I can’t believe how quickly the time went on my experiment.

Now that June is behind us, it’s time to sit down and review the month I spent with Freshbooks. There are many questions to be answered.

Did I like using Freshbooks exclusively?
Did it work better than QuickBooks?
Would I recommend it to others?
Did Freshbooks help me lose 10 pounds, boost my self-confidence, and stop people from kicking sand in my face at the beach?

Let’s read on and find out.

I’d like to start by describing the perfect Freshbooks customer. This isn’t going to be the right app for everyone, so before you try it out, I think it’s important you fit the majority of this profile.

You will most likely be a freelance service provider, working alone or on a small team of freelancers. These will be other contractors, not employees (since payroll isn’t a part of the software). Ideal candidates would be bloggers, writers, consultants, designers, and people offering technical support.

You will either not need or not possess a knowledge of accounting terminology. However, either due to budget or other reasons, you prefer to handle your financial records yourself, rather than hire a bookkeeper. Freshbooks data will most likely be used to generate reports that will be sent to an accountant each year during tax season (or maybe even a bookkeeper that you update monthly).

You are very comfortable working online or in remote locations (coffee shops, remote offices), and already use other web services to help your business; possibly some that tie into Freshbooks (Shoeboxed, Basecamp, etc.).

Most importantly, you want to spend your valuable time working on your business, not on its financial records. You want a simple service that will allow you to look professional without having to spend a lot of time or money doing so.

If any of that sounds familiar, Freshbooks might be the app for you.

I didn’t use all of Freshbooks’ features. I don’t have other contractors I work with. A really cool feature that is available is to collaborate with other service providers on a project. For example, if my client needed their website updated, I could outsource that to a web designer. He or she could (using their own Freshbooks account) bill time and expenses to my project. From there, I could bill the client and pay the designer, all from within Freshbooks.

The other thing I really tried to use was the support, which I’ve heard is amazing. In fact, the folks at Freshbooks asked me to try out their support as a part of my review. I just never ran into any reason to ask for help. The interface is really simple to use, and I just couldn’t find a situation where I needed something explained to me. There were never any glitches, the service never stopped working, and I never ran into a situation where I didn’t understand how to perform a task. Having such a clean, easy to use product must help them with their support calls. I can’ t imagine how many calls the QuickBooks team gets every day, just because of how unnecessarily complex some of their UI is. 

Like any product, there were pros and cons. Freshbooks isn’t for everyone, so here’s a list of positives and negatives I ran across last month.

Pros

• Really simple to use
• Canadian company
• Small, enthusiastic support team (from what I’ve read, I didn’t need to test this)
• Support for GST/HST reports
• Time tracking w/ Windows app
• Integration with 3rd party apps/services (Basecamp, Shoeboxed, Google Apps, etc.)
• Flexible account pricing (from free to $80/month)
• Professional, customizable interface for your clients
• many more

Cons

• No ability to download transactions to QuickBooks directly
• Too stripped down for more complex businesses
  • no inventory, payroll, or Chart of Accounts
• Premium plan is more expensive than competing products
• Expensive iPhone app

The Pros speak for themselves. I really found a lot to like about Freshbooks, and certainly couldn’t list everything off. I will, however, give a bit more detail on some of the cons.

I wish there was a way to download your transactions directly to Quicken or QuickBooks, like you can from your bank account online. I’m not sure what would be required on their end to accomplish this (maybe it’s something only banks are allowed to do?)

There are quite a few similar products currently on the market. Two examples are Zoho Invoice and WorkingPoint, both of whose premium accounts were less expensive.

Zoho’s free plan lets you have unlimited clients, but only lets you send out 5 invoices/estimates per month. For $8/month, you get 25 invoices/estimates. Both accounts also let you have 2 users (you only get additional users in Freshbooks with the $39.95/month Team account).

WorkingPoint is much more robust. It’s a lot more like QuickBooks, with a Chart of Accounts, inventory, and payroll (optional, and quite pricey). Their free account lets you have 5 clients, and unlimited invoices. The premium account is $10/month, which gives you unlimited clients, and the ability to import transactions from your online bank accounts.

Finally, there’s what I currently use. I am a QuickBooks ProAdvisor. Basically, it’s a membership at Intuit for bookkeepers and accountants. For $25/month, I get free copies of QuickBooks Premier (with full payroll) and Enterprise, along with access to special training and support. I don’t use the Enterprise software that often, but I’m basically getting $1,500 worth of software for $25/month. There’s no real comparison here. Freshbooks could never replace QuickBooks for my client work. Even WorkingPoint would have to be really good to justify switching my clients over to it.

