Thinking of signing up for a free FreshBooks trial, but wondering what happens after those 30 days are up? Here's what you need to know about the right FreshBooks plan for you.
FreshBooks offers a free 30-day trial so you can kick the tires and get a feel for the difference it will make for your business. But those 30 days can fly and maybe you want to know first: What then? Which FreshBooks plan is right for me?
If you’re the kind of small business owner who likes to have all your ducks in a row, hats off to you! Read on to get a sense of where you’ll land at the end of your 30 days.
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Need Help Deciding Which FreshBooks Plan Is Right for You?
As you approach the end of your free 30-day trial with FreshBooks, there’s an important decision to be made: Namely, which plan is the right one for your business.
It’s a cinch to upgrade to one of our plans. You don’t need to worry about your service being interrupted when your free trial ends. But you may be wondering: Which plan is right for me?
At FreshBooks, we know every small business is different. That’s why there are different plans to choose from. There is no “one size fits all”—think of us as the Italian suit of cloud accounting!
Our advice? Take a moment and take stock of:
- Where your business is today
- Where you hope to grow your business to in the next 6 months
- Your overall income and expenses
- The features you need to help your business accomplish all its goals
To help you make the decision about which plan is right for you, read on!
Plus Plan: Our Most Popular Plan
The Plus plan is by far the most popular plan with small business owners just like you. This is probably because it’s the “Goldilocks choice”—right in the middle.
The Plus Plan offers a few notable advantages over Lite, especially for growing businesses.
First, the client limit is a generous 50. This allows you to maintain your key anchor clients in addition to a growing roster of ad hoc, seasonal, and other business. It saves you the bother of juggling clients to stay within limits and gives you the freedom to grow, grow, grow.
Grow Sooner
But more than that, the Plus Plan also includes features that will actually help you achieve faster growth. This plan will help you get where you’re hoping to grow, sooner.
The key feature here is proposals: Think of them as estimates on steroids. The best way to pitch your business to new clients and dazzle them with your portfolio of work, testimonials, and other key information most clients will want before handing you their business.
Adios, Cash Flow Drama
If you get paid online with FreshBooks, you already get paid twice as fast as you would waiting for checks.
But there are additional features in the Plus plan that keep your cash flowing smoothly. We know cash flow drama is one of the biggest pain points for small business owners. Recurring invoices are a great way to both minimize paperwork and ensure a steady monthly income.
And in the case where a client is a slow off the mark to pay an invoice, the Plus plan also allows you to charge late fees for overdue invoices.
Money Talk, Made Easy
One thing we’ve heard over and over from small business owners is that they don’t really like talking about money—especially chasing payments on invoices. Let’s face it, it’s time-consuming and not exactly a conversation anybody would relish.
With the Plus plan, your FreshBooks account can handle some of those conversations for you by automatically sending payment reminders. You’ll be able to set it and forget it, and focus on the work you really love doing.
Industry Standard Double-Entry Accounting
With this more robust way of looking at your accounting activity, you’ll have a more complete picture of your business’ financial status. In addition, with double-entry accounting in FreshBooks, you can get more insight into cash flow and profitability and understand how much you’ve got in assets, liability, and equity at any given time.
Some key features and reports include: Costs of Goods Sold, General Ledger, Chart of Accounts, and Bank Reconciliation. Learn more here.
Premium Plan: Growing Businesses With Team
If your business is really moving and shaking—congratulations! You’re where most small business owners dream of being.
But you know better than most that billing at scale brings its own challenges. For one thing: You’re busier than ever before.
You have client numbers in the 100’s and you need to be able to easily bill them, manage multiple projects, and stay on top of all your paperwork.
Good news: There’s a plan for that. With the Premium Plan, you get everything included in the Plus plan, but you can maintain an unlimited number of active clients.
This will no doubt keep you on top of things today, with room to grow for tomorrow. But if you have even greater needs, please reach out to us about a Select Plan.
The good news is that FreshBooks is designed to grow with your business. The sky’s the limit!
Lite Plan: If You’re Just Up and Running
If Plus and Premium seem a little bit of a stretch for you today, consider the Lite Plan.
It’s a great place to start for businesses that are just getting up and running and have under 5 active clients.
However, before you decide on the Lite plan, do consider how fast you want to grow. If you have ambitious goals and clients banging down your door, it might be worth selecting a plan you can grow into.
That said, if you’re not really certain how fast your business is going to grow, Lite is a great place to start. And rest assured, it’s easy peasy to graduate to the next plan up at any point in the future.
With its lower cost, the Lite plan is also a prudent decision to keep control of your costs as you get up and running. After all, managing your income and expenses is going to be key for your future success!
No Matter Which Plan You Choose…
We may be a little biased, but in our opinion, there is no wrong choice here. After all, we wouldn’t offer a plan that we didn’t think could help you and your small business thrive!
No matter which plan you choose, you can decide to pay monthly or annually. The advantage of the annual plan is you save 10%… after all, every dollar counts!
And of course, all plans allow you to:
- Customize invoices and look professional
- Send estimates that help you win jobs
- Accept credit cards online and get paid faster
- Simple time tracking to never miss a billable hour
- Automatically import expenses to track spending
- Project budgets that keep your team on track
- Dashboards that keep your finger on the pulse
- Powerful reports with insights about your business
Finally, an add-on option with any plan is to add team members so they can track time, expenses, and help manage your projects.
For more information, please visit our pricing page. And, if you want a little help making this important decision, please feel free to reach out to our support team. But—for now—make the most of your free 30 days with FreshBooks!
Give our award-winning Support Team a shout at 1-866-303-6061 or support@freshbooks.com.
Written by FreshBooks, Small Business Blog
Posted on August 25, 2017