our invoices as needed, and a single user login (which is what we have been doing since January). We considered this matter as done. Anything that we had overpaid prior to communicating with the customer service team was written off.Now today, we receive another invoice for the full $130 USD (conversion to CAD). When we follow up on the email correspondence, it is clear that MJ never made any of the changes that were discussed and approved, and had no recollection of the discussions and was quite unapologetic.As a full disclosure, the monthly charge isn’t really a significant expense to us due to the nature of our business and our operations; however, there is a principle involved. There should never be a reason when a business has to pay more, just because they can. There should never be a moment when the customer service representative promises to make changes and then proceeds to drop the ball and forget everything once the phone call ends.Frankly, if this was not such a waste of our valuable time, we would pursue this much further.Sincerely,A Detractor of Freshbooks

    1

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    DM

    Organization Name: FreshBooks

    Hey there, thank you for taking the time to share this review. I am sorry to hear about the issues you had using FreshBooks, and I wanted to address a few of the concerns raised.

    FreshBooks has always charged in USD, but we do understand that this can be a challenge for our Canadian customers. This is something our team is aware of, and I have ensured that this feedback has been passed along to our team.

    You are entirely correct that the new FreshBooks was lacking some features when we first launched, but there has been a lot of work done and so many features added! You can see them all here: https://support.freshbooks.com/hc/en-us/categories/115000847207-Changes-Updates

    As for the final issue you’ve raised, with the error in your downgrade and still being charged at your old price – I can’t speak to the specifics of that situation, but I am sorry that it happened. If there are any outstanding concerns you have or feedback you wish to provide, you can contact our Support Team at 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST or [email protected]. ^DM

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    Dave

    Organization Name: SI LTD

    For those people who continue to use and like classic, Freshbook enjoys playing a little game of… “How often can we have a Freshbooks Classic problem so users will move to higher tier paid plan.”Look, when Freshbooks came out, it was simply THE BEST option out there. Now, greed, fees, nickel and dime practices and ‘problems’ with classic make this one of the poorer choices. I would look at other options and will when I determine it’s time to switch.

    1

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

    DM

    Organization Name: FreshBooks

    Hey Dave, I’m sorry to hear about the issues that you’ve run into using the classic FreshBooks. Any one here on the Support Team would be happy to speak with you about these concerns, and talk about your account specifically. We can be reached at 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST and [email protected]. ^DM

    This comment refers to an earlier version of this review and may be outdated.

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