Reintroducing FreshBooks, for Accounting Professionals [webinar]

👋 Looking for the webinar Q&A? Click here.

How well do you really know FreshBooks?

You might know that many small business owners love it for its easy and intuitive invoicing, expenses, estimates, proposals, time tracking…all the front-end housekeeping that goes into getting paid.

But here’s what you might not know:

FreshBooks is full-featured accounting software. After significant investments in our platform, today we are built not just for business owners, but for business owners and their accountants. That means we’ve got your General Ledger and financial reports—and a whole lot more. Watch the webinar to take a tour.

The FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program is growing fast. As a FreshBooks Accounting Partner, you get FreshBooks certification, client leads, access to a community of like-minded accounting professionals. Plus your valuable feedback shapes the product improvements and offerings of the program. Learn more and join the program here.

FreshBooks is a unicorn 🦄 . In 2021, FreshBooks received another $130 million in funding and achieved a $1 billion valuation, reaching “unicorn” status. With the latest round of funding, we will be investing in key areas of our business, like the Accounting Partner Program and developing more accounting features.

Watch the Webinar

Join Twyla Verhelst, Director of the Accountant Channel at FreshBooks, and Blake Oliver, Accounting Podcaster and Journalist, as they show you how (and why) FreshBooks is hurtling full-speed toward becoming a global leader in small business accounting software. And how you can be a part of the journey.

Watch it now:

Webinar Q&A

Our webinar prompted some great questions in the chat. Here are some we didn’t have time to answer.

Is FreshBooks a good option for business owners who do their own bookkeeping? Will users have Journal Entry and Chart of Accounts access?

FreshBooks can be a great tool for a business owner to do their own bookkeeping. The interface is built for owners: it’s easy and intuitive for them to use, resulting in less stress around their accounting.

Access to the COA is a permission under the Accountant role and is also available to Owners with Advanced Accounting [beta] turned on. This gives Owners the ability to modify the COA and create manual JEs. We always suggest Owners communicate with an accounting professional prior to making manual adjustments themselves.

Is FreshBooks designed for both small business owners and accounting professionals?

Yes! Since our start in 2003, we have always been a software that was built for owners. We continue to keep the business owner at the center of the user experience. But we have added features and functionality for accounting professionals in order to support these small business owners in the platform that works best for them.

Does FreshBooks have a bookkeeper/accountant version? And free access and training?

Each Team Member in a FreshBooks account has different permissions; for example, only Accountants are allowed to create custom sub-accounts in the Chart of Accounts and create manual journal entries.

We understand that accountants may need more permissions than reviewing reports. FreshBooks Accounting Partners can enable the dual Admin-Accountant role, giving you all the access you need to collaborate with your client in their account, as well as your Accountant permissions.

Part of becoming an Accounting Partner means becoming FreshBooks certified. That includes comprehensive training, designed to make you an expert in all FreshBooks features. Partners also get a free FreshBooks account for their own use.

To learn more, check out our program page. Enter your details and one of our Partner Consultants will get in touch with you to talk about the Accounting Partner Program.

Other platforms have priced themselves too high for my small practice. How much will the full version of FreshBooks (plus Payroll) cost me?

FreshBooks prides itself on being easy to use and intuitive. That is one of the core features of FreshBooks.

FreshBooks was founded to serve self-employed professionals and small business owners. We are still committed to those owners, and part of commitment means remaining affordable from the start and as they grow.

With payroll, there’s a lot to get right, so we leave it to the experts. We do not have our own payroll application, but we do integrate with Gusto in the U.S. and Payment Evolution in Canada, both of which serve the small business market at a reasonable cost.

What’s the difference between the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program and other industry partner programs?

Our Accounting Partner Program offers benefits you’ve seen with other platforms, like product certification and a directory listing, and more. Unique to our program is the community we’re building, made up of modern accountants and progressive bookkeepers. The goal is to create a forum where you can share and sharpen your skills, and access tools and technology to give you more time to advise and empower small business owners.

This isn’t just a program—it’s a partnership. At FreshBooks, we want to contribute to your success. We’re committed to listening to you: We want to hear directly from you what works best for you and your clients. And because our program is new, when you join now, you have a unique opportunity to help shape the community and the platform for the future so we can grow together.

But don’t just take our word for it.  Here is what some of our Accounting Partners have to say about the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program:

“I encourage fellow accountants to take a look at FreshBooks and jump into the Accounting Partner Program. I really feel like I have a place to go when there’s a hiccup, or for questions when I have them. … It’s not just software. You care—you care about the actual people using it. And that comes through in everything you do.” —Megan Justice, EA

“I love that FreshBooks is asking for feedback from accountants who are actually using it, as opposed to just going with whatever developers think is right.” —Lindsay Darby, CMA

“I really like the values and the mission that FreshBooks has. I think it aligns a lot with my own—how I feel about small businesses and supporting them.” —Melanie Schroeder, CPA

👉 Watch the webinar recording with Twyla Verhelst and Blake Oliver.

This post was updated in July 2022.