Why people look
Why teams look for a FreshBooks alternative
The reasons that come up in evaluations. Whether they apply to you depends mostly on where your receipts come from.
An expense in FreshBooks is a photograph and a category picked off a list.
Itemized receipts arrive from the merchant already coded, with the category taken from what was actually bought.
Once more than one person spends, there is nothing to approve against and no limit to hold anyone to.
Approvals, spending limits and issued cards are built in. A budget holds before the purchase is made.
Charging a cost back to a client means typing the whole thing in a second time.
Rebilling runs off the captured line items. A client charge is built from the receipt instead of typed in again.
The shortlist
6 alternatives to FreshBooks
The products teams shortlist against FreshBooks, each with what it's for. The order isn't a ranking, and the criteria are explained below.
- 01
Wave
For businesses that have outgrown Wave's free tools, usually once staff spend on cards and missing receipts start costing money.
Best forVery small businesses that need a competent ledger and client invoicing at no cost at all.
Compare it with Smartbills - 02
QuickBooks
Keeps QuickBooks as your ledger and replaces only its receipt capture, sending in itemized, policy-checked entries.
Best forBusinesses whose receipt volume is small enough that the capture already included with QuickBooks still copes.
Compare it with Smartbills - 03
Xero
Leaves Xero as your ledger and takes over expense claims and receipts, which reach Xero itemized and already coded.
Best forBusinesses whose claim volume is small enough that the bundled expenses module still copes.
Compare it with Smartbills - 04
BILL
Worth a look if your payables team loses more time finding and coding invoices than paying them, and card receipts sit in another tool.
Best forBusinesses paying supplier invoices at high volume, especially when most of their suppliers are already enrolled on the BILL network.
Compare it with Smartbills - 05
Melio
Melio pays suppliers cheaply. Smartbills covers the invoice work that comes first: capture, matching, coding and multi-step approvals.
Best forSmall businesses whose one real need is paying a handful of suppliers as cheaply as possible.
Compare it with Smartbills - 06
Sage
An alternative to Sage Expense Management (formerly Fyle) that delivers receipts as data, while your Sage ledger stays put.
Best forOrganizations on Sage that place real value on buying the ledger and the expense product from one vendor.
Compare it with Smartbills
Disclosure
And Smartbills, which is ours
Slipping our own product into a roundup without saying so is exactly what makes these pages worthless, so to be clear, this one is ours.
Smartbills
Best for: Businesses whose costs are purchases rather than hours, and where more than one person spends money.
Smartbills vs FreshBooksHow this list was put together
These are the products that come up in the same evaluations as FreshBooks, drawn from what prospects actually shortlist against it and from the rest of its category. The order is editorial rather than a ranking, because we don't run benchmarks on products we don't operate, and a scored table written by a vendor about its competitors isn't evidence. Each entry links to a full comparison with claims specific enough to check.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
What people ask us before they sign up.
Get started
Comparing FreshBooks with something else?
Bring one month of your own receipts and card transactions. The number that settles it is the share of transactions that ended up with an itemized document attached, and you can measure that in one cycle.