Zipbooks - Worthy of being a free Xero Alternative? (First impressions)

Whether you’re ready to venture out on your own or take your side hustle to a small business; it can be daunting to decide what accounting software to use. 

You may just be after something to send invoices, stay on top of bills or track your business account movements. In all these scenarios, one major free software comes up on Google searches: Zipbooks.

If you are reading this from Australia, then you may or may not have heard of it over the bustling noise of the major software: Xero, Quickbooks, MYOB and Reckon. 

All four of these only have a free trial, with no free version available.

With this in mind, we thought we’d start a new series, where we try out accounting software which claim to be completely free and claim to be decent alternatives to the above software. We’ll be trying these without watching any tutorials, videos, or even going through their website for a guide - this is to see just how easy it is for someone to pick-up and use the tool. 

First cab off the rank is Zipbooks, this blog is a quick summary of what we covered in the Youtube video below.

Invoicing – Aesthetically Pleasing

The first thing I checked after logging in was the Invoicing section. Overall, I found it very intuitive and easy-to-follow… However, I struggled to find where to enter the tax (GST) for the invoice while recording the video. Naturally, when I jumped on to edit the video I realised that this can be updated in the tax section (OOPS!). 

In the free version, you cannot save reusable templates for items or services. This means that you must type these out every time you create an invoice. Sounds bad, but if you save it handy somewhere ready for you to copy and paste it in, it’s not the worst thing in the world. 

A nifty little feature is the ability to invoice in any currency worldwide, which makes it useful for wherever you may be or if you have a global customer base.

The invoice itself was well-formatted and aesthetically pleasing – our logo popped and was nicely sized, the details came out looking great. If I received an invoice like the template I downloaded, I would be very happy with the presentation. 

Worth noting though that I did have issues sending the invoice (albeit to myself).

Quotes – Easy to Accept

Before we keep going, it’s worth noting that Zipbooks calls it “Estimates”, which you cannot change. So if you’re providing quotes for professional services or more used to branding them as quotes, this may be a deal breaker for you. 

The quotes (estimates) look basically the same as the invoice – so that’s a big tick. 

The biggest advantage was that when I looked into the quote, it was really easy to click “accept” and convert it to an invoice for issuing at a later date. 

There’s nothing else really to be said about it, just straightforward, nice-looking quotes which can easily be converted to invoices once the quote is accepted.

Integrations – Not Many

In the world of integrations and automation, it’s great to have different apps work together to make your life easier. Unfortunately, Zipbooks doesn’t do a great job of this. 

It integrates with Slack, but the other options are for US/CAN only, meaning that Zipbooks can only really be used as its own app – for invoicing and accepting quotes. 

Bank Feeds – Untested for Australia

Now, in my tests I did see if bank feeds could be set up, but it proved a struggle. I couldn’t find definitive answers to whether bank feeds worked or not for Australia. That being said, if tracking is the key reason you want to use free accounting software, this one may not be the best one for you.

Other items of note

Everything is in USD

In my testing, I noticed that the prices for even the starter version is in USD. On the current conversion rate, if you want to use the (slightly) more premium features, it works out to be $22/month. Jumping from a free version to that is quite a stretch, when we aren’t even sure bank feeds would work for Australian Institutions!

Constant package upgrades

Zipbooks constantly upgraded my plan to the next one up, every time I touched a feature in the free version. This resulted in not knowing what was premium and what wasn’t. 

You will need to be careful not to get used to any of the premium features as it will tempt you to purchase the full pack when there are better alternatives out there for a paid software subscription. 

Verdict

Zipbooks is a great free software if you are looking to send quotes and convert these to invoices. They look great and the interface is intuitive so a customer will be happy with how your invoice is presented. 

However, it is more likely to be categorised as an invoicing system more than accounting software.