Quick facts: the July 2026 numbers
- QuickBooks Online
- Simple Start about $38/mo (1 user); Essentials about $75/mo (3 users)
- FreshBooks
- Lite $23/mo (5 billable clients); Plus $43/mo (50 clients); Premium $70/mo (unlimited); each extra team member $11/mo
- Promos
- Both discount the first months heavily (half off or more); the numbers above are what you pay when the promo ends
- Card fees
- Both charge roughly 3% to take a card payment on an invoice, on top of the subscription
Prices checked July 19, 2026. Both companies raise prices regularly; verify the current number on their sites before you buy. Nobody paid to be in this comparison, and these are plain links, not affiliate links. If that ever changes, we will say so right here on the page.
Every new contractor hits this decision around the time the first real invoice needs to go out. QuickBooks is what your accountant keeps mentioning. FreshBooks is the one with the friendlier ads and the lower sticker price. Both will send an invoice, track expenses, and tell you whether you made money this month. The differences that actually matter for a one-truck shop are buried in the fine print, so here is the fine print, translated.
Bookkeeping is one step on a longer path. Build your free Contractor Lane roadmap and see where it falls in the full Washington setup order.
The client-limit trap, read this part first
FreshBooks' $23 Lite plan, the price that makes it look like the obvious budget winner, allows five billable clients. Not five invoices, five clients, total. If you do residential work, where every kitchen remodel and every drain call is a different homeowner, you will burn through five clients in your first month and be forced up to the $43 Plus plan, which caps at fifty clients and which costs more than QuickBooks' entry plan. A busy residential contractor can genuinely outgrow fifty clients in a year.
There is one kind of contractor the Lite plan fits beautifully: a subcontractor. If you are a framer, drywaller, or electrician billing the same three or four general contractors every month, five clients is all you need, and $23 a month is honestly hard to beat. Know which kind of shop you are before the sticker price makes the decision for you.
What QuickBooks does better
QuickBooks Online Simple Start runs about $38 a month as of July 2026, with no limit on how many customers you can invoice. Its real advantage is not a feature, it is the ecosystem: nearly every accountant and bookkeeper in the country works in QuickBooks daily. When tax season comes, or when you hand off your books because you would rather be on a job site, that handoff is smooth and cheap because your CPA is not learning your software. For a Washington contractor there is a second, quieter benefit: your quarterly or monthly combined excise return needs your gross receipts organized cleanly, and an accountant who lives in QuickBooks can pull that in minutes.
The honest downsides: Intuit raises prices nearly every year, and it does not hide the trend. Simple Start was $25 a month in 2020 and is around $38 now. The interface also does more than a one-truck shop needs, which means more places to get lost. And the one-user limit on Simple Start means the day you add an office manager, you are looking at the roughly $75 Essentials plan.
What FreshBooks does better
FreshBooks was built around invoicing, and it shows. Sending an estimate, converting it to an invoice, chasing it with automatic late reminders, and logging your hours against a job are all faster and friendlier than the QuickBooks equivalents. If you price time-and-materials work, its built-in time tracking is genuinely useful rather than an afterthought. Adding a helper costs a flat $11 a month instead of forcing a plan jump. For a sub billing a handful of GCs, FreshBooks at $23 does everything you need for a lot less money, and you will actually enjoy using it more.
The honest downsides: the client caps above, a smaller accountant network, and double-entry reports that are serviceable but thinner. If your books ever get complicated, think payroll, job costing across crews, inventory, you will feel the ceiling, and switching bookkeeping systems mid-year is nobody's idea of fun.
What they have in common
Both take card payments on invoices for roughly 3% per transaction, both do bank feeds and receipt capture, both have mobile apps good enough for truck-seat bookkeeping, and both run aggressive first-months discounts, half off or more, that expire and quietly become the full price on your card. Judge both on the post-promo number in the quick facts box, not the banner price.
And neither one files your Washington taxes for you. Your combined excise return with the Department of Revenue, your B&O tax, and your L&I quarterly reports are still your job, or your accountant's. Software organizes the numbers; it does not submit them.
The honest bottom line
Most one-truck residential shops end up in QuickBooks Simple Start, and it is usually the right call: no client limit, and the accountant handoff pays for the price difference the first time you hire out your taxes. Most subcontractors billing a few builders are better served by FreshBooks Lite, and it is meaningfully cheaper for that shape of business. If you are not sure which shop you are yet, pick based on this month's reality, not the five-year dream. Switching later is annoying but survivable, and either tool beats the shoebox of receipts you are using now.
Bookkeeping is one tool; scheduling and dispatch is the other most contractors add. If you are weighing that side too, see our best field service and dispatching software for contractors comparison, and check whether your accounting pick syncs with it.
Get the setup order right before the receipts pile up. Build your free Contractor Lane roadmap and see when bookkeeping actually enters the sequence.
Where Contractor Lane comes in
Contractor Lane is the front door for starting a contracting business in Washington, and bookkeeping is one of the steps we place in order for you, after registration and before your first excise filing sneaks up. The roadmap tells you when to set up your books, what to track from day one so B&O season is painless, and how to keep business and personal money separated so your LLC protection actually holds. The free roadmap builder shows you the path; the paid roadmap walks it with you.
Ready to launch?
Pick the tool that fits the shop you are running this month, set it up in an afternoon, and get back to work. Build your free Contractor Lane roadmap and put every setup step, including this one, in the right order.
General educational information for people starting a business in Washington. Requirements and fees change. Contractor Lane is not a law firm or tax advisor.