FreshBooks vs. Microsoft Dynamics GP

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

It does accounting really well, it does payroll not so well. I say this because when you get into states that have complicated payroll laws like California, overtime calculations are hard to setup and get right. Same goes for other states when they do out of the normal pay structure like piece rate pay. It does HR, A/P and A/R really well and we have had no issues on that side; just payroll when it comes to certain states and how we do anything that is not salary or hourly.

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.

• User friendly interface
• Able to be extended into multiple areas of your business
• One feature we have been using for a few years is EFT for payables - it has significantly reduced the time spent paying vendors and reduced our check printing and mailing costs. It is very easy to setup and use.

Incentivized

• 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.

• Having an integration between Project Accounting and Field Service would be amazing! There are so many companies that have service technicians that perform work on a customer's contract but also have a need for project accounting functionality within that customer's contract. Right now those modules are separate so you either need to use one or duplicate some efforts if you need to use both.
• Microsoft Dynamics GP could do a better job documenting their new enhancements to the product. They realize great enhancements but the documentation about them, or new products, is lacking so it is difficult as a consultant to know everything a new feature can do for me and my customers.
• They could enhance their forecasting capabilities with a new forecasting tool within Management Reporter.

Incentivized

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.

Due the economic challenges that Puerto Rico is having, the company has had to merge some companies in order to be more efficient. It has been easy in GP to process those merges, even thought we had to spend days to accomplish that the process was smooth and accurate. In addition we were able to streamline the purchasing and sales process and the organization is confident to keep renewing GP for the future versions.

Incentivized

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

Overall usability of the older model is not quite so user friendly for the basic bookeeper, but at an accountants level we can generate all the necessary reports and create Sales Orders, Purchase orders and invoices - though it is a bit redundant to enter the sales and purchase orders separately instead of being able to convert a sales order directly to a puchase order by applying a price book like the newer versions can.

Incentivized

FreshBooks is easy to use and always works!

Incentivized

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

The rating is directed to the thrid party serive provider that we use. I do not now how good the Microsoft direct support is.

Incentivized

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

Basically the challenge with this implementation was the Business Portal, too many errors and even the aplication is up and running the users are still having issues. We will start planning the migraton to GP 2015 soon.

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

Because GP doesn't do CRM we have looked at D365 Customer Engagement for our field service, and F&O as a replacement. Vaporware, no direct upgrade path, and if you want to continue with GP for your back office and just use Field Service it's an insanely complex integration import/export. D365 F&O is a huge implementation cost, and without a direct migration path every bit of data has to be custom imported. There really is no straightforward way to stack up GP against these programs currently. Again, the future of GP is in some doubt.

Incentivized

The functionality that GP and related ISV solutions offer and the ease of integration of GP to other systems makes it an extremely scalable solution

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.

• If implemented properly, the product can save many hours of data entry time - specifically by setting up integrations of large data sets.
• Many times the underlying business process must be adjusted to accommodate software limitations. By being flexible, a company can leverage their users' skills in combination with GP to make data entry faster and more efficient. I have seen many companies eliminate the need for data entry personnel as well as reallocate employee hours to more skilled positions such as reporting and analytics.
• Poor implementations, on the other hand, can cause employees to hate their jobs and the software. This isn't specific to GP but to the software industry in general.

Incentivized