FreshBooks vs Xero: Choosing accounting software 2024
Ya know who always picks up and never transfers you when you call FreshBooks? At 91%, FreshBooks has the best rating for customer support among all competitors. Xero doesn’t offer the opportunity to call a representative directly for assistance. You can reach support by raising a case (similar to filing an IT ticket) on the Xero website. FreshBooks is best equipped to serve freelancers without much accounting experience.
- Instead, Xero requires users to upload a bank statement before reconciliation.
- FreshBooks has the best rating for customer support among all competitors at 91%.
- Learn why Zoho Books topped our list of best accounting software.
- This makes tax time easy as you have all the numbers in one place.
- These are separated by function and industry to make it easier to search.
- For example, FreshBooks is weak on inventory and Xero is strong, but FreshBooks beats Xero in its easy processes for booking invoices and expenses.
We will summarize their key benefits and drawbacks so you can reach a decision based on your preferences. Inventory management is one of those advanced features that you don’t get in FreshBooks. You can keep a count of up to 4,000 items you have in stock as you buy and sell.
It’s a No-Brainer ✔ FreshBooks vs ✘ Xero
The larger your business is, the better equipped Xero becomes to meet your needs. FreshBooks brings some serious pizzazz and excitement to accounting, while Xero takes a more polished, business-like approach. Ultimately, Xero and FreshBooks are both solid software options targeting different users. Our friendly support team is there for you every step of the way. We’ll help you move your data to FreshBooks and onboard your team. The easiest way to answer that question is to start out with your preferred investment approach.
- You can use the FreshBooks automated bookkeeping software wherever you have access to the internet, so let FreshBooks take care of your invoicing worries while you sit back and relax.
- FreshBooks makes it easy to transfer all of your financial data over from another platform so you can get up and running.
- The total price for a Yearly plan is billed at the time of purchase.
- While both are similar in many regards, there are some key differences in their features.
The Xero app also has the basic features found in the cloud version, such as invoicing, bank reconciliation, cash flows, profit, and loss. A useful feature is its contact management integration with invoicing. The app also lets you add contacts, and Xero gives you useful information about the person automatically, such as the average days to pay and billing activity. Our overview of FreshBooks’ A/P management is basic and direct to the point.
FreshBooks vs. Xero: 2023 Comparisons
Though it doesn’t limit transactions, it only allows you to add five clients. It may cost more that Early, but it’s still the better value. FreshBooks is a super-easy-to-use accounting software built specifically for small business owners, letting you easily do everything yourself. However, when it comes to using all the tools available to you as a small business owner, your accountant should definitely be part of your toolbox.
Many businesses are involved in the sales of products, so it’s essential that the best accounting software has a dedicated inventory management system. Our evaluation was based on a rubric scoring methodology in six categories, each with a designated appropriate percentage. You’ll find both FreshBooks and Xero useful if you’re a service-based business that works on projects or bills clients by the hour. You’ll have the option to set up hourly or flat-rate projects and assign them to your employees or customers.
You can even monitor your company’s performance by customizing and measuring specific KPIs. Both FreshBooks and Xero are cheaper than QuickBooks while offering many of the same functionalities. QuickBooks has more inventory management and budgeting tools than FreshBooks. QuickBooks also has a more intuitive interface than Xero as well as a desktop version. Xero also has a centralized BI analytics dashboard where users can check cash flow and financial health, and track metrics. For a fee, users who want to leverage more advanced BI analytics tools can upgrade from Xero Analytics to Analytics Plus.
You have to upload a template to customize an invoice in Xero, but the fields on it must correspond to the service’s standard invoice fields. You can’t add anything that isn’t already present on a Xero invoice. While both services claim to give you customized invoices, that’s not quite true. Our team of experts thoroughly test each service, evaluating it for features, usability, security, value for money and more.
FreshBooks vs Xero: Integrations
Here is a list of our partners and here’s how we make money. When comparing the reports generated by FreshBooks vs. Xero, I found Xero’s to consistently provide more detail and offer more flexibility with data presentation than FreshBooks’. Coming from someone who’s not a numbers person, anyone who does accounting is a brave and admirable soul, and I’m glad that there are excellent tools out there to make your job easier. It’s full of user guides, help articles and other learning tools so you can hopefully find answers to your questions faster. Xero is cheaper when comparing the two base plans, but it quickly becomes more expensive in higher tiers.
Start Easier and Grow Faster With FreshBooks
Like most accounting programs, FreshBooks’ expense tracking automatically syncs expenses to your FreshBooks account and helps categorize expenses by tax category. Xero is a strange outlier in that it doesn’t include basic expense tracking with every plan—instead, expense tracking only comes with Xero’s priciest plan, which starts at $62 a month. Plus, while Xero has thorough invoicing and receipt scanning capabilities, it doesn’t include business expense tracking with any plan except the most expensive. In our opinion, that’s a fairly glaring oversight—expense tracking is an incredibly common accounting feature that almost all of Xero’s key competitors include in their base plans. FreshBooks gives a fresh, clean look at accounting software — something that’s usually quite complicated to use.
Small business
Zoho Books stands out for its 24/5 customer support, strong feature set and affordability. It’s ideal for businesses that already use in-house Zoho apps, since it has limited third-party integrations beyond that. All FreshBooks plans, except for the highest-tier custom plan, come with one user. FreshBooks gives you six user roles discontinued operations to choose from, plus client access and project manager customization options. FreshBooks and Xero are both powerful accounting tools that can help businesses keep their financial information and assets organized and accessible. But the two apps are geared toward different audiences, which explains their functional differences.
Read our QuickBooks vs. Xero comparison to explore these platforms’ similarities and differences further. Although FreshBooks’ per-month subscription prices are lower, the per-user add-on fee only makes FreshBooks less expensive than Xero for very small teams. Plus, Xero offers a competitive feature set at every price point, making its value per dollar you spend better than with FreshBooks. Additionally, canceling your account incurs no fees if you do so at least 30 days in advance. FreshBooks is ranked the Best Accounting Software for Sole Traders and Small Businesses by PCMag. And we do more than just invoicing and payments – we have award-winning support, are twice as easy to use, and cost half the price.
The only project accounting feature lacking in FreshBooks is the ability to assign actual inventory cost to a project, which is expected since FreshBooks doesn’t provide inventory accounting. Xero has the majority of general accounting features we’d like to see, and this includes the features we’ve mentioned above that are missing on FreshBooks. However, there are minor features we didn’t see on Xero, and these missing features pertain to note payable amortization. Although it won’t affect the overall user experience, it would be helpful if Xero could generate an amortization schedule for long-term notes automatically. FreshBooks’ cheapest plan uses the less-reliable single-entry accounting system, which introduces a higher possibility of accounting errors.