A Letter to the Global Team

Dear FreshBookers,

I am writing to share one of the toughest decisions we have ever made at FreshBooks. We’ve decided to part ways with approximately 80 talented FreshBookers (about 10 % of our current team).

This morning, we will send emails to employees regarding the elimination of their roles in North America. Over the next two days, subsequent meetings will be set up for transition conversations with management and HR representatives. For our international locations, this process will follow local laws and practices.

This news will be hard for all, but significantly harder for those leaving us. I’m sorry for the great people that we will need to exit, sorry for our remaining teammates that will be missing friends and respected colleagues, and sorry for our customers who will not get to fully benefit from the continued support of these truly talented individuals.

As you know, we value transparency – especially in challenging times. So I’m going to share why we made this decision, what it means for the company, how we plan to take care of those who are leaving, and where we go from here.

Why This Decision?

Over the last 6 months, we have seen interest rates rise, economies slow across many of our markets, and capital markets get more and more expensive. In response, starting in November, we leaned into several cost-saving measures, including reduced hiring and eliminating backfills. We also let go of 6 full-time employees and 2 contractors on the talent acquisition team, along with many agency contractors across our engineering and data teams. And, importantly, we started thinking hard about our best path forward.

During this time, we worked closely with the board and our advisors to monitor changing capital market dynamics and assess the risk and cost of continuing to fund our growth plans with losses and outside capital.

Ultimately we decided that the capital markets are, for the foreseeable future, too unpredictable to continue to rely on external funding to fuel our growth. So, we decided to no longer rely on third-party capital to fund revenue growth. Instead, we will rely on our current cash flow and debt facility to get to profitability. Our 3-year strategic plan that was just approved allows us to achieve this goal in 2025. In order to do this, we also need to reduce headcount and programmatic spend.

FreshBooks is a community, and living our mission to execute extraordinary experiences every day to help Small Business owners grow has never been more important. Serving our owners will always be our priority – it’s why we exist as a company and what we all work towards.

How Will We Care for Each Other?

This news will affect everyone differently. For those that are leaving, we’ve built a package of benefits to help in the transition. We’ll be in touch individually with more details, but in general, this package includes the following:

• Time on Payroll/Severance/Transition Payment
• Continued benefits coverage (where applicable)
• Outplacement services to support their career journey forward
• Elimination of the one (1) year cliff vesting schedule
• Extended exercise window for exercising options and repriced shares that were priced above our most recent valuation to Fair Market Value
• Impacted employees will not be required to return their laptop, monitor, or mouse/keyboard provided by FreshBooks
• Establishment of an opt-in alumni talent directory to help facilitate introductions between those leaving and companies in need of great talent

For those that are staying, there will be challenges as we work through this change. We ask that you join FreshBooks and help those moving on with the next steps in their career journeys where you can. Our message to outside teams looking for talent is that FreshBookers have done, and will continue to do, extraordinary things anywhere and everywhere. Brilliant people come to FreshBooks because they’re attracted to good work, big challenges and a company that truly cares for its customers.

These FreshBookers will be an incredible addition to any team.

How Will We Move Forward?

We need to be resilient as we embark on this shift in funding strategy. While the decisions shared today are painful, we continue to remain optimistic about our future. We will continue to focus on the actions that help us deliver against our strategic objectives and operating plans. Practically speaking, our mission and vision have not changed. What has changed is that we will lower growth and push out the product roadmap in return for reaching profitability much sooner than we had initially planned.

In the coming days, you will hear more about what this decision means for you and your teams. Your leadership team is dedicated to prioritizing our investments in a way that will allow us to serve our people, customers and shareholders to ensure a bright collective future. We are a resilient team that cares deeply for each other and for our customers. This will clearly show over the coming weeks and months.

What If I Have Questions?

There is no doubt that all of this is a lot to take in, and I’m sure you’ll have questions. We will work to answer as many of them as we can at our All Hands meeting on March 23rd (please expect an invite later today).

We owe a debt of gratitude to all those affected. We are so grateful for the support and skill those leaving us gave FreshBooks during their time with us. The impact these talented individuals have had on FreshBooks will be with us for a long time.

Thank you all for helping make a difference in the lives of hundreds of thousands of Small Business owners around the globe.