Cancel FreshBooks. Run Your Solo Bookkeeping in Excel.

The honest postmortem on a year of FreshBooks Plus

I was on the Plus plan for fourteen months. $30/month, $360/year. The pitch — solo accounting + invoicing + expense tracking + simple P&L — was exactly what I needed when I started freelancing. The first six months I used everything. The next eight months I used about 30% of it: I created invoices in FreshBooks, my client paid through the FreshBooks portal, money landed in my bank, the expense log mostly auto-categorized itself. The other 70% — proposals, projects, time tracking, retainers, reports — sat unused.

When the renewal email arrived I asked the obvious question: am I paying $360/year for invoices and expense tracking? The answer was yes. Both are genuinely simple things — one is a Stripe link, the other is a spreadsheet column.

I cancelled. The replacement stack is $11 once and runs better.

What FreshBooks Plus actually does (be fair)

The Plus plan bundles:

1. Invoices & payment processing — branded invoices, auto-reminders for overdue, Stripe-style card processor built in.
2. Expense tracking — log expenses with category, business %, receipt attachment.
3. Time tracking — billable hours by project, convert to invoice.
4. Project tracking — collaborate with up to 50 clients per project.
5. Bank-feed connection — auto-import transactions via Plaid.
6. Simple reports — P&L, sales tax summary, expense by category.
7. Estimates & proposals — branded quote → accepted → converted to invoice.
8. Recurring invoices & subscription billing — for retainer clients.

That's a real product. For an agency or a freelancer with 20+ active clients, the bundle's coordination is worth $30/month. For a solo freelancer with 3–8 concurrent clients, you're paying for features you don't use deeply.

The unbundle

What's genuinely software (the spreadsheet handles it)

• Expense tracking + simple P&L — categorize expenses, sum by category, compute net.
• Invoice aging — which invoices are outstanding, how many days overdue, total receivables.

The gridmoo Invoice & Expenses Tracker covers both in one .xlsx file:

• Invoice Log tab — Client, Invoice #, Sent Date, Due Date, Status (Sent / Paid / Partial / Overdue), Amount Invoiced, Amount Paid, Days Outstanding, Aging Bucket (Current / 15–30 / 31–60 / 60+), Service Category, Hourly Rate, Hours Billed, Effective Rate.
• Expense Log tab — Date, Vendor, Category, Description, Amount, Business %, Deductible, Receipt?, Account, Notes.
• P&L Summary tab — Revenue, Expenses by category, Net Income — monthly and YTD.
• Aging Dashboard tab — receivables by bucket, oldest unpaid invoice, total outstanding.

What's a service (use free tools)

• Invoice sending + payment processing → Stripe Payment Links. Create a payment link in 30 seconds. Send via email. Client pays card or ACH. Stripe takes 2.9% + 30¢ — exactly what FreshBooks charges through its processor. Free to use, no monthly fee.
• Estimates & proposals → Google Docs template. Free.
• Time tracking → Toggl Free, or log hours directly in the Solo Practice OS Engagement Tracker.
• Bank-feed import → CSV export from your bank, paste into Expense Log monthly. Five minutes.
• Recurring invoices → Stripe Payment Links also support recurring (subscription) mode, free.

The math

Year	FreshBooks Plus	Unbundled stack
1	$360	$11 (workbook) + $0 (services)
5	$1,800	$11
10	$3,600	$11

See the Invoice & Expenses Tracker — $11 once.
→ See the workbook

How the unbundled stack works in practice

1. You complete a project (or hit a milestone). Open Stripe Dashboard → New Payment Link → enter amount, description. Get a URL.
2. Email the link to the client in a one-paragraph email: "Hi [Client], milestone 2 complete. Payment link below: [link]. Net 14 terms. Thanks."
3. Open the Invoice Log tab in the workbook. Append a row: Client, Invoice # (just date-based: 2026-05-16-Acme), Sent Date, Due Date (today + 14), Status (Sent), Amount Invoiced, Hours Billed, Hourly Rate.
4. When client pays, Stripe sends you an email. Update the workbook row: Status (Paid), Amount Paid, Days Outstanding (auto-computes).
5. Once a week, glance at the Aging Dashboard. Anything in "60+" bucket gets a polite follow-up email.
6. Once a month, paste your bank's CSV into Expense Log, set Business % per row (most rows are 100%), check P&L Summary for the monthly net.

Total time per invoice: ~2 minutes. Total time per month for bookkeeping: ~15 minutes. Total cost forever: $11.

What you actually lose by switching

• Branded invoice emails. Stripe Payment Links look like Stripe, not like your brand. If client-facing polish matters more than $349/year, FreshBooks wins.
• Auto-reminders for overdue invoices. The workbook flags overdue invoices visually but doesn't email the client for you. You set a calendar reminder to follow up.
• Tax-line categorization synced to QuickBooks. If your CPA pulls data from FreshBooks at year-end, switching to a spreadsheet means handing them a CSV instead. Most CPAs are fine with CSVs.
• Multi-currency invoicing in some configurations. Stripe supports multi-currency Payment Links too, but the workbook reporting is single-currency by default (add a column if you need it).
• Estimates that convert to invoices automatically. Manual step: copy the accepted estimate's line items into a new Payment Link description.

If those gaps are dealbreakers, FreshBooks is right. For most solo freelancers sending 3–8 invoices per month, the unbundled stack is cleaner.

The decision

FreshBooks is a competent product, especially if you have a team or many clients. For a true solo freelancer with a handful of recurring clients, you're paying $360/year for what amounts to a polished invoice template + automatic categorization. Both are free in 2026.

You can get the Invoice & Expenses Tracker for $11. Or browse the full catalog for other Excel workbooks that replace specific SaaS subscriptions.

Want to see the workbook shape before you buy? Download the free Daily Budget Planner — same architecture, no card required.

And to see what your full freelancer SaaS stack costs per year, run the SaaS Tax Calculator.