FreshBooks Payments Review

 It may be convenient, but when you’re deciding on a credit card processing company, be sure to consider all the factors, including costs, reviews, and more. Note that FreshBooks is available in both the United States and Canada. In this profile, we’re focusing on FreshBooks’ credit card processing services for businesses based in the United States.

• History
• What are the features of FreshBooks payments?
  • Card acceptance
  • Partial online payments
  • Invoicing
  • Automatic billing
  • Currencies
  • Seamless syncing with FreshBooks accounting
  • Mobile payments
• FreshBooks Select
• What equipment do I need?
• What reports are available?
• Security
• FreshBooks Cost
  • Pricing for FreshBooks Select
• Reviews

History

FreshBooks is a cloud-based accounting program that introduced a payment processing component in autumn 2014. FreshBooks is headquartered in Toronto, Canada and processes payments through a company called WePay. Don’t let the Candian headquarters throw you off - FreshBooks is increasingly popular in the United States and can help businesses located in the US.

In 2016, the company redesigned many of its interfaces. Here’s the new Freshbooks dashboard.

What are the features of FreshBooks payments?

FreshBooks accounts automatically come with the ability to accept credit cards with no additional setup through FreshBooks. You do need to complete a short setup with WePay, the company that processes for FreshBooks. Once you’re ready to go, you can accept major credit cards and some debit cards and take advantage of features designed for convenience.

Card Acceptance

FreshBooks supports the following major credit cards: Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Diners’ Club, and JCB. Note that for debit cards, you’ll only be able to accept Visa debit.

Partial Online Payments

If your customers want to make a partial payment on their invoice, you can enable an option to accept partial payment and allow the balance to be paid at a later date.

Invoicing

With FreshBooks, you can create invoices for clients and request payment by credit card. When you create your invoice, there is a box you can check for “accept credit cards” which will allow you recipient to pay with their major credit card. Check out the redesigned Freshbooks invoicing interface:

Additionally, you can accept Apple Pay from clients.

Automatic Billing

For regular recurring invoices, you can choose to set up automatic billing. Your clients can save their information for automatic charging for convenience.

Currencies

FreshBooks lets you take payments in US or Canadian dollars, and is working on support for additional currencies. As of early 2016, your clients outside of the US or Canada can still pay you through FreshBooks, but you would need to charge them in either USD or CAD and their bank may charge an international currency conversion fee.

Seamless Syncing with FreshBooks Accounting

All of your transaction information can be easily synced to your FreshBooks accounting, including your transaction fees for payments, which are listed automatically in your expenses.

Time Tracking

Freshbooks includes a convenient time-tracking feature for services charged on an hourly basis or in other units of time. A redesigned time tracking interface makes it easy what was worked on, when, and for which clients.

Mobile Payments

In the spring of 2016, FreshBooks came out with a combination EMV/magstripe reader for smartphones and tablets. The FreshBooks credit card reader works with iPhones and allows you take take payments from almost anywhere.

FreshBooks Select

FreshBooks also offers a premium package – FreshBooks Select – for businesses that process more than $10,000/month in payments.

The company refers to Select as billing software for businesses that accept a lot of payments online. FreshBooks Select offers the same features as Classic, but with lower processing rates and increased caps for the number of staff members and clients you can track.

The solution still allows you to bill clients, set up recurring billing, and create payment schedules or accept one-time payments. You can also create custom invoices. You'll be able to invoice in different currencies, collect a deposit from an invoice, apply discounts, apply taxes, and set up a payment schedule.

You do pay for those features, with the lowest Select package starting at $100/month. You’ll benefit from lower processing rates with WePay, starting at around 2.7% for Visa, Mastercard, and Discover and 3.3% for American Express. (Rates subject to change.)

What equipment do I need?

Getting paid with FreshBooks Payments doesn’t require special hardware, but you do need to have a payment gateway or use the FreshBooks reader. FreshBooks Payments works with several gateways, including Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize.Net.

If you want to use FreshBooks with your smartphone to take payments on the go, the FreshBooks credit card reader costs $29 and will connect to smartphones through the headphone jack. Readers are available for both Apple and Android devices. You can read more about FreshBooks mobile in our article FreshBooks vs. Intuit GoPayment and QuickBooks.

What reports are available?

Since FreshBooks payments works with FreshBooks accounting, a wide variety of reports are available. You can view information including billing history by time period, client, or date, track your clients who are slow to pay to see who you need to follow up with, share ledgers with tax accountants, and more. FreshBooks reports can be exported as either Excel or CSV files as needed.

Security

FreshBooks utilizes tokenization technology for cardholder security and uses 256-bit SSL encryption. WePay, the company that processes transactions for FreshBooks, is PCI compliant.

FreshBooks Cost

FreshBooks states that their payments pricing is a flat rate of 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction for all cards except American Express. The rate for American Express is 3.5% + $0.30. You can turn off card acceptance for any cards you want by going to your FreshBooks credit card acceptance dashboard.

Note that these rates are for payment processing using the FreshBooks payments option with WePay as the processor. Costs if you choose to make payments through FreshBooks using an alternate gateway (such as Authorize.Net) and processor will be different depending on the processor. You can sign up for a free CardFellow account to get quotes for payment processing with a FreshBooks-supported gateway. FreshBooks also charges a 1% additional fee for using the Authorize.Net gateway.

The above rates are for FreshBooks payments for transactions. Cost for the FreshBooks accounting program is not included. FreshBooks mobile has separate costs.

Pricing for FreshBooks Select

If you sign up for FreshBooks Select, you'll have a monthly fee starting at $100/month, depending on the package. You'll get reduced processing rates through WePay, starting at 2.7% for payments made with a Mastercard, Visa, or Discover, and 3.3% for payments made with an American Express card. 

Reviews

Reviews for FreshBooks as of late December 2015 mostly focus on the accounting side, not the payments options side. This is likely at least partially due to the fact that FreshBooks payments has not been an option for very long.  However, even reviews for the accounting offering are a little sparse. In the financial industry, that’s not necessarily a bad thing. FreshBooks has a profile with the Better Business Bureau, where they currently boast an A+ rating and no complaints.

FreshBooks does not list customer testimonials on their website, but does include a selection of press mentions that include prestigious publications like the New York Times, Forbes, and Inc.

Do you take payments with FreshBooks? Tell us how you like it! Leave a review!