Accounting Software for Businesses With Contractors

FreshBooks is built specifically with small business owners in mind. And this includes those that work with contractors (including construction professionals, marketing teams, human resources, etc).

You not only get accounting software that’s easy to use and really helps boost your cash flow, but you get customized onboarding. While FreshBooks is simple to use, we want to ensure the contractors you work with can hit the ground running, so you don’t skip a beat. 

On top of that, you can assign specific user permissions to contractors to limit the amount of access they have to company information and financials. For contractors, they can use FreshBooks project management software as a task management tool by viewing and tracking time for any Projects they’re invited to.

First off, you don’t need to worry about your business being interrupted when you transition to FreshBooks from your current accounting software. FreshBooks plans are as follows:

• Plus PlanPremium Plan (lots of advanced features)
• Select Plan (a customizable plan for growing businesses with contractors)

Most businesses with contractors speak to one of our plan specialists to customize a Select plan to specifically suit the needs of their business. Click here to talk to a Specialist.

All of your information stays in your account.

Want to know how much FreshBooks costs? We know every small business is different, which is why there are different pricing plans to choose from. You can review them here. Our advice? Take a moment and take stock of:

• Where your small business is today?

• Where you hope to grow your business in the next 6 months?
• Your overall income and expenses

• The features you need to help your business accomplish all its goals?
• Do you need business health reporting tools?

• Will you be outsourcing work to contractors and project managers?

• Do you want in-depth financial reporting based off real-time data?

• Do you need mobile mileage tracking?

Read this article for even more information to help you choose the right FreshBooks plan for your business with contractors: Wondering Which FreshBooks Plan Is Right For You?

FreshBooks joins forces in a partnership with other companies to provide an “integrated” service. Once connected, integrations help you sync data and transfer information from one software to another (from Company X to FreshBooks and vice versa), thereby automating otherwise menial tasks and saving your team tons of time. Customer experiences are at the heart of integrations in an effort to automate as much as possible and provide business owners like you with the tools they need to run and scale their businesses alongside their customers.

Check out the benefits of FreshBooks’ suite of Integrations in this short video.

FreshBooks integrates with over 100 other applications, so when visiting the FreshBooks AppStore you can easily find great apps to handle things like payroll and scheduling to help optimize your business even more. 

Check out the FreshBooks AppStore here.

If you’ve had a business for years you’ve likely solved bookkeeping problems to some extent, but if not or you’re just starting out here’s what you need to know. Keeping tight books year-round will save you more time and effort than not doing a good job of it and waiting until tax time.

There’s no question that best-in-class accounting software like FreshBooks is an essential part of running a business these days. Beyond that, if you have a more complex business with lots of moving parts and growth, you likely don’t have time to take care of your books. Here are a few articles that can help:

Should You Hire a Bookkeeper for Your Small Business?

Conquer Business Finances at Different Stages of Growth

Sara Uses FreshBooks Because She Knows Accounting and Getting Paid Are Tough

Absolutely! When you invite contractors to work with you on FreshBooks you’re able to assign them a unique user role within your team. This gives them a set of permissions that allows them to navigate the same as any other FreshBooks Business Owner. But they only see specific shared information from your account:

• Time Tracking – Can also track time for any specific Projects they’re invited to
• Projects – Can also see any Projects they’re invited to, only time entries logged by them are visible

It’s the easiest way to ensure your contractors feel like they’re on the same page as you (like a team of construction laborers working together on one large project). But it also allows you to monitor and manage their work and workload.

FreshBooks has connections to third-party apps that seamlessly integrate with your account to run and automate payroll (our payroll partner for US based businesses is Gusto). This makes it easy to run payroll and manage forms like a 1099 – all while tracking the transactions directly in your FreshBooks account.

So instead of worrying about missing an employee or contractor’s hours when running payroll, our Gusto integration handles everything for you. Plus, it’s fast to set up, easy to use, and allows you to track the transactions as expenses, which are reflected in reports.

