Xero vs FreshBooks Comparison

The ease of use.

Reports are not tax inclusive and that's problematic for Canadian companies.

Clear, simple layouts; many app integrations; consistently good customer service; excellent focus on research and development of new features. More robust than softwares like FreshBooks or Wave.

Less aesthetically appealing than QuickBooks.

Much easier to use than Quickbooks but still provides powerful accounting and bookkeeping features. Also offers more integrations than Quickbooks, which tends to wall off their software for the most part to keep you in their ecosystem. Provides a good balance of invoicing, expense tracking and accounting capabilities.

For some reason they still lack recurring payments on invoices, which keeps me using Freshbooks for invoicing. While it's easy to use, if you have never used accounting software, there is still a learning curve involved.

Xero is user-friendly and offers quality results. For a digital tool, it's smart and very intelligent. It has a vetted CX team and provides adequate invoicing solutions. I adore its reporting frequency and daily tasks management capacities. It's a nice tool for small businesses and ultimately delivers outstanding results.

Its offers a few pricing options which are not bad but, a little more exorbitant as compared to Freshbooks. It doesn't ooffer auto follow up for unpaid invoices. For an automation tool, this doesn't favor workflow since It will require to manually do it.

I previously used quickbooks pro, but found their product too expensive and the support was also not very good. I switched to Xero, because of the price and the quality of the software

Support is only via email. They initially respond within the promised time frame, but 9/10 times the answer is not relevant to the question asked. It's like they don't read the question, or the initial techs are inexperienced. So after wait on average 4 hours for a response, you have to wait long for a reply to any subsequent answer, which is 9/10 times not relevant to the question. So, in my experience...

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- Built in budgeting software - Widely used by accountants and bookkeepers

- Steep learning curve for the non-professional - Tied to automatic bank feeds - Confusing support

See above for details.

See above for details.

Xero was good when we started using it in 2015. It bundled true double-entry accounting with payroll and tax filings for a reasonable price. Xero helped us find an accountant with Xero expertise. You can grant an accountant the ability to log in remotely, set up accounts, run reports, and file taxes. Xero seems to be capable of supporting larger and more complex organizations, though we haven't tested its full capabilities.

The user interface was only fair; some operations were not intuitive. Our main complaint is that Xero stopped doing payroll in 2018, so now you have to pay an additional fee to a payroll processor such as Gusto. The FreshBooks/Xero integration stopped working around 2017 (I don't know why; each company blames the other). Finally, for 2019, we would have to upgrade to a much more expensive monthly plan to get expense tracking and reimbursement features. Therefore, we stopped using Xero at the end of 2018.

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No cons were added to this review

This software is easy to use for the average business owner and integrates well with other accounting systems. Works well for small companies.

Too simple for an accounting software. Lacks some features you get with other accounting software's like Xero and QBO.

FreshBooks is noted for its user-friendly interface with plenty of features as far as invoices, payments, clients' order, time-tracking and many other financial assets. Though built for small businesses and freelancers, its Lite Plan comes with unlimited features, particularly, the number of invoices and reports to generate unlike Xero, in this context. Additionally, FreshBooks makes it easy for its users through their great customer service, a large number of third party integrations, step by step guides, which is again not affordable in its rivals' platforms.

Actually, their app crashes frequently, and the price is somehow high compared to what you get, unlike in Xero

I love the simplicity, easy of use and automated reminders. I felt like the software offered bookkeeping, tax prep, and accounts receivables management all in one.

There were some limitations when handling unique billing circumstances that I found tricky to work with.

Easy to use, price structure compared to Xero and QuickBooks was way better!!! I like how it runs in the cloud and not on a desktop. easy to use a laptop or an ipad with because it is cloud based.

Wasn't able to run all the reports that I would have liked that Quickbooks and Xero do, more extensive reports to compare business year to year....

Hey there, thanks for taking the time to share this review with us! FreshBooks is definitely a little different than other more traditional accounting softwares. FreshBooks is a single entry accounting software, so some of our features differ from other softwares. That being said, our team has been working hard to build new features and functionality into FreshBooks, including our recently added reports: General Ledger, Chart of Accounts and Trial Balance. All of the other reports in FreshBooks, including these, can be run for any date range needed. We're always happy to hear feedback so we can continue to improve, so thank you for your feedback! Please don't hesitate to reach out to us if there's anything we can assist with. ^DM

Awesome accounting software. Does what you need it too. Pretty self explanatory and intuitive. Easy to learn.

AS long as you dont need it to do anything crazy or lift a ton of weight, than you'll be okay. Otherwise check out Quickbooks or xero.

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No cons were added to this review

This is good for freelancers and small businesses. We were attracted to is because of their awards and very convincing customer reviews.

We can't recommend Freshbooks for serious business. It lacks the completeness of a full-featured accounting software like Quick Books Online and Xero. It doesn't support double entry accounting.

Easy to use and easy to navigate admin area. Makes it a breeze for creating invoices. Also supports recurring payments, which many other invoicing software does not offer. Freshbooks also offers a lot of 3rd party integrations to other software you may use, such as accounting and CRM integrations.

While they provide basic bookkeeping software, it is really underwhelming. They currently use single entry accounting methods which do not align with most other accounting software like Quickbooks or Xero.

