In 2003, Mike McDerment, who was in charge of a small design agency, saved an invoice in Microsoft Word. Unfortunately, he saved over an existing invoice. So he started on a little coding project that would eventually help a whole lot of other small businesses move their invoices out of Word and onto a website dedicated to managing their accounts receivable: FreshBooks. Today FreshBooks, despite being a relative newcomer, is a serious contender when it comes to accounting services.
The Basics
FreshBooks began its life on the Web by simply processing invoices. It's grown steadily over the years, and now lets you manage estimates and expenses, and track time. Its item-tracking capabilities include the option to track inventory, making it the only online solution we reviewed that can do that. FreshBooks' user interface was clean and friendly from the start, and it's only grown better?though it would be nice if there wasn't so much white space, which sometimes necessitates excessive scrolling.
Numerous developers have built online invoicing sites, but none that is better than FreshBooks. It's slowly morphing into a competitor for sites like Xero?that are considered small business accounting applications (FreshBooks, in fact, recently added the tag line, "Cloud Accounting").
It took a roundabout way to make this transition: Most software companies try to launch with at least a bare-bones framework for accounts payable and receivable, payroll, etc. and then flesh out features internally. FreshBooks started with invoicing and has been building itself out ever since. It lacks two key functions to compete with the Editor's Choice award-winning QuickBooks Premier Edition 2013 and its ilk: account?tracking and payroll.
Invoice Expertise
FreshBooks' focus, of course, is on invoices. And it handles this task with more flexibility and functionality than its online competitors. You can choose from two customizable invoice templates (some competitors offer more) and create one-time or recurring invoices by using the information you've entered about customers, items, and services. Personalization options include your choice of logo and color scheme, modifiable customer messages, and even a tear-off stub?a nice touch we haven't seen elsewhere. FreshBooks' invoice templates offer the option of separating product and time-based billings.
Customers can either send a check for the balance or remit the funds through a payment gateway like PayPal or Authorize.net. Invoices are more than just bills you send customers; they're fluid and flexible. For example, when contractors or vendors invoice you, you can instantly turn that bill into an expense. Approved estimates turn into invoices with one click. And you can invite customers to view their invoices on a password-protected website, so you can tell when they've been seen.
If you send out a lot of invoices, knowing where they are in the process of getting paid can be a challenge. Your invoice list in FreshBooks contains a column for the status of every invoice (draft, sent, partial, paid, etc.). Invoices themselves are stamped with a banner that also indicates their status, and they display what's called an "invoice autobiography," which is basically an invoice audit trail. FreshBooks incorporates a lot of helpful, unusual touches like that.
You can also create multiple tax rates for use on invoices and edit email templates for a variety of uses with customers, like late payment reminders and credit card failures.
Tracking Time and Expenses
Expense-tracking is very basic but capable. You can assign expenses to clients, take pictures of receipts with your smartphone and attach them, and assign categories to make reports more meaningful (and prepare for taxes). You can import expenses by connecting to your financial institution and/or PayPal; FreshBooks will look for new expenses every day and import them automatically (this feature is in beta testing).
But you can't write a check to pay a bill in Freshbooks. You need to have another way to manage the administration of your accounts payable. None of the competitors reviewed here has true online banking and bill-pay like QuickBooks Premier Edition 2013.
Time-tracking has a few more frills. It works well for individuals as well as teams; you can create projects, assign tasks and clients to them, and build team timesheets. This is where FreshBooks people-management capabilities come in. You can define three types of individuals in FreshBooks:
? Clients, of course, are your customers. You can store an adequate but not overwhelming amount of identifying information in their records (i.e., multiple contacts, login credentials for viewing invoices, currency, etc.) ? comparable to online competitors but not to QuickBooks Premier.
? Staff includes anyone on your company's team. You can modify FreshBooks' interface to include only the tabs in areas where they have permission to work (create and manage projects and clients, view and update support tickets, etc.).
? Contractors, your part-time, external contributors, can use FreshBooks to track time and submit invoices.
Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/t3OrOURN03k/0,2817,2411886,00.asp
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