FreshBooks vs. QuickBooks Online

QuickBooks and FreshBooks are two of the most common names in small-business accounting. Both software brands can track business expenses, send invoices, and help you prep for tax time, but they have heaps of differences too. And if you're investing in accounting software for the first time, those differences can be (understandably!) hard to parse.

Want the tl;dr? Here’s what we’ve got: In general, if you value customer service and lower pricing, we recommend FreshBooks. If you want thorough accounting software regardless of price, we recommend QuickBooks.

There’s a lot more nuance, though, so don’t make up your mind quite yet. Instead, keep reading. This article breaks down both brands by price, plan, pros, and cons.

FreshBooks’ plans include these accounting software fundamentals:

• Income and expense tracking
• Customized workflows
• Time tracking (for accurate customer billing)
• Online payment acceptance (both credit cards and ACH)
• Unlimited customizable invoices
• Automatic bank account syncing (for accurate records)
• Financial document generation, including tax reports
• 200+ third-party app integrations

FreshBooks’ more expensive plans include unlimited proposals (not just unlimited estimates) and more automation for tasks like recurring invoices, late payment reminders, and scheduled late fees. Imagine a world where you don't have to hassle clients yourself to pay you for your work—sounds like a pretty good perk, right?

The main difference between FreshBooks’ two more expensive plans is the number of clients each plan lets you bill per month.

In a business sector not known for customer satisfaction, FreshBooks’ customer service stands out. You can get in touch over the phone or via email—in contrast, providers like Wave offer email support only. On the review site Trustpilot, users give FreshBooks 3.5 stars out of 5 with over 60% of reviewers rating FreshBooks “Excellent.”¹ FreshBooks is accredited with the Better Business Bureau, where it has an A+ rating and only three customer complaints to QuickBooks’ 1,000+.²

Most accounting software providers limit the number of users who can access your business’s accounting software, but FreshBooks allows for unlimited users as long as you’re willing to pay a fee: $10 extra per user per month.

You can see FreshBooks’ biggest shortcoming in its plan details: each plan limits the number of clients you can bill each month. For instance, FreshBooks Lite limits you to five—just five!—billable clients per month. While we can see this plan working for small construction companies that contract with just a few clients a month, it doesn’t seem viable for growing companies with dozens of clients on the roster.

FreshBooks Lite also falls short in offering only single-entry accounting. With the single-entry bookkeeping system, one tiny mistake in the books can throw your financial accounts way off with no safeguards. Double-entry accounting isn’t available until the Plus plan, which costs $25 a month.

Intuit, QuickBooks’ parent company, has been in business since the ʼ80s. The company’s had plenty of time to perfect the art of user-friendly software—and it shows.

Like FreshBooks, QuickBooks Online offers invoicing, income and expense tracking, and online payment acceptance with every plan, along with these features:

• Mileage tracking
• Receipt scanning and organizing
• Easy tax categorization for income and expenses
• 1099 employee management, including end-of-year tax form creation

The pricier plans add services that accommodate growing and full-grown businesses alike:

• Check creation
• Recurring payments
• Batched billing
• Inventory tracking

In particular, recurring payments and batched billing can save oodles of time—busy business owners with dozens of clients don't have to worry about dispatching bills one by one or missing any payments.

Of all the accounting apps out there, QuickBooks’ mobile accounting app is our absolute favorite. Tens of thousands of users agree: 33K on the Google Play store, where the app averages 4.2 stars,³ and 123K on Apple’s App Store, where it averages 4.7 stars.⁴ The app sends invoices, tracks miles, digitizes receipts, and lets you check your cash flow on the go.

QuickBooks’ cheapest plans lack the hefty features of its two pricier plans, which start at $70 a month and $150 a month. Only these two plans include built-in inventory tracking, job costing, and project profitability tracking. And the $70 plan still limits the number of users you can add to only five. From our perspective, that’s not quite enough to justify the high cost.

QuickBooks also has low customer service ratings, especially compared to FreshBooks. On Consumer Affairs, Intuit QuickBooks has just one star,⁵ and while the BBB gives QuickBooks an A+, it isn’t accredited with the Bureau.⁶ Scores are similarly abysmal on the review site Trustpilot, where QuickBooks gets 2.4 stars out of 5 and a whopping 56% of users rank the company as “Bad,” the site’s lowest designation.⁷

FreshBooks costs less than QuickBooks, provides better customer service, and offers better invoicing customization. On the other hand, QuickBooks builds mileage tracking into all of its plans and comes with inventory management. In other words, FreshBooks might be better for you than QuickBooks—or vice versa. It depends entirely on what your business needs.

Since FreshBooks and QuickBooks are two different accounting programs, you can’t integrate one with the other. If you have both a FreshBooks account and a QuickBooks account (not something we’d recommend), you’ll have to keep the software separate—unless you sign up for FreshBooks’ custom plan, FreshBooks Select. According to the site, this plan includes Xero and QuickBooks integration. But honestly? We’re not sure what on earth that means, so be sure to ask about it if you call for a quote.

FreshBooks and QuickBooks do integrate with many of the same third-party apps, like Expensify for expense management and TSheets for employee time tracking.

QuickBooks Online is Intuit’s cloud-based accounting solution. If you use QuickBooks Online, all your information is stored in the cloud, where you can access it from any desktop, laptop, or web-enabled device. Like most cloud-based software, QuickBooks Online costs a monthly fee.

In contrast, QuickBooks Desktop Pro is Intuit’s desktop accounting program. You’ll download the software onto one computer, which means you can access your data only from that device. QuickBooks Desktop Pro costs a one-time fee of $299.95.

QuickBooks Self-Employed is a QuickBooks Online plan for freelancers. It starts at $15 a month, and for its price, it has quite a few useful features:

• Invoicing
• Payment acceptance
• Mileage tracking
• Basic reporting
• Receipt capturing
• Income and expense tracking

So if QuickBooks Self-Employed costs the same as FreshBooks Lite, why did we label FreshBooks the more affordable provider? Because QuickBooks Self-Employed doesn’t have anything to offer businesses with multiple employees. Meanwhile, FreshBooks Lite is tailored towards freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses with employees on hand—basically, it packs more of a punch for more types of business owners.

That doesn’t mean QuickBooks Self-Employed won’t work for you. FreshBooks Lite’s reporting and invoicing features are more thorough than those included with QuickBooks Self-Employed, but QuickBooks includes more tax features.

For instance, QuickBooks calculates quarterly taxes for freelancers who want to pay smaller, more manageable sums during the year instead of one lump sum in April. And if you fill out a Schedule C form for itemized tax deductions, QuickBooks will highlight deduction categories you might have missed otherwise (which means you'll get a better tax return).

Here’s our bottom line: if you have only a few clients, need quality invoices, and want a plan that’s easy on your budget, try FreshBooks. If you don’t care quite as much about cost but need mileage tracking and extra tax help, QuickBooks is your accounting solution.

Not totally sold on either QuickBooks or FreshBooks? Our article on the year’s best accounting software for small businesses has eight more options to consider.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.