Infographic: FreshBooks economy reaches one billion in just four months
We’ve recently spent a little time digging into the aggregate activity and usage across the FreshBooks community to better understand the trends and needs of our users. So far the data report proves what we’ve long suspected: there’s a thriving global network of freelancers, small business professionals, and service providers — in short, you lovely people who are the underappreciated duct tape of the global economy.
So how big is this ball of duct tape? Well…as it turns out one billion (USD) was invoiced worldwide using FreshBooks from January to early May of this year. In contrast, it took us until August to reach the same milestone last year.
Check out the infographic above and you’ll see we looked at activity based on country, and the findings are certainly thought provoking. Here are some highlights; you draw your own conclusions and interesting theories:
- The average invoice size on FreshBooks was $1,677
- Mexico and Sweden saw the largest invoice sizes with $4,669 and $4,423 respectively. India and Malaysia were the lowest with $414 and $406
- Average invoice size for the U.S. was $919
- The average time to pay was 22.8 days
- China saw the shortest time to pay with 11.9 days, while India saw the largest at 31.7 days
- Average time to pay for the U.S. was 20 days
(all values are in US dollars)
Thanks to Interactive Things for the outstanding infographic.
helps invoice enough money to buy a 
11:22 am
It would be nice to see the volume of invoices from each of these countries along with the average invoice amount.
8:28 pm
2004 to Aug 2009: $1B
Sep 2009 to Dec 2009: ???
Jan 2010 to early May 2010: $1B
Is this about right? Congrats on an incredible milestone.
8:58 pm
“# Average invoice size for the U.S. was $919″
Man, I gotta start sending some bigger invoices!
9:10 pm
@terence – Actually, it took us to August to invoice a billion in 2009…and only till May in 2010. I hope that’s a little clearer. Nonetheless, thanks for the words of encouragement!
@yujin – thanks for the input – maybe we’ll do that report next time!
9:53 pm
[...] over the FreshBooks ecosystem between January and May of this year. CEO Mike McDerment also provided an infographic to display activity based on country as well as some other [...]
3:49 am
Im thinking why Mexico? Interesting demographic…
Love your product by the way…it’s going to change my business and my life.
6:35 am
I always find the “time to pay” incredibly high, because in my industry (web design), I take 50% down before even beginning work, so those payments are usually made within 24 hours. The net payment is due when the site is in a draft stage (about 75% done), and those usually come in fast, also because they want their last 25% of the work done.
If they are done on the same invoice that gets edited with a removed “deposit” line item, it’d be interesting if this shows up as a 24 hour collection or a 1 week “time to pay.”
See you Thursday in Tampa, Mitch – unless Mike is joining you, too.
1:14 pm
Couldn’t do without Fresh Books at our agency. Keep churning out data like this at a macro level. For our own industry its great to see our own invoicing stats versus the competition.
2:45 pm
Wow! congratulations, that’s a lot of invoices!
5:48 pm
wow a billion that crzy!!!
9:11 pm
I wonder how many of those invoices from New Zealand are ours?
Is there a record of the number of companies using Freshbooks in each country?
11:48 am
Apparently drug lords know how to use freshbooks in mexico =\
12:40 pm
Great service by FreshBooks.
It would be great to add a shopping cart too as this would be then a one stop solution for accepting payments for goods and services.
1:20 pm
Bet you’re kicking yourselves for not charging per invoice sent
5:45 pm
What percentage of these transactions are genuine? I’ve tested accounts and billed a friend thousands of dollars to see if he received the same info on his end when he logged in.
You are counting all “transactions” including test transactions. This is flawed data unless you are somehow verifying that all of these amounts have actually been paid.
10:40 am
One Billion!, probably explains why I’ve out grown my free copy and couldn’t find anything as easy to use or set-up.
Nick
2:07 pm
This shows me there are areas of opportunity in Canada to market Freshbooks.
12:15 am
Interesting stats! Well done team at freshbooks!
12:25 pm
“I always find the “time to pay” incredibly high, because in my industry (web design), I take 50% down before even beginning work, so those payments are usually made within 24 hours. The net payment is due when the site is in a draft stage (about 75% done), and those usually come in fast, also because they want their last 25% of the work done.”
I would say that is likely very unique to your (and a few others) industry – so your segment may be more of an outlier of these statistics than the other way around.
9:28 pm
Who would I’ve thunk it. Mexico.
Guess it’s time to break out the “We’re Huge in Mexico” T-Shirts
Cool inforgraphic.