Look, for a micro business it is very easy to set up, get going, send invoices etc.

It does not have the app ecosystem around it that the other solutions like Xero, QBO, Sage etc. have. There is a reason that apps don't connect to it and that limits its potential.

Hey there, thank you for sharing your review of FreshBooks! FreshBooks has integrations with dozens of different apps, both direct and through third party connection apps. All of the apps that we integrate with can be found at https://www.freshbooks.com/integrations. If there's a particular integration you are looking for, our team would be happy to find out if we have an integration available, or pass the feedback along to our Integrations Team! We can be reached at 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST or support@freshbooks.com. ^DM

It has the best and powerful invoicing services. Freshbooks fits for small/medium size construction business with few staff. With it's mobile application features, vendor's sales invoice can easily be uploaded to the system where ever you are. In terms of customer service supports, they are responsive and well knowledgeable about the system.

Limited user and client in lower subscriptions. Freshbooks should consider increasing the number of user and client in lower tier in which it will be more competitive to the other softwares like Quickbooks Online and Xero.

User-friendly interface that is easy to navigateAutomated invoicing and reminders to help you get paid fasterTime tracking feature allows you to easily track time spent on projectsOffers a mobile app for iOS and Android devices, allowing you to access your account on the goIntegrations with other popular apps, such as Google Calendar and PayPal.

Limited reporting and analytics features compared to other accounting softwareNo inventory management or purchase order functionalityLimited customization options for invoices and estimates

iPhone and iPad app is great allowing you to take photos of receipts and instantly enter and save your expense. Support is fast and helpful from actual people with timely responses to email. Easily create projects, time budgets and then generate invoices from time entries. Full colour/logo customization even on free plan. Integrate with lots of other helpful business apps - Basecamp, Google, Xero, etc. Easily add users as sub-contractors and create teams to track times and expenses.

Could be a little less expensive for the low-user plan...but still worth the cost for what it saves me in time.

-The iPad app is beautiful and allows you to snap photos of receipts, saving them straight to the cloud. -The people who work there are clearly awesome. -You can create projects with time budgets and generate invoices from time entries. -You can customise the colours and logos even on the free plan. -Freshbooks integrates with tons of other applications (Google Apps, Xero, Basecamp etc). -There are real people available to help you and they actually respond to emails! -You can add people as sub-contractors and create teams to track time/ projects/ billing.

no longer a 'forever free' option available, so you will have to pay to use after a month.

-easy to use -UI -Snapping pics of expenses -ability to auto bill clients

-not full accounting solution -limited number of clients you can auto-bill -mobile app sometimes malfunctions

FreshBooks is good for freelancers or service-based small businesses that need to track time spend on client projects, and report the time on invoices. It's also good for tracking basic expenses, whether they are allocated to the business, or passed on to clients. The reporting features are also useful. The payroll integration with Gusto is a simple and affordable way to run payroll for a small business.

The mobile app for time tracking became so buggy that I had to stop using it; it would frequently lose track of the time if I paused the timer. They also added a "feature" that creates a new line item on the invoice every time you pause the timer, which really clutters up the invoice. I now use a separate tracking app and manually enter my time. The accounting features are barely adequate, and the...

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Hey Craig, thank you for taking the time to share this detailed review of FreshBooks. I'm sorry to hear that you've run into issues with our mobile app and the timer creating multiple timers (though that is by design). If you had specific suggestions or features that you'd like to see for the Accounting features or anything else in FreshBooks, our team would love to hear it! I have flagged your feedback to be heard by our Product Specialists directly, but if there's anything else our Support Team would be happy to capture that feedback. They can be reached at help@freshbooks.com or 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST. ^DM

Ease of use and straightforward, simple interface. Easy invoicing.

Freshbooks lacks all of these industry standard security features: No Two-Factor Authentication at login. No IP address blocking to prevent certain IP addresses from logging in my account. No log/audit showing when I last logged in and out of the account. No forced internet timeout/log out when the account has been left untouched for a while. This is standard on other online accounting software and is used by most banks as a security feature.

Hey there, thank you for taking the time to share your review of FreshBooks. I certainly understand where you're coming from regarding features like two-factor authentication. While my colleague that you spoke with recently is correct that this isn't a feature we currently offer, I have flagged your feedback for our Product Team to review directly. This is a team we have a FreshBooks who reviews and gathers customer feedback for issues and concerns like what you've raised. If there's any other feedback you wish to provide, please don't hesitate to reach our to our Support Team at 1-866-303-6061 Monday through Friday, 8am-8pm EST or support@freshbooks.com. ^DM

See details in the above review.

See details in the above review.

No pros were added to this review

No cons were added to this review

Freshbooks gets plenty right. Tracking billable time against customers or customer projects is a breeze, and their invoicing and methods for collecting payments is really hard to beat. Plus, they integrate with so many other services, it makes it really easy to get addicted to. The things I love most - and the main reasons I'm glad that I left Quickbooks for Freshbooks is: Automated invoice...

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No connections to your banking / credit card accounts. You can do this with expenses to some extent, but it's just awful to work with, when compared to Quickbooks, Xero, FreeAgent - pretty much anyone else. In order to use Freshbooks, you have to have some other software or service for managing the accounting aspects of your business. This ended up being a bad thing for me. I like having it all connected,...

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