Accountants: What Is the Best FreshBooks Plan for Your Client?

Thinking of FreshBooks for your clients but not sure where to start? You’re in the right place.

You already know that the right accounting software will help clients keep track of their day-to-day finances and give you the information you need to offer expert accounting services. Which might be what led you to consider a different software option. Many business owners who aren’t “numbers people” feel confident using FreshBooks—and even recommend it to others.

At FreshBooks, there are multiple plans to suit businesses at any stage, whether they’re just getting started or are scaling up fast. Read on to find the plan that’ll work best for your clients.

Is FreshBooks Accounting Software a Fit for My Client?

Before comparing plans, it’s important to understand who is a fit for FreshBooks and why.

FreshBooks is ideal for:

• Small businesses looking for an easy-to-use software
• Service-based or project-based businesses
• Businesses with light or no inventory
• Businesses with up to 25 employees (Although larger businesses can still thrive and scale quickly with FreshBooks.)

You know that the right software is not just about your tech stack and your proficiency or level of comfort. It’s about your client being able to use the software comfortably, too. That’s why the Collaborative Accounting™ model works so well for accounting professionals who use FreshBooks with their clients. Now let’s compare plans and see which works best for your clients.

Now let’s compare plans and see which works best for your clients.

All Plans: Not-So-Basic Standard Features

Each FreshBooks plan has its own unique features and benefits. As a cloud accounting and invoicing software, there are tons of great features available on all FreshBooks pricing plans.

Key Features

• Unlimited invoices, estimates, and expenses
• Online payments
• Projects
• Time Tracking
• Reporting

All of our plans allow business owners to send unlimited invoices and estimates and track unlimited expense entries. Growing businesses particularly like how easy it is to create professional invoices and send their clients payment reminders.

Speaking of getting paid, FreshBooks plans allow business owners to accept payments online with credit cards and bank transfers.

FreshBooks’ Projects and Time Tracking features are great project management tools. Users can review all time tracked from their team members, as well as see all invoices and expenses associated with a specific project.

While FreshBooks may have started as an invoicing software company, today’s small business owners turn to us for help with their day-to-day bookkeeping and accounting tasks. All of our plans include financial reporting tools so users can generate invoicing and payments reports, Profit & Loss (P&L) reports, and Sales Tax Summary reports.

Plus Plan: Our Most Popular Plan

Key Features

• Free Accountant roles
• Bank reconciliation
• Accounting reports

Chances are that most of your small business owner clients will find that Plus is the best FreshBooks plan for their business.

With a generous limit of 50 billable clients, they’ll be able to invoice their regular customers and still have room to grow their client base.

As an accounting professional, you can feel comfortable recommending the Plus plan because it’ll capture the financial data you need to help your clients. And it’s priced competitively for them to boot.

Dedicated Accountant Role

Whether you need to set up your client’s FreshBooks account from day 1, or you only need access at tax time, FreshBooks has two Accountant roles that allow this to happen.

By setting up your client’s account from the Accountant Hub, you, as the Accountant – Full Access can set up their Chart of accounts, and connect their bank account to start automatically importing transactions. You can also decide if you or your client will pay for their FreshBooks subscription (if included in your list of offered services). In the advanced accounting settings, both accounting roles allow you to make accounting changes within the account, like creating custom accounts in the chart of accounts and creating and editing journal entries, The Accountant Hub will allow you to manage your clients’ FreshBooks accounts in one place.

Bank Reconciliation

The Bank Reconciliation feature lets you match account activity in your client’s bank account against entries recorded to their FreshBooks account. While the tool does a lot of the heavy lifting by automatically scanning the account and providing a list of likely matches, you can also manually match account activity to further ensure accuracy and consistency.

You can also record transfers and contributions to or draws from owner’s equity to cut down on the need for manual journal entries. Imagine the time-saving potential for your accounting processes!

