Any good software handles two things very well; input and output. This is the basic requirement of all software, and certainly bookkeeping is no exception.
Freshbooks makes it very easy to enter expenses, track time, and generate invoices. However, as a bookkeeper, I need reports. I want to know how much revenue I generated, if I made any profit, and how much I will owe the government.
As you would expect, the list of reports Freshbooks can generate is smaller than a typical bookkeeping program.
Here’s a side by side of the reports Freshbooks offers, compared to the Report Centre in QuickBooks Premier 2010, which is what I use for my clients. As you can see, I could only show the list of categories in QuickBooks. The full list of reports wouldn’t show up in a simple screen capture. But, as I have said many times, Freshbooks isn’t supposed to be as full featured as QuickBooks. The majority of Freshbooks’ ideal customers wouldn’t have a clue what to do with the amount of reports that QuickBooks spits out.
The question is, are the reports in Freshbooks good enough for their target market?
I think the answer is yes.
The reports are split into 3 categories; Finance Reports, Invoice Reports, and Timesheet Reports. Once again, I have created slides in Slideshare (via PowerPoint) to show you the various reports you can generate.
Freshbooks experiment reporting
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As I said, there aren’t as many reports as I’m used to working with. However, the ones you get are simple, use basic terminology, and give the average freelancer exactly what he or she needs. At a quick glance, these reports should tell you everything you need to know about the state of your business. Or, they’re easy to export to an Excel spreadsheet. From there, you can save them, email them to me, and let me take care of the rest.