Financial Edge (legacy) vs. FreshBooks

• Financial Edge is well suited for traditional day to day accounting, accounts payable, and related needs.
• Financial Edge dashboard does not provide a snapshot view of data that I have found are available through other platforms (like QBO).

Incentivized

FreshBooks is the perfect tool for businesses who have hundreds of clients and customers whom they invoice regularly. It removes the need to manually send invoices to clients and customers, by streamlining inputted information to create an automated invoicing system which keeps clients and customers up to date with their bills. It is also a great tool for managing expenses, especially for companies with different teams working on varying projects, ensuring these teams do not exceed the budget ceiling.

Incentivized

• Grant Management - nothing is more harrowing than grant reporting, and FE does it best. It allows for layered budgets and limitless division of expenses among grants, overhead, or other projects/programs.
• Reporting - Most financial software tries to adapt for-profit accounting into a non-profit mode without addressing the unique needs of a nonprofit for reporting and auditing.
• Multiple projects and/or cost centers within a budget and system - nothing is more challenging than trying to manage expenses over several cost centers and FE is a champ at allowing that complexity.

Incentivized

• FreshBooks is pretty intuitive to use. I did have some questions when I first started using the system, but it wasn't a long learning curve.
• FreshBooks provides more capability than other billing applications such as PaySimple or BlinkSale. FreshBooks does provide an easy invoicing function. It's easy to create invoices that can be sent via email or snail mail to one or more individuals (for example, the decision-maker and the accounting dept). Clients can pay online or send a check and then I note that the payment has been received. If paid by credit card, the system automatically marks the invoice paid. Your business accounts such as bank accounts can be linked to FreshBooks. Then, the system can automatically draw in expenses and will create simple P&L reports, overdue invoices, client history, etc. If you don't have inventory and complex payroll, etc. FreshBooks provides just the right level of capability to make financial tracking simple.
• FreshBooks integrates with a number of credit card companies. I use Stripe, which has fees similar to Paypal, but much more reliable processing. I can accept all credit cards, including American Express, for a reasonable fee.

• Customer service blames the customer, and never offers solutions other than "wait it out." I've always been told it's my computer, even though everyone else at my work has the same issues.
• Website is constantly "under maintenance" and it somehow never gets better.
• The Database View is outdated and glitchy. Honestly get rid of it.
• The Crystal Report is the only way to handle monthly recurring statements, and Financial Edge does not offer support for it anymore. Good luck figuring that out on your own.

• Pricing structure is very poor for us. $10/user per month when we have staff that comes and goes. And it's impossible to change a free contractor to a paid staff and vice-versa. This is my biggest complaint.
• They only allow one admin owner user. Emails must come from that account. This is annoying, as other staff cannot log in with the same power.
• The user interface is quite dated. I've made recommendations to improve it and all have been ignored. It's skinny and not fluid. Also, there is no way to link between invoices and clients.

At the current needs of our business, FreshBooks suits us perfectly - it allows online access by our accountant to the system for GST purposes, easy input of expenses and tracking of Profit and Loss statements. FreshBooks customer service is great as well - very understanding and accommodating.

It's user friendly, when it wants to be.

It is well-built software with no significant drawbacks. It offers all the necessary futures expected from online software. However, it is not yet up there with Xero and QuickBooks regarding connections with other software and advanced reporting features. The developers work closely with accountants, and therefore, I expect further development of the software.

Incentivized

FreshBooks is easy to use and always works!

Incentivized

I would give this a zero if I could. Here's the deal. Once you request a chat with a representative, they immediately respond. So responsiveness: 10/10. However, they have a tendency to (always) tell you that whatever problem you're experiencing is your problem, not theirs. They offer no solutions and never take responsibility for their website malfunctioning

I think the support level for FreshBooks is on par with a 6 because the folks behind this application do a fairly good job at providing support for their customer base. I still don't think they are at an elite level when it comes to supporting but are getting there although too slow in my opinion.

Incentivized

I haven't changed my mind since my first evaluation. Freshbooks is still meeting my needs, easy to use, etc.

Financial Edge is more economical than GuideStar, and more focused on the financial successes than simply the management of funds and general data.

Incentivized

There is no fluff and feature overload with FreshBooks. I can get to what I need quickly and easily. I don't have to deal with unnecessary features and fields the system considers essential. The payment features are streamlined and have lots of flexibility when receiving payments. I love FreshBooks support, and it is 100 more customer-friendly and easier to work with than its primary competitors from my experience.

Incentivized

• We have been able to more effectively track utilization of budgets
• Scholarship management has more than tripled over a five year period

Incentivized

• Since implementing FreshBrooks, 80% of invoices created are paid in less than 30 days from the time the invoice is sent via email to the client. Prior to FreshBooks, we were mailing or hand-delivering our invoices and payment on those invoices was in the 45-90 day range.
• Time tracking is done directly in FreshBooks (or through a plugin that's connected directly to FreshBooks) and is very easy to use. With this feature we're much better able to track all business activities. This has helped us to quantify the time we're spending on non-billable business-related work in addition to our billable client hours. We've been able to adjust our pricing accordingly, as well as being more efficient with our non-billable activities.
• When FreshBooks online payments is set-up in your account, payments made with this method are automatically sent to your bank account. We choose between FreshBooks payments and PayPal payments in order to manage how much money stays in the PayPal account for online expenses vs. how much is transferred directly to the bank account.