Accounting Reports

Speaking of financial data, let’s dive into the information clients can easily track with the Plus plan, and what it’ll look like on your end. FreshBooks’ double-entry accounting features allow you and your clients to get a full-picture view of money earned versus money spent.

The double-entry accounting reports on the Plus plan that make this possible are:

• Balance Sheet
• Profit & Loss
• Cash Flow
• Trial Balance
• General Ledger

Premium Plan: For Tracking Payables

Key Features

• Unlimited billable clients
• Customizable email templates
• Accounts payable features
• Track Project Profitability

The Premium plan has all the features of the Plus plan and then some. It’s ideal for owners who are scaling up and starting to outgrow the Plus plan.

Typically, most owners who choose the Premium plan do so because it supports an unlimited number of clients, which is a step up from the 50 available on the Plus plan.
It also offers owners additional email settings, including automated client emails with dynamic fields and customized email templates and signatures.

From an accounting perspective, the Premium plan also includes the Accounts Payable and the Project Profitability features. Clients can use Project Profitability to easily track and record their bills for various vendors all in one place–giving you the visibility to accurately advise on cash flow at any time. By comparing the profitability of standardized services, businesses can get accurate and real-time insights to all the revenues, expenses, and employee costs associated with the client or project.

Select Plan: For Big(ger) Businesses

Key Features

• Dedicated account manager
• Customized onboarding services
• Dedicated customer support
• Access to lower credit card transaction rates
• Data migration services
• Revenue forecasting

The Select plan is our highest-tier plan and should be considered for clients whose businesses are at a stage that requires specialized support.

Select plan members can expect a dedicated account manager, customized onboarding services, and data migration services.

It’s also a good option for businesses that process a lot of online payments as it’ll allow them to take advantage of lower credit card and debit card processing fees.

Along with the accounting tools included on the Plus and Premium plans, the Select plan also offers a greater level of insight into a business’s finances with additional reports. Recurring revenue reports, for example, help with revenue forecasting. In particular, the Recurring Revenue Details report can be run from the present date to any date in the future to see future projected recurring revenue at any given time.

Lite Plan: For Those Just Getting Started

The Lite plan tends to be the best fit for businesses that are just getting started and have less than 5 active clients. While the Lite plan definitely punches above its weight as an invoicing tool, it doesn’t offer the same accounting tools as our other plans.

That’s not to say the Lite plan is short on features! For example, the ability to import expenses as a CSV file into FreshBooks is available on all plans. Clients also get unlimited invoices.

However, you might find that a different plan is the better fit for your client if they’d benefit from the dedicated Accountant role, double-entry accounting, accounting reports (other than the P&L Report and Sales Tax Summary Report), or bank reconciliation features.

Just for You: The Accounting Partner Program

When saying that FreshBooks is built for owners, that also includes accountants and bookkeepers, too. The Accounting Partner Program was designed to support accounting professionals build up their own businesses with access to great tools, education resources, and a peer network to collaborate (and sometimes commiserate) with.

Switching a client to a new accounting software can feel daunting. Our team is equipped to help accounting partners migrate their clients’ full general ledger (GL) to FreshBooks as seamlessly as possible.

Partners also get dedicated support from our partner support specialists, who have accounting backgrounds and know FreshBooks features through and through.

Want know more? Email us at accountants@freshbooks.com to set up a call with one of our partner consultants.

With Any Plan Your Client Chooses…

We know that your top priority is to provide your clients next-level service by helping them track their finances and make sound financial decisions. At FreshBooks, we have the same commitment to unbeatable service.

With any plan your client chooses, you can count on FreshBooks to deliver outstanding service from our award-winning Support team.

Every small business is different. Their accounting needs vary by business type, size, and industry. We know there’s no one-size-fits all solution when it comes to accounting software, which is why we don’t try to be!

Get your clients started with a free 30-day trial or contact our award-winning Support team at 1-866-303-6061 or support@freshbooks.com for more information.

This post was updated in March 2024.