FreshBooks or QuickBooks: Which to choose?
When should you choose QuickBooks Online over FreshBooks? Here are five scenarios when the accounting software giant can make the most sense for your business.
1. If your business sells products QuickBooks is a stand-out accounting choice if you're selling products or retail goods, while FreshBooks is our top pick for managing clients and billing as a freelancer.
With QuickBooks, you can record your daily sales from every channel and sync sales systems like PayPal, Square and Shopify. QuickBooks also offers inventory management to easily see what you have in stock and on order from your vendors.
If you have a brick-and-mortar shop, take a look at QuickBooks Point of Sale to simplify your in-person transactions. As you'd expect, it integrates seamlessly with Cloud Based QuickBooks, so you can see your POS purchases alongside all your other accounting data.
2. If you need a scalable accounting solution
QuickBooks offers fully-fledged accounting software that's built to scale. It's designed for a wider array of business types and sizes than FreshBooks – and has a very comprehensive set of features.
3. If you want just one financial tool in your stack
QuickBooks is a great all-in-one solution for your accounting and invoicing needs. There are no major gaps – and if there are, other QuickBooks products like QuickBooks Point of Sale will fill many of these. This means you can get away with a smaller app stack.
On the other hand, FreshBooks is focused on a narrower audience: freelancers, small businesses, and solopreneurs looking for simple and hassle-free software. Since it avoids complexity, you're more likely to need to sync FreshBooks with other tools to achieve some custom outcomes, but this is simple to do.
4. If your accountant prefers QuickBooks
While your accountant's preferences aren't the most important factor, being aligned on the tools you're using can make both your lives easier.
QuickBooks tends to be the top choice for accountants in the US, but it's also quickly grown in popularity worldwide in the last few years and now offers many country-specific bank feeds, integrations, and tax compliance features.
FreshBooks is still quite focused on North America, so if you're based outside of it your tax return might be faster with QuickBooks than FreshBooks.
5. If you have a mid-sized or fast-growing business
If your business is currently mid-sized or fast-growing, QuickBooks Online will likely be a better fit for you. FreshBooks has a fantastic feature set for small businesses, but when your business grows, you may need to switch tools.
When to Choose FreshBooks?
1. If you're a freelancer
FreshBooks is designed with small business owners in mind, especially freelancers. If you listen to entrepreneurship podcasts, you might have heard their ads and recognize their brand.
Of businesses that reviewed FreshBooks on G2, 20.6% are in marketing and advertising – many of which will be self-employed consultants. Most QuickBooks Online reviewers, by contrast, are accountants (what did we say earlier about accountants loving QB?
FreshBooks makes it easy to track time spent per client or project, so you can check your productivity in any time period. And when it comes to invoicing, you can quickly turn the hours into an invoice or mark hours as already billed without creating an invoice from them.
Other FreshBooks advantages include simple project management, integration with Stripe to get paid online, and automated and manual invoice reminders for unpaid bills.
2. If you're just getting started with your business
If you're working on a side hustle or just getting started with a small business idea, you may not want to go all-in with a fancy accounting software just yet.
FreshBooks is a better choice than QuickBooks Online for simplicity, although QBO's complexity has its own advantages – you can do much more with the system.
3. If you want user-friendly software that's quick to set up
FreshBooks' main benefit is that it's extremely easy to use. On G2, it has a rating of 9.2/10 for ease of use, compared to QuickBook's 8.1/10.
FreshBooks also receives consistently high feedback for ease of setup and ease of admin. If you want to reduce as much complexity as possible with your accounting processes, FreshBooks is a great pick.
To know more about Does FreshBooks Integrate with QuickBooks or QuickBooks for Contractors visit Apps4Rent.