At a glance
FreshBooks is accounting built around invoicing and time tracking for freelancers and service businesses. Expense tracking and receipt photos are included, but its center of gravity is getting you paid.
Best for
Businesses whose costs are purchases rather than hours, and where more than one person spends money.
Where it's stronger
Best for
Freelancers and small agencies whose financial job is invoicing clients and tracking billable time.
Where it's stronger
Every comparison on this site names what the other product does better. If we couldn't think of anything, we didn't publish the page.
Side by side
These are structural differences, not plan checkboxes. Capabilities change, so check the vendor's own documentation before deciding on any single row.
Invoicing clients and tracking time
Which product is your general ledger
Itemized receipts issued by the merchant
Spending rules and approvals
Corporate cards
Charging a cost back to a client
How simple it is for a one-person business
None of this needs a big-bang cutover. Most teams run both tools for one cycle and compare capture rates before switching anyone off.
Client billing, estimates and time tracking all stay. None of that should move.
Run card spend and supplier costs through Smartbills for a cycle and leave revenue alone.
Coded entries reach your books on their own instead of being typed in by hand.
Once capture is stable, rebill clients from captured lines rather than a marked-up total.
FAQ
What people ask us before they sign up.
Keep comparing
The products people evaluate alongside FreshBooks.
For businesses that have outgrown Wave's free tools, usually once staff spend on cards and missing receipts start costing money.
Read the comparisonKeeps QuickBooks as your ledger and replaces only its receipt capture, sending in itemized, policy-checked entries.
Read the comparisonLeaves Xero as your ledger and takes over expense claims and receipts, which reach Xero itemized and already coded.
Read the comparisonEach product works on its own, and when you run two, the same record carries from the receipt to the ledger entry.
Accounting automation software that codes each transaction and posts the journal entry to your accounting software the day it happens.
Re-invoice the costs you carried for a client, priced by the rule you agreed with them and sent out with the supplier's own document attached.
Digital receipt software that turns every sale at your POS into an itemized electronic receipt, hosted online and delivered by app, SMS, email or API.
Get started
Bring one month of your own receipts and card transactions, and we'll show you the capture rate on both sides instead of a slide deck.
