FreshBooks gets expenses – at last!
Our good friends at FreshBooks have released version 4.3. The big news is they’ve (finally) got around to including expenses inside the application:
You can now track your business expenses in FreshBooks. You can enter anything you spend money on. If the expense was for a client, you can log it any time. When you next invoice that client, you will be prompted to add the expenses to the invoice. Each expense can be tied to a category and you can even tie an expense to a project.
Congratulations – I know it has been a long time coming. What is not made clear from the release is whether FreshBooks has taken into account the VAT rules which apply for the UK. (I couldn’t reach the company to confirm – I’m sure someone will comment.)
I also note they now claim 300,000 registered users. That’s a great achievement when I think back that less than two years ago, the company had some 65,000 users. At the time, CEO Mike McDerment said that around 9-10% of his business was coming from the UK.
Other major upgrade elements include:
- View and save invoices as PDF
- Import Outlook contacts
The global micro business market is really starting to get interesting as more players enter the fray. Earlier today, I spoke with a firm that is using multiple online accounting systems to manage different parts of their client portfolio. That plays to Ron Baker’s airplane metaphor I discussed yesterday. I’m meeting with this firm in the next week following which I hope I will be able to say more about their market and business strategy.
Congratulations again to FreshBooks. A great achievement that demonstrates how well this market is maturing.
About This Post
Hey Dennis,
Thanks for the encouragement and congrats on the successes to date with FAC.
re VAT: we’re Canadian and have GST here (essentially the same as VAT) and you can still manage your expenses just fine with FB. We’re going to roll out additional reporting in the future, but we like to release with less and add, rather than start with too much and subtract. And…for the record…we’ve received notes from very happy UK based customers about expenses..so my guess is, that’s the best assessment of all.
Anyway – thanks for the shout out, and a belated happy new year.
- mike
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Good to hear Mike – I know the feeling of adding less…usually means we need to add more!
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all in good time
Cheers Dennis.
- mike
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