FreshBooks
A weekend of work, and real gaps remain.
Invoicing and light accounting for freelancers and small firms: invoices and estimates, expense capture, time tracking and the reports an accountant asks for at year end.
Build me an invoicing tool for a one-person business, with numbering that will survive an audit. STACK - Astro with a Node adapter, SQLite via better-sqlite3 - Stripe for payment links, pdf-lib for the document CLIENTS AND INVOICES - Client with billing address, VAT number and default currency - Invoice with line items, quantity, unit price, tax rate per line and a due date - Totals computed on the server only, rounded per line then summed, and the rounding rule written down NUMBERING, WHICH IS THE PART THAT MATTERS - Sequential per year with no gaps: number is assigned at issue, inside a transaction - An issued invoice is immutable; a correction is a credit note referencing it, never an edit - Deleting an issued invoice is impossible by design, and the README says so TAX - Rates in a config file per country, with the rule that applies chosen at issue time and stored on the invoice - Reverse charge and zero-rate cases handled as named rules, not by leaving the field blank PAYMENT - A Stripe payment link per invoice; marked paid only from the webhook - Partial payments recorded as separate rows, never by adjusting the invoice REMINDERS - Three scheduled emails: before due, on due, and after; cancelled automatically on payment REPORTS - Revenue by month and by client, tax collected per rate, and outstanding by age Include a README on the numbering guarantee, the rounding rule, and how to export everything for an accountant.
What you lose
- Sales tax rules for the places you invoice, kept current by someone else
- Payment processing, dunning and automatic late reminders
- Bank feeds and reconciliation, which is where the accounting actually happens
- Reports your accountant asks for, in the format they expect
- Audit-safe numbering and immutability that a tax authority will accept
If you would rather not build
- Wave — free invoicing, paid payments
The escape hatch
open source · no votes, no paid placement
Invoice Ninja
$0Invoicing, quotes, payments and recurring billing, self-hostable.
invoiceninja/invoiceninjafree · open source
Crater
$0Simple invoicing with clients, estimates and payments, with mobile apps.
crater-invoice-inc/craterfree · open source
Why this verdict
our own opinion · changed only by a person
53/100
Verdict kinda at 53: sequential numbering, immutability and credit notes are the parts a build usually gets wrong, and the prompt makes them the centre. What stays with the vendor is tax rules that change without warning and the bank reconciliation half.
History
tracked since 9 Aug 2026 · nothing is ever overwritten
Nothing recorded yet. This chart fills in once the page has visitors, votes or prompt copies — it will not draw a flat line to look busy.
Questions about FreshBooks
answered from the record above
Is FreshBooks free?
No — the plan we track is $21 a month. Plus at about $21/month billed monthly for one user and 50 clients; extra team members are billed per seat.
Can you replace FreshBooks by building your own?
ALMOST. A weekend of work, and real gaps remain. Replacement score 53 out of 100, build time a weekend. Read what you lose before you decide.
How much does FreshBooks cost?
$21 a month on Plus — $252 a year. Recorded 9 Aug 2026.
What do you lose by replacing FreshBooks?
Sales tax rules for the places you invoice, kept current by someone else; Payment processing, dunning and automatic late reminders; Bank feeds and reconciliation, which is where the accounting actually happens; Reports your accountant asks for, in the format they expect; Audit-safe numbering and immutability that a tax authority will accept. If any of those carry weight for you, keep paying.
Is there an open-source alternative to FreshBooks?
Yes: Invoice Ninja, Crater. The prompt on this page is for when you want it your way instead.
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