FreshBooks Review: Complete Business Finance Guide (2025)

Why FreshBooks Deserves Your Attention

If you're still chasing late payments, manually tracking hours in a spreadsheet, or juggling multiple tools just to keep your business finances in order, there's a better way. FreshBooks is a platform that consolidates invoicing, proposals, time tracking, expense management, accounting, and even payroll into a single tool.

What makes FreshBooks stand out is the balance it strikes between power and simplicity. The platform has been around since the early 2010s and has matured significantly over the years — adding features without burying users in complexity. Whether you're a freelancer just getting started or a small business owner ready to scale, FreshBooks can replace your existing patchwork of financial tools.

You can start with a 30-day free trial to explore everything, and there's often a promotional discount (up to 60% off your first six months) available if you decide to commit.

The FreshBooks Dashboard: Your Business at a Glance

Once you sign up, the FreshBooks dashboard gives you an immediate bird's-eye view of your business health. You'll see how much revenue is coming in, who still owes you money, unbilled time that hasn't been associated with a client yet, and other key financial metrics.

The dashboard is fully customizable — you can drag and rearrange widgets to put whatever matters most front and center. There's also a prominent "Create New" button that serves as a quick-launch hub for the most common actions: creating a new client, adding a retainer, generating an invoice, and more. It's a small design touch, but it means you're never more than a click or two away from getting things done.

Adding Products and Services

Before you can start billing clients, you'll want to load your products and services into FreshBooks. Head to the "Items and Services" section, where you can create entries for physical goods or services you offer.

For physical items, you fill out a straightforward form: product name, description, account assignment, pricing, sales tax, and optional inventory tracking. FreshBooks even lets you create checkout links for items, so you can sell products directly from your website, emails, or text messages — no separate e-commerce platform required.

Services work the same way. Add a name, description, and your hourly or flat rate. Once your catalog is set up, these items and services become available across the entire platform — in proposals, invoices, and recurring templates — so you never have to re-enter the same information twice.

Setting Up Payment Methods

Getting paid starts with connecting a payment processor. FreshBooks offers two built-in options: FreshBooks Payments (powered by Stripe under the hood) and PayPal. You can enable one or both from the Settings menu under "Connections and Integrations."

FreshBooks Payments charges 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction for standard credit cards. Amex transactions cost slightly more. A useful tip: if you're working on high-ticket projects, encourage clients to pay via ACH bank transfer — you'll get the lowest processing rates available.

Setup is quick. For FreshBooks Payments, you just provide some basic business information. For PayPal, you'll need an existing PayPal Business account to link. Once connected, you're ready to accept payments through invoices, checkout links, and recurring templates.

Creating Proposals and Estimates

FreshBooks distinguishes between estimates and proposals. Estimates are concise — best for straightforward jobs where pricing is simple. Proposals are more detailed documents that let you describe the scope of work, include images, add custom sections, and even require a client signature before work begins.

The proposal editor is clean and intuitive. You can upload your logo for branding, assign the proposal to an existing client or create a new one on the spot, and build out sections with rich text and images. Every proposal includes a pricing section where you pull in the products and services you've already set up.

One particularly useful feature is the ability to add a liability or terms section with a signature requirement — great for service businesses that need clear expectations before starting work. When you're ready, send the proposal via FreshBooks' built-in messaging or copy a shareable link.

The real magic happens after your client accepts. You can convert an approved proposal directly into an invoice with a single click, carrying over all the line items and pricing. No re-entering data, no copy-paste errors.

Creating and Sending Invoices

Invoicing is where FreshBooks really shines. You can create invoices from scratch, convert them from proposals, or generate them from tracked time — and every method feeds into the same clean, professional invoice format.

The invoice builder lets you add line items from your catalog, customize payment terms, and configure some powerful automation. You can set up automatic payment reminders on a schedule (for example, at 3 days, 15 days, and 30 days overdue) so you never have to manually chase down late payments again.

FreshBooks also supports late fees. You can configure a percentage-based fee (say 10% of the invoice value) that kicks in after a set number of days. Combined with automatic reminders, this creates a system that handles collections without you lifting a finger.

Clients receive a clean, branded payment page where they can see the invoice total, choose a payment method, enter their details, and pay immediately. They can also download a PDF copy for their records.

Recurring Templates for Subscriptions and Installments

If you bill clients on a regular schedule — monthly retainers, subscription services, or installment plans — FreshBooks' recurring templates automate the entire process. Despite the name, these aren't generic templates. Each one is tied to a specific client and billing schedule.

You set it up like a regular invoice: assign a client, add your line items, and set the total. Then you configure the recurring schedule — monthly, weekly, or whatever cadence fits your business. You can leave it running indefinitely for ongoing subscriptions, or set a specific number of payments for installment plans.

For example, if you want to split an $800 project into four monthly payments of $199, just set the recurring template to four payments. FreshBooks will automatically generate and send invoices on schedule until the balance is paid. The invoices go out automatically by default, though you can change that if you prefer to review each one before it's sent.

Time Tracking and Hourly Billing

For service providers who bill by the hour, FreshBooks includes a full project management and time tracking system. You start by creating a project — either flat-rate or hourly — and assigning it to a client.

The project setup lets you configure billable rates in several ways. You can set a single hourly rate for the entire project, define different rates per service type (e.g., $100/hour for design, $150/hour for development), or even set rates per team member. There's also a cost rate field so you can track what you're paying employees versus what you're charging the client — this information stays private.

An expense markup setting lets you add a percentage cushion (say 20%) to any project expenses, protecting your margins without manual calculations.

Once your project is configured, log time through the web interface or FreshBooks' mobile app. You can start a live timer when you begin working or add time entries manually after the fact. When you're ready to bill, FreshBooks generates an invoice directly from your unbilled hours — pulling in the correct rates, hours, and line items automatically.

Expense Tracking, Accounting, and Reports

FreshBooks supports over 14,000 financial institutions for automatic bank and credit card connections. Once linked, your transactions flow into the expense tracker where you can categorize them for clean bookkeeping come tax time.

You can also manage expenses manually — add bills, track vendors, upload receipts, or even forward invoices to a custom FreshBooks email address for automatic capture. It's flexible enough to handle however you prefer to work.

The built-in accounting section handles full bank reconciliation, eliminating the need for a separate accounting tool. You get access to essential financial reports: profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and cash flow summaries — everything you'd need for taxes, investors, or just understanding your business health.

Beyond accounting reports, FreshBooks offers business intelligence reporting that shows which products are most profitable, which clients generate the most revenue, and other operational insights that help you make smarter decisions.

Payroll Integration and Final Thoughts

FreshBooks rounds out its feature set with built-in payroll, either through a direct Gusto integration (if you already have a Gusto account) or through FreshBooks' own payroll service. The native payroll option runs $40/month plus $6 per employee — competitive pricing that's actually lower than what Gusto charges on its own.

This is full W-2 payroll, not contractor payments. FreshBooks recommends it for teams of one to five employees, making it ideal for small businesses that are just starting to hire. For larger teams, you'd likely want a dedicated payroll platform.

What makes FreshBooks compelling isn't any single feature — it's the fact that proposals, invoicing, time tracking, expenses, accounting, reports, and payroll all live under one roof. Each piece feeds into the others: tracked time becomes invoices, accepted proposals convert to invoices, expenses flow into accounting reports, and everything shows up on that central dashboard. For small business owners tired of stitching together multiple tools, FreshBooks is a genuinely complete solution.

Watch the Full Video

Prefer watching to reading? Check out the full video on YouTube for a complete walkthrough with live demos and commentary.