Top 5 Invoicing And Cloud Accounting Apps (And Alternatives To Freshbooks)

This post is an example of the content I share every Friday in my Living by Experience Magazine. If you’d like your free copy, click here.

Ok so Freshbooks kicked me out. For 8+ years I’ve been a “loyal” customer, using their app to send an invoice-and-a-half a month. Most of my income comes from book sales and people signing up for my online classes – not much comes in via the good-old-invoice. I like it that way. And for the odd time I needed an invoice, Freshbooks has been awesome.

But they decided to change things. Out of the blue, I got a phone call from an account manager advising me my account would be shut down in less than 14 days. Unless I paid for an upgrade. “No thanks”, I said. “I’m happy where I’m at”. My assistant even called them to elaborate on the points mentioned above. They didn’t budge. And I wasn’t going to pay $15+ for sending my invoice-and-a-half.

Usually, when you’re a long-standing user of an app or service, your account gets “grandfathered in” when the organizations changes it’s pricing model in a way that would negatively impact the customer. Personally, I’ve never grandfathered anyone in. I change my paid courses and content all the time, but in a way that benefits new and existing users alike. Freshbooks doesn’t agree, which is their fair choice but gets them my bad review today. After over 8 years, it’s been the end of my Freshbooks era. I’m sure they’ll get over losing a non-paying happy customer. And I’m sure I’ll find a better alternative elsewhere. Here’s 5 options.

1. WaveApps

Wave is a web-based built-in accounting solution completely designed for small organizations. Collectively, the solution features accounting, invoicing, billing, payment tracking, payroll management, finance administration and receipts.

With the financial institution reconciliation feature, you can link your bank accounts, PayPal accounts and different sources of information for real-time transaction records. You can also generate reports such as balance sheets, sales tax reports and account receivable and payable reviews.

Wave accounting software also offers an invoicing app to collect money (perfect for me). Invoices can be sent through email, and the system’s charge processing permits customers to collect credit card payments. Transaction processing is where Wave makes money, as well as additional bookkeeping services (which may come in handy if your company grows).

Wave’s payroll module (supported in the U.S. and Canada) comes with elements such as direct deposit and worker self-service. The private finance tool features a budgeting tool, real-time funding monitoring and a dashboard for non-public finance management.

2. ZipBooks

ZipBooks is another free choice which covers all your basic invoicing needs and more. Its fundamental elements consist of online accounting, invoicing, time tracking, and charge processing. The only paid characteristic of the application is Invoice Instant Payments where you can pay without delay (before the customer will pay the invoice), and you pay ZipBooks a small rate for the service.

3. Street Invoice

If you want simple invoicing and don’t care an awful lot about advanced features, then Street Invoice is a choice to explore. It doesn’t have all the perks of different apps, however for easy billing and invoicing, payment tracking, and reports, it works well. It has a free model restricted to fifteen invoices per month and a stripped-down characteristic set. There’s also three different paid plans (from $4.99 to $14.99 a month) with greater advanced features.

4. Invoice Home

Invoice Home is another app to try if you are primarily after sending basic invoices. What’s exceptional about it is that it comes with lots of invoice templates. There’s a free and a paid version, even though I couldn’t easily locate publicly-accessible facts about the features and the costs of the unique plans.

5. GnuCash

Lastly, one for the geeks (yes, that includes me). GnuCash is an open source alternative. It’s free and you can use it both to control your private budget or to run your small business’ financial/accounting operations. GnuCash is a computer software handy for Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. You can use it to track financial institution accounts, stocks, profits and expenses, or as a checkbook register. It additionally has quite a lot of reports and graphs to visualize your economic activity.

Screenshots provided by each of the providers.

P.S. No pressure, but if this post helped you in any way, please consider buying me a coffee to keep me going. Thanks!