The last complaint was about the iPhone app. There is an app called MiniBooks, that lets you do all of your work from your phone. The app is $14.99. There’s also an app called ExpenseBooks, which just tracks your expenses for $4.99. I haven’t tried out either, but $15 seems like a lot for an iPhone app. I’m pretty sure there used to be a “Freshbooks” iPhone app that just did time tracking. It was either free or very cheap. That’s all I’d want, and it’s too bad it’s not available.

The Verdict

So, this huge post (sorry for my verbosity) is here for one purpose. I wanted to see if Freshbooks would be something I could use day to day for my personal client work.

If you fit the description I gave for the ideal customer, I think this is a great option. You can use Freshbooks for your day to day tracking, and then hand off the heavier work to a bookkeeper or accountant.

As for me, I’m not quite ready to make a full switch.

The problem is I just can’t justify another $20/month for bookkeeping software, especially given the nature of my clients. Right now, I have clients who mostly pay me in cash or by cheque. Only some of them use email regularly, and I usually just hand them an invoice in person when I meet with them each month.

If I had lots of web-savvy clients, who always paid me by PayPal, then this would be a good choice. In fact, the $80/month plan makes more sense to me than the $20/month plan does. If I had 20 clients who I could automatically collect from each month, the time savings alone would more than justify the extra cost.

I really enjoyed doing this review. I’ve been stuck with the same app for so many years, it was nice to see what other people are doing. Not only does this give people a new choice to manage their finances, it also puts the pressure on companies like Intuit and Sage to improve their own products. I would love to see a version of QuickBooks that was this easy to use, and backed by equally friendly support staff.

If you have any questions about my results, please let me know in the comments, or contact me directly.

A very long time ago I worked at an office supply store. I won’t name any names, but let’s just say that I had to listen to “Taking Care of Business” far too often during staff meetings. In that particular store, we had a pathetic book section. It was mostly filled with tech how-to books. Things like “Windows 98 for Dummies” summed up the meagre selection. There were only a few business or “self development” titles in the mix. One of the books whose title caught my eye was “Don’t Sweat The Small Stuff…and It’s All Small Stuff”, by Richard Carlson.

At the time I wasn’t much of a reader. I think I walked past the book 5 times a day for the better part of 2 years without ever picking it up. I just read the title, and it always stuck with me. The idea (assuming the book’s premise relates to the title) seemed sound at the time, and remained that way for a long time. That was, however, until I really started working seriously with small businesses.

I think the idea of not letting the small things take over in your personal life makes sense. If you are trying to raise kids, don’t freak out if one of them just won’t eat their peas and carrots. Don’t lose sleep if you only vacuumed 3 times last week instead of 5. These things seem reasonable.

Small business is a whole different animal. Especially now, with the internet giving everyone a fairly level playing field, the small things can be the difference between successful and obscurity. Here are some examples of things that I take notice of:

1. The seller on eBay that includes a personalized note in each package they ship out.
2. The website I signed up to that DOESN”T include my password in plain text when they send me a confirmation email.
3. The book that has a website with handy extras for people to dig deeper into what they just read.

These things make a difference. I remember these things, and I tend to shop with those types of businesses over and over again.

Don’t Forget…You’re Not Selling The Small Stuff

Here’s the thing to remember. You still have to make sure the “big things” are in order before sweating those small things. The small things are the sprinkles on the sundae, they aren’t the ice cream. If your ice cream tastes like paint thinner (ok, I don’t really know what that tastes like…honest), nobody is going to care how generous you are with the sprinkles. I didn’t know that the girl on eBay was going to send a personalized note. I bought from her because the product was what I wanted, and for a price I felt was reasonable. The note brought me back a 2nd time, but it didn’t make the first sale.

It’s great if you have a nice website. It’s also great if your social media skills are strong, and you help out everyone on Twitter that mentions your product. Just make sure that before you even open the doors, that your product is worth talking about. In order to differentiate yourself from the pack, you first have to be running with the pack. If Michael Johnson didn’t train, and showed up to the Olympics weighing 275 with Cheetos stains on his shirt, the gold shoes would have looked even sillier.

If you are going to sweat the small stuff, then do so only after going absolutely crazy over the big stuff first. Triple test the product, give some away to friends, family, and strangers. Make sure you know everything about the service you’re providing. Run the numbers backwards and forwards (if you need help with the numbers, I happen to know a guy), and make sure that the business will eventually make a profit. When all the big things have been obsessed over, then and only then go ahead and sweat the small stuff. Make sure the bathrooms are clean. Hire someone to do a great website (don’t do it yourself if you don’t know how), create a referral program, and think up cool ways to make your customers smile.

It’s not going to be easy. It’s going to take an awful lot of hard work and determination, but you’re up for it, right?