Invite up to 10 Accountants per business at no extra cost, on Plus and Premium plans. If your Accountant wants to learn more and familiarize themselves with FreshBooks’ accounting features, they can sign up for the Accounting Partner Program to become a FreshBooks certified partner, which comes with a bunch of cool benefits. If you don’t have an Accountant yet, reach out to us and we can help you get matched with one of our expert partners based on your geographical location, industry, and your accounting needs.

If you’re not sure about things like accounts receivable, general ledger, balance sheets, or doing your business taxes, not to worry. Getting your accountant on board and working with you in FreshBooks can be done in just a few clicks.

Learn more about working effectively with your accountant on FreshBooks in this great article.

As an Accountant, you can review your new Client’s financial reports and help balance their books to ensure their business runs smoothly. Each Client that invites you to work in their FreshBooks account as an Accountant will appear as a separate business that you can switch to within your own FreshBooks account.

You can access accounting reports, add Journal Entries, manage Chart of Accounts as well as review and manage other data in each Client account.

We also have an Accounting Partner Program where you can become a certified FreshBooks accounting partner. The program is designed to help you offer services such as advisory, reporting, analytics, or business coaching. Accounting partners also get:

• Free FreshBooks training and Certification as part of the onboarding process
• Connections with potential FreshBooks users looking for help from an accountant
• Referral commissions for recommending FreshBooks to your clients
• Dedicated Accountant support and account management
• Free subscription to use as a demo environment to discover FreshBooks’ accounting functionalities

• Ongoing resources and product information

As an accountant here’s what you can do in a Client account:

• Access the Dashboard and Reports of your business’ financials
• Create Journal Entries and custom Sub-Accounts in Chart of Accounts
• View Invoices and manage payments
• Create Other Income
• Create and manage Expenses

• Switch between businesses using the Manage Businesses link if you’ve been invited to other Clients’ accounts

Here’s are some links to learn more or to help you get started:

• Join the Accounting Partner Program here
• Create Journal Entries and custom Sub-Accounts in Chart of Accounts
• Learn more about our Accounting features here
• Review how all the Reports work
• Familiarize yourself with managing Invoices here and Expenses here

It really depends on your approach as a business owner. While FreshBooks is super-easy to use, when it comes to using all the tools available to you as a business owner, your accountant should definitely be at the top of your toolbox (and they have a dedicated user role within the platform). 

Not only does FreshBooks allow business owners to add their accountant to their account, but FreshBooks also has an Accountant Partner Program that pairs business owners with accountants. This ensures that businesses are matched with accountants that suit their specific needs. 

Learn all about the Accountant Partner Program here.

The biggest difference for our customers between FreshBooks and other cloud-based software is that FreshBooks’ cloud-based solution was designed to be easy for them to use, while also having all of the functionality and reporting capabilities that accountants need. 

This means as a business owner you have the ability to easily handle daily tasks, bookkeeping, connect with your clients, improve your cash flow, monitor your financial health, and a lot of other things. At the same time, you can give your accountant special accountant access to your account to get the information they need to provide advisory services, help you grow your business, and effectively deal with tax time – all while avoiding human error.

On top of all the easier-to-use features, many of our customers made the switch because of our award-winning support team. They actually pick up, don’t transfer you, and stick with you until you have the information you need.

The short answer is YES!

The long answer is as follows:

When setting up a FreshBooks account, you can start fresh, or transfer over existing data from any previous software like QuickBooks Online, Xero, Zoho Invoice, or Sage. If you’re not a fan of manual entry, Clients, Expenses and Items can be imported by you with the steps below in real-time. For Taxes, you can email us the below details and we’ll take care of it for you.

NOTE: If you choose a Select Plan, your information will be migrated for you by one of our account specialists.

Below are the types of data FreshBooks can import:

Clients

Clients can be imported using the steps here yourself.

Expenses

You can now import Expenses yourself with the steps here.

Items

Import Items using the steps outlined here.

Taxes

For Taxes, you can put together a CSV file for each type of data with the required columns below first. Then send this from your owner’s email (that matches your account) with written permission for us to upload.

Required Fields

Tax Name – i.e. ‘HST’

Percentage – i.e. ’13’ for a 13% tax

Optional Fields

Tax Number – Government-registered tax number

Vendors

Import Vendors using the steps outlined here.