Freshbooks vs Xero A Freshbooks Alternative

You’ll be able to save time by scheduling upcoming payments and batch pay suppliers with multiple bills in one transaction. Additionally, you can email bills and other essential documents to your files inbox in Xero for paperless record-keeping. Danielle Bauter is a writer for the Accounting division of Fit Small Business. She has owned Check Yourself, a bookkeeping and payroll service that specializes in small business, for over twenty years.

• 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.
• For a full description of Xero’s features, check out the full Xero review.
• You can add new users via email and assign them one of seven different user roles, including “read only” and “advisor” access.
• For a more in-depth overview of features offered by FreshBooks, check out the full FreshBooks review.
• Can support larger small businesses with dozens of employees; all three plans include an unlimited number of users.

Due to its limited accounting features compared to Xero, FreshBooks doesn’t offer as many report options, and within its reports, customization is pretty sparse. FreshBooks doesn’t offer quite as many connections, with just 100 partner apps. However, you’ll be able to find integrations to help you analyze data, book appointments, manage projects, run payroll and so much more. You can enjoy project conversations, file sharing and project due dates, but these features are most helpful for individual or small-team projects.

FreshBooks vs Xero: User Reviews

What we noticed is that FreshBooks deducts all entered expenses from the Petty Cash account manually. FreshBooks charges different payment processing fees for different payment methods. ACH transfers incur a 1 percent fee, although FreshBooks Select users may pay less. Visa, MasterCard and Discover payments incur a fee of 2.9 percent plus 30 cents per transaction.

Like several competitors, Xero provides tools to customize the look and feel of your invoices. You can save 10 percent on a FreshBooks subscription by making a single annual payment rather than monthly payments. Ultimately, Xero and FreshBooks are both solid software options targeting different users. Integrates with more than 100 third-party apps; limited choices for direct payroll and point-of-sale integrations. FreshBooks is best equipped to serve freelancers without much accounting experience. The larger your business is, the better equipped Xero becomes to meet your needs.

Why FreshBooks Is The Best Xero Alternative?

Unless you need to generate particularly advanced accounting reports, this section should suffice for small businesses. You can track time on the go with a start-stop timer and location-based tracking on mobile to link costs to jobs and projects. Moreover, you can view job profit margins in an easy-to-read chart, with a breakdown of costs, and quickly determine how much remains to be invoiced. You can easily create custom purchase orders from templates and email them as PDFs from within Xero.

Any small business benefits from using QuickBooks for its accounting software. Read our QuickBooks review to learn why this platform is our pick for the best small business accounting software. In our research, Gusto ranks among the best payroll services in the industry. Read our in-depth Gusto payroll review to learn about its features and pricing.

FreshBooks vs Xero: Features

Xero received a higher rating because it includes inventory management features, which FreshBooks doesn’t have. FreshBooks has a lower rating because, while it’s a solid starter tool, it’s not quite advanced enough for non-service-based businesses. A winner of our 2021 Best Accounting Software Award, this robust cloud accounting app for small businesses makes billing easy and efficient. FreshBooks allows users to manage key processes easily from turning receipts into expense files to tracking billable hours. The FreshBooks app offers a convenient solution because of its invoicing on-the-go feature, which speeds up collections from clients.

It’s also helpful that Xero categorizes tools that are relevant to different industries like health, hospitality, and retail. During our testing, we found that the biggest drawback is that it’s a bit difficult to get in touch with the customer support team. We interviewed multiple customers who are extremely happy with the way Xero works for their business. Cheree Hill, the owner of Tranquility Bookkeeping Services, uses Xero for all of her clients and finds it incredibly easy to categorize transactions.

Xero vs FreshBooks pricing

Business owners, on the other hand, might not have the in-depth accounting knowledge needed to make Xero work for them. When choosing software vendors you need to prioritize the one that fits your business needs. Xero has some of the worst customer service we have ever experienced, particularly for a company of their size. Combine this quickbooks self-employed 2020 with terrible user experience in some parts of the app, unintuitive subscription models, and bad resources online, and it takes about 20x longer than it should to get anything done. The entire premise of Xero is cloud-based accounting, but it feels like traveling back in time 25 years when trying to get anything done with them.

These are separated by function and industry to make it easier to search. Popular categories include payroll, inventory, time tracking, payments and CRM. It works with any device, from laptops to tablets and smartphones. You can download and use FreshBooks mobile app on Apple and Android devices. Easy-to-use invoicing, payments, project management, accounting features, and so much more, is why over 30 million businesses in 160+ countries have used FreshBooks. Cloud accounting software provides access to your data anytime, anywhere, from any device connected to the internet.