FreshBooks vs FrontAccounting

FreshBooks is accounting software for freelancers, solopreneurs, and small businesses. It creates invoices with tracked time and expenses, calculates taxes, and offers configurable payment options. Users can track time against clients and projects, then generate invoices from those records. Projects organize client work, team members, time, invoices, and expenses, and include profitability views. Listed payment options include card and ACH payments, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and buy now, pay later options. FreshBooks also offers recurring invoices, expense tracking, and a client portal. Its API uses OAuth2 for integrations and account automation. The service runs on the web and has iOS and Android apps, but some features, including reporting, are desktop-only. Mobile apps require iOS 15 or later or Android 7.0 or later. Lite costs $23 a month and includes five billable clients; Plus costs $43 a month and includes 50. Premium costs $70 a month and includes unlimited clients. Double-entry accounting is available on Plus, Premium, and Select. There is no free plan, and the listed trial lasts 30 days.

FrontAccounting is free, self-hosted web accounting software for small companies, covering accounting tasks across a broader ERP chain. It includes purchasing, sales, accounts payable and receivable, inventory, manufacturing, fixed assets, and a general ledger with budget. Sales tools include quotations, orders, delivery notes, invoices, credit notes, batch invoicing, point-of-sale definitions, and payment allocation. Purchasing includes purchase orders, goods receival notes, supplier price lists and payments, and transaction attachments. Inventory supports stock items, locations, transfers, reorder levels, average material cost, and barcode scanner entry; manufacturing includes bills of materials and work orders. It supports multiple companies and users with different privileges, along with backup, restore, and simple audit trails. Reports can be printed, emailed, converted to PDF, or exported to Excel or OpenOffice Calc. Multi-currency and GST/VAT support are listed. Installation requires a web server, PHP, and MySQL with InnoDB enabled; other database systems are unsupported. The software is web-only, and support requests are directed to its forum. The listed plan is free.