12:17 am
Thanks for u r information
its very useful
8:19 am
What about total dollars invoiced by the top countries?
8:50 am
I replicated your very interesting Freshbooks Economy chart in Excel 2007 and added animation to sort the countries. It is available for download from my advanced Excel blog:
http://www.excelhero.com/blog/2010/07/animated-business-chart-2.html
Regards,
Daniel Ferry
excelhero.com
11:51 pm
I’m moving to Mexico! Incredible!
4:06 pm
Very interesting infographic and congratulations on hitting the 1 billion milestone so quickly.
I find Freshbooks so easy to use and means the admin time is so low in comparison to the dark days before Freshbooks.
2:46 am
Indonesia is not listed there.
I’m one of Freshbooks paid customer located in Indonesia
4:12 pm
It’s interesting that Mexico is so much higher per invoice than the US. Could that possibly be because there are so many more invoices in the US for small things other than i.e. Web Design/Development
6:16 pm
Mexico 1st that’s very suspicious…money laundry perharps?
7:27 am
[...] is not as ambitious as it may sound. Last month, FreshBooks put out an infographic that showed its UK customers bill on average $1,389 per transaction. (See also graphic above) That’s about [...]
3:01 pm
@Freshbooks — this is a really interesting chart that is only possible with the notion of web based tools with data “in the cloud”. Never before would this type of analysis been possible.
I would ask though that you folks normalize this information. What I mean by that is that you must take into account the # of invoices in Mexico vs say US or Canada. US must have many more invoices and therefore the distribution may be much wider and thus a lower average amount.
What you could do is take 100 random invoices that are not test from each country and THEN count the average amount. There is clearly a long tail by country and that’s interesting to see, but having say
A total of say 100 invoices with from Mexico a 4000+ dollar average
And a total of say 1000 invoices from US with a 900+ dollar average say something very little.
You’re withholding some very necessary data to make some insights about the demographic and geographic nature of microbusinesses.
I recognize that the data set that is in Freshbooks is very valuable information to the microbusiness economy. I commend you folks for continuing to innovate. Looking forward to more insights.
9:17 pm
“Mexico and Sweden saw the largest invoice sizes with $4,669 and $4,423 respectively”
This should mean “largest average invoice sizes”, right?
Otherwise I have to throw my AU$ 11,107.21 invoice from April in the ring!
1:50 am
Haha, China with the shortest payment period. Good to know. At least one perk of being here.
8:57 am
Freshbooks has the been the perfect billing system for my small business. I just wish payment time was a bit more like China’s – 11 days or less.
9:40 am
Wow! Amazing accomplishment guys! We’ve been using Freshbooks at WebFuel for about 2 years now, and we love it!
5:01 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
7:09 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
8:10 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
8:17 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
9:25 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
10:50 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
5:07 pm
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
5:23 pm
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
8:06 pm
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
12:21 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
4:35 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
6:51 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
8:57 pm
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
9:46 pm
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
12:48 pm
[...] lesson was driven home in mid July when FreshBooks detailed the size of its “FreshBooks economy.” While it was interesting as an indicator for just how [...]
2:37 pm
[...] lesson was driven home in mid July when FreshBooks detailed the size of its “FreshBooks economy.” While it was interesting as an indicator for just how [...]
7:33 pm
[...] lesson was driven home in mid July when FreshBooks detailed the size of its “FreshBooks economy.” While it was interesting as an indicator for just how [...]
11:40 pm
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
1:49 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
1:49 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
5:58 am
Thanks for u r information
its very useful
7:12 am
cool idea.
thanks
6:35 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
7:15 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
7:17 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
7:32 pm
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
7:42 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
2:12 am
[...] invoices that you send to your clients. They have over 1 million users and were able to conduct $ 1 billion woorth of transactions in just 4 months — a testament to the excellence of the [...]
1:14 am
very beautiful collections.
Thanks for sharing with us.
1:15 am
very useful tips.
Thanks
1:17 am
very thanks for useful information.
6:34 am
wow…very good achievement for freshbooks..
keep it up..
1:43 am
Im thinking why Mexico? Interesting demographic…
Love your product by the way…it’s going to change my business and my life.
2:21 pm
You have added new post here and this is very good. Thanks.
11:46 am
I thought that India would have a shorter time period considering they are on the internet often, but apparently I am wrong. I mean I understand the money issue but I thought it would still be quicker.
10:06 am
very useful ststistics.simply credits goes to freshbook
5:13 am
Good article and very valuable information. Keep it up! Thank u
2:39 pm
the post was excellent
9:50 am
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