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FreshBooks: 5 Things to Know Before You Sign Up 

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There’s no question about it. We’re living through a new age. Plenty of people still have a regular job. The landscape has changed for a huge portion of working adults though. Online connectivity has enabled some to work from home and set their own schedule. Trends in technology allow independently owned small businesses to prosper with far less infrastructure than was once required. FreshBooks, a subscription finance tracking app, gives the people managing small businesses the tools that they need to stay organized.

For the independent worker, it’s designed to take the hassle out of managing money and tracking expenses. Writers, artists and programmers are well served by its auto-generated reports and ability to check specific accounts for new expenses. Multiple user accounts, dedicated customer portals and credit card handling make it great for businesses that go far beyond independent contracting.

FreshBooks

If you’re starting a business or working independently, you’ll want something like FreshBooks. At least, you’ll want to consider it alongside traditional pieces of management software from Intuit and others. Here’s what you need to know before signing up for FreshBooks.

FreshBooks Uses Automation to Track Your Cash

If you’ve experimented with other financial apps and programs before, you know that managing them can be time-consuming. Some bookkeeping apps still require you to manually enter every expense.

Freshbooks account

FreshBooks saves you time and energy by importing your expenses. It can auto-file them and put them into categories, or you can come in and do that for yourself. The service itself interacts directly with your bank. When it’s time to organize your paperwork for a meeting with your accountant, everything is already in place. The service and apps also make dealing with an accountant easier in other ways.

You Can Use FreshBooks Wherever You Are

Software programs, with their high price tags and yearly update cycles, are no longer a big focus. They’ve been mostly replaced by cloud services with mobile apps. FreshBooks follows this direction.

freshbooks apps

You can interact with the service using apps for iPhone, iPad and devices running Google’s Android operating system. You don’t pay anything extra for using these apps at all. There’s also no fee to get upgrades. FreshBooks treats them like a service and is always adding new features.

An addition to the apps, there’s the FreshBook site itself. When you sign up for the service, you get a fully contained portal with its very own subdomain. You can add your own logo to that portal, making it look as professional as you want. Clients can log into this portal to get a look at your estimates and invoices.

FreshBooks Add-Ons Can Save Time

The best apps connect to other services to make your life easier. Your smartphone is indispensable because apps downloaded through its store let you streamline the tasks that you care about. FreshBooks isn’t an island. It works well with other services that you might be interested in, or already have.

If you have Shopify, you can automatically import invoices. Through G Suite, you can send invoices directly to clients. There are payment tools and customer relationship management add-ons. One add-on, Partial.ly, allows you to offer payment plans to your customers.

FreshBooks Makes Tax Time & Management Easy

Everyone hates dealing with tax season. It’s a time for pulling together all the different strands that make up your financial situation. If you’re an independent contractor or an entrepreneur, you need decent records of what running your business costs you. Those records better not involve handing your accountant a box of receipts.

FreshBooks makes tax season easy. A built-in report systems lets you see exactly what you spent money on, for example. Profit and loss statements can be run with just a mouse click. Your accountant doesn’t have to go running to you for any of this information. FreshBooks lets you give them a login to your portal so that they can get the information they need to assess your situation.

freshbooks invoicing

In fact, reports come in handy for more than just tax season. Because FreshBooks is tracking your expenses and invoices, you’re able to get a real-time look at how your business is performing. Accounts aging lets you see if your clients are paying and how long they are taking to do so. A meter on the home page gives you a sense of how much money is coming in, versus how much is going out.

Once you’ve created an invoice, you can have it emailed or mailed to your client. When they get the email, you get an entry on your dashboard letting you know that they’ve taken a look. Your dashboard can be configured for credit card or PayPal payments. You can automate invoices, if you find yourself sending the same invoice to the same clients frequently.

How Many Clients You Have Determines How Much FreshBooks Costs

FreshBooks Plans

Old-style accounting software got many used to the idea of paying just once. FreshBooks is different. You pay for it every month that you use it, for as long as you use it.

FreshBooks Lite is $15. FreshBooks Plus is $25. The most expensive version of FreshBooks is FreshBooks Premium. It’s $50 each month.

Ordinarily, different plans means different feature line-ups. Not with FreshBooks. The differences in prices are related to how many clients you have. Lite limits you to just 5 active clients. The Plus package ups it to 50 active clients. Premium lets you have 500 active clients. You simply choose the right plan for what your business needs.

If you’re looking for something to manage your company’s finances, check out the FreshBooks free trial. You’ll get 30 days to experiment with its features. Then you can decide if it is right for your needs.

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