QuickBooks vs FreshBooks in Canada: Which Fits Your Business?

QuickBooks Online and FreshBooks are two widely used paid packages for Canadian small businesses. They’re built from different starting points: FreshBooks from invoicing clients and tracking time, QuickBooks from the accounts themselves. This page compares how their plans are structured and which kind of business each suits. The best accounting software comparison adds Wave and Xero, and both products have their own pages: the FreshBooks review and the QuickBooks Lite and Self-Employed page. All are part of the self-employed tax hub.

How the plans are limited

The biggest structural difference is what each company limits as you pay more.

So a freelancer with many small clients hits FreshBooks’ client limit first, while a business adding staff hits QuickBooks’ user limit first.

Where the features sit

Which suits which business

FreshBooks fits a service business that bills by the hour or by project: time tracking and a client portal on every plan, proposals and retainers from Plus, and project profitability on Premium put quoting, time and billing in one place. The trade-offs are the client limit on the cheaper plans and payroll through a separate partner.

QuickBooks Online fits a business that holds inventory, has staff, or expects several people to work in the books. Its plans scale by users up to 25, and inventory and project profitability come with Plus. For a one-person business, Intuit’s smallest plan, Lite, is covered on the QuickBooks Lite page.

If an accountant or bookkeeper will keep or review your books, ask which package they work in; using the same one saves time at year-end. Switching packages later means moving your records, so it’s worth picking with the next few years in mind. For the setup steps that come before software, see starting a business in Canada.

Related reading

• Xero vs QuickBooks
• Wave review
• Self-employed vs incorporated