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Freshbooks vs Zoho Books
March 09, 2025 | Author: Michael Stromann
13★
FreshBooks is an online invoicing software as a service for freelancers, small businesses, agencies, and professionals. The product includes a myriad of other related features, such as time tracking, expense tracking, recurring billing, online payment collection, the ability to mail invoices through the U.S. Post, and support tickets.
15★
Zoho Books is an online accounting software with time tracking that allows you to easily manage the money flowing in and out of your business. Manage your customers and invoices, while keeping expenses in check. Record, monitor and reconcile your bank accounts and transactions, and collaborate with your accountant in real-time. Most importantly, Zoho Books helps you make better, more informed decisions and stay on top of your business.
See also:
Top 10 Online Accounting software
Top 10 Online Accounting software
FreshBooks and Zoho Books are both cloud-based accounting tools, which means they exist in that strange digital realm where invoices float around like confused pigeons and expenses mysteriously categorize themselves (sometimes correctly). They both let you send invoices, track expenses, generate reports and even automate reminders so you can passive-aggressively nudge clients who seem to believe “net 30” means “whenever I feel like it.” They integrate with all the usual suspects—Stripe, PayPal and other platforms designed to make money vanish and reappear somewhere else—while also offering mobile apps so you can check your financial doom on the go.
FreshBooks, having existed since 2003 (an era when people still said “dot com” with genuine enthusiasm), hails from Canada and caters primarily to freelancers and small businesses who would rather be doing literally anything other than accounting. It includes a suspiciously friendly interface, an emphasis on invoicing that borders on obsessive and built-in time-tracking so you can quantify just how much of your life is spent explaining things to clients who don’t read emails. It also charges per user, meaning the more people you add, the closer you get to understanding the phrase “death by a thousand cuts.”
Zoho Books, born in 2011 in the mystical land of India, takes a more all-encompassing approach, integrating seamlessly with Zoho’s sprawling empire of business software. Unlike FreshBooks, it’s built with inventory management in mind, making it a better fit for businesses that sell actual, tangible things rather than just ideas and expertise. It offers a client portal so customers can see their invoices and pretend they didn’t and it lets multiple users in at a more reasonable price. It is, in many ways, the sensible older sibling to FreshBooks—perhaps less charming, but certainly more practical, especially if you need to keep track of where all your widgets, gadgets and thingamabobs are disappearing to.
See also: Top 10 Online Accounting software
FreshBooks, having existed since 2003 (an era when people still said “dot com” with genuine enthusiasm), hails from Canada and caters primarily to freelancers and small businesses who would rather be doing literally anything other than accounting. It includes a suspiciously friendly interface, an emphasis on invoicing that borders on obsessive and built-in time-tracking so you can quantify just how much of your life is spent explaining things to clients who don’t read emails. It also charges per user, meaning the more people you add, the closer you get to understanding the phrase “death by a thousand cuts.”
Zoho Books, born in 2011 in the mystical land of India, takes a more all-encompassing approach, integrating seamlessly with Zoho’s sprawling empire of business software. Unlike FreshBooks, it’s built with inventory management in mind, making it a better fit for businesses that sell actual, tangible things rather than just ideas and expertise. It offers a client portal so customers can see their invoices and pretend they didn’t and it lets multiple users in at a more reasonable price. It is, in many ways, the sensible older sibling to FreshBooks—perhaps less charming, but certainly more practical, especially if you need to keep track of where all your widgets, gadgets and thingamabobs are disappearing to.
See also: Top 10 Online Accounting software
