Freshbooks review

FreshBooks

I really like FreshBooks.  It has a very clean and fresh interface and the whole application can be customised very easily.  Don’t need to manage staff?  You can just hide the Staff tab.  You can change colours, upload logos – it’s probably the most customisable application of the ones that made it to my shortlist.

FreshBooks has a very comprehensive expense management section and even has a built-in trouble-ticketing system and document sharing system – surplus to our requirements but nice additions if you need them.

There’s a very well documented API and a lively developer forum which gave me a good feeling that we could do what we wanted to do with the API – and if it needed tweaking, that it would get done.

It even has its own Ruby wrapper. I’m not entirely sure what a Ruby wrapper is but I do know that our internal systems are based on the Ruby scripting language – so it’s likely that this wrapper thingy could make it easier for us to chat to FreshBooks via their API (waves hands in the air, nods reassuringly).

There’s more too.  FreshBooks even has a QuickBooks client import.  Clearly FreshBooks is targeting people just like me who want to move away from a desktop version of QuickBooks and competing toe-to-toe against QuickBooks Online.

At $89 per month, FreshBooks appeared to be the most expensive solution of those I reviewed – but it also has a whole bunch of features that the others don’t have.

It also has a long list of payment processors which support recurring billing: Authorize.net, Landmark, PayPal Payflow Pro, Itransact, LinkPoint and PSiGate.  Argh – none of which are any use in the UK or Europe.

With so much else working in favour of FreshBooks, I emailed their support people and get a timely, professional response – unfortunately the conversation went like this ..

Me: Hi, FreshBooks seems to have everything we’re looking for except a European payment processor for recurring payments. I checked your forum for any progress on this but all seems very quiet – is there any hope of that aspect working any time soon?

FreshBooks: We’re looking for payment gateways for our European clients, as well. Do you have any in particular you’d like to recommend?

Me: We’re using WorldPay at the moment – can’t really recommend them too highly but there’s almost no choice for recurring billing outside the US at the moment.  But I’d be overjoyed if FreshBooks could interface to them?

FreshBooks: Thanks for the recommendation.  Though I can’t promise that this particular gateway will be integrated (this one is not in very high demand), I’ll certainly pass it on to our integrations team for consideration.

Me: Do you have a shortlist of European payment processors you’re likely to implement as we’re looking for an alternative to WorldPay?

FreshBooks: We actually do not have a shortlist right now because we’re still trying to find some really good ones as well.  Sorry about that, but we’re always open to recommendations if you find one that you think may integrate well with our product.

Darn.  I don’t blame FreshBooks for not solving this problem for European clients but it effectively rules them out for us for now.  This forum thread died out mid 2007 which kind of confirms (to me, at least) that this isn’t a top priority for FreshBooks.

Shame, I really really like everything about this application – even at $89 per month.  For me it’s the stand-out favourite – except for the payment gateway problem.

Conclusion

Oooh, so close.  Expense management, great API, great look and feel, brilliant customisation features – and a Ruby wrapper thingamabob.  Unfortunately, no European payment processor stopped it from being at the very top of the pile.  Maybe FreshBooks will bounce back into contention later once the European payment processing has been solved – but, for now, it’s a no for us.

Next Step: A review of KashFlow

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