A FreshBooks alternative for a business that runs on jobs: the checklist

This page is for a business whose work arrives as jobs rather than as hours: a contractor with a site, a machine shop with a part number, a studio with a shoot, an agency with a campaign, a trades firm with a callout. The thing you sell has a quote at the front, supplier bills and photographs in the middle, an invoice at the end, and a payment after that — and all of it belongs to one number. Most invoicing software is built around the invoice, which is the last document of the job and the least interesting one. This page makes no claims about FreshBooks — not what it does, not what it includes, not what it costs. Those things change, and the only honest source is the product's own site on the day you decide. What follows is a checklist you can hold against any product, including KRONENWERK, the Canadian and German rules that sit underneath it, and KRONENWERK's own answers — including the one that ends the comparison for a business that bills by tracked hours.

Why the job, and not the invoice, is the unit of work

Ask a contractor what a job costs and the answer is never on one document. It is the quote that was accepted, the order confirmation that changed it, the four supplier bills for material, the delivery note the yard signed, the twenty photographs of what was behind the wall, the drawing the client marked up, the invoice, the part payment and the balance. A business that keeps these in seven places — a drive, an inbox, a phone, an invoicing tool, a shoebox — does not have a job file; it has a search problem that surfaces months later, when a customer disputes a line or an auditor asks what the material actually cost. The question to put to any product is therefore not "can it send an invoice" but "show me one job, from quote to payment, on one screen, with the supplier bills and the photographs attached to it".

The second question follows from the first: what is the job worth? A job folder that carries an amount of its own invites double counting — the quote is not revenue, the order is not revenue, the invoice is. A well-built job folder holds documents and has no balance; the ledger takes its figures from the invoices and bills inside it. That sounds like a small design decision. It is the difference between a margin figure you can defend and one you have to explain.

The checklist: ten things to compare

Take the list to each product's documentation or demonstration. The useful question is never "is it on the roadmap" but "show me the document it produces for this case".

The tax facts that sit under rows 5, 6 and 8

For a Canadian job business the numbers are settled. The GST rate is 5 % and the QST rate is 9.975 %, each computed on the price before tax, so the two never compound; a document showing one merged line totals correctly and tells the buyer's bookkeeper the wrong thing about who was paid. Registration follows the small-supplier test: a business must register once its worldwide taxable sales exceed $30,000 over four consecutive calendar quarters, and below that it may not charge either tax unless it registers voluntarily. The buyer's side drives what must be printed. Under $100 the supplier's name, the date and the total suffice; from $100 the supplier's registration number and the amount of each tax must appear; from $500 the customer's name, the payment terms and a description of each supply are needed as well. Those tiers were $30 and $150 for many years and have been $100 and $500 since 20 April 2021. Records and the documents behind them are kept six years from the end of the tax year they relate to. The Québec invoice rules set this out line by line.

For a European job business the pressure is on the format. Under § 14 UStG an invoice carries a defined set of particulars — both parties' full names and addresses, the seller's tax number or VAT identification number, the issue date, a sequential invoice number, the quantity and nature of the supply, the date of supply, the consideration broken down by rate and exemption, the rate and tax amount, and the word Gutschrift where the buyer raises the document. Since 1 January 2025 a domestic German business must be able to receive an electronic invoice in the European standard format; issuing becomes mandatory in stages from 2027 for larger businesses and from 2028 for the rest. For a job business this mostly means one thing: the invoice at the end of the job has to leave as a file the customer's system can read, on the first attempt.

KRONENWERK's answers, row by row

1. The job folder. The transaction is a job folder inside the accounting: quote, order confirmation, delivery note, supplier bills, photos, invoice and payments under one number. It deliberately has no amount of its own — the figures come from the documents inside it, so nothing is counted twice.
2. Quote to invoice. The chain runs inside the transaction, and each document keeps its own identity and its own frozen copy once issued.
3. Supplier bills. Bills are posted against the transaction with the original file attached, so the cost side of a job sits beside the revenue side.
4. Attachments. Photos, drawings, signed delivery notes and e-mails attach to transactions, invoices, bills, customers and payments alike, with original filenames kept.
5. Two taxes. Multi-tax lines are computed on the net and printed separately with the registration numbers. KRONENWERK refuses to charge QST for a company with no QST registration on file, before a number is spent, and warns when a document's tax structure does not match the customer's province. See invoices and the Montréal page.
6. E-invoices. XRechnung and ZUGFeRD are generated and validated before the invoice gets a number; a violation is a refusal with the rule named. Incoming e-invoices are read into bills with the file attached.
7. Two currencies. Invoices can be issued in one currency while the books are kept in another, and both values appear on every ledger line.
8. The record. Issued documents are frozen snapshots, corrections are credit notes, numbering is gap-free, and every act carries who and when. An accountant can be invited into the company with the rights you choose.
9. Time tracking. There is none. See the next section, which exists because this row ends the comparison for some businesses.
10. Price and migration. Four plans from 29 € a month on the pricing page; no free plan and no trial. Customers, suppliers, open invoices and bills come in by CSV or XLSX with an approval step before anything lands and a reversal rule if it is wrong. Bank connections bring the account lines in for matching. An AI assistant connects over MCP on the Enterprise plan, with three levels — read only, propose, or act within a limit — and a per-act limit the company sets.

The row that may end the comparison: there is no time tracking

KRONENWERK has no timers, no timesheets and no hours-to-invoice. If your business quotes a price for a job and bills against that price, this changes nothing: the quote, the variations and the invoice are all in the transaction, and the hours are your own business. If your business bills tracked hours — an agency on a retainer, a studio on a day rate, a consultancy that reports hours to the client every month — then KRONENWERK is the wrong product today, and this page would rather say so now than have you discover it in the third week. Honesty is cheaper than a migration that has to be reversed. There is no roadmap promise here to soften it: either you bill by the job, or you need something else, or you keep a separate time tool and bring its totals in as invoice lines, which many firms do and which is a real answer, but it is two products and two subscriptions and you should price it that way.

The other gaps are shorter to state and no less firm. There is no payroll, so wages run elsewhere and arrive as entries. There is no DATEV interface and no SKR03 or SKR04 chart, which is the row that ends most German comparisons — settle it with your tax adviser before anything else. There is no ELSTER filing, and no GST/HST or QST filing: the figures per rate and category are in the reports, the filing is on the authorities' portals or with your accountant. KRONENWERK does not determine rates, does not decide whether a supply is taxable, zero-rated or exempt, and does not give tax advice.

What switching actually involves

Export customers, suppliers, open invoices, bills and a trial balance as of a date from whatever you run today; upload them; map the columns once; compare the totals; approve. Nothing lands until you approve it, and an import that turns out wrong can be reversed as a whole rather than unpicked row by row. Old invoice numbers are kept as they were and new ones continue your sequence, which matters because gap-free numbering is exactly what an auditor looks at. There is no dedicated adapter for any particular product, so the exports go through the generic CSV and XLSX mapping; the switching guide walks through the steps and the reversal rule. Most businesses pick the first day of a quarter, bring the open jobs across as transactions, and issue the first invoice the same afternoon. If you are comparing more broadly, the Canadian comparison and the page for businesses outgrowing a free tool cover the same ground from different starting points.

How KRONENWERK handles this

SUPPORTED WITH LIMITATIONS Transactions as job folders holding quote, order confirmation, delivery note, supplier bills, photos, invoice and payments under one number with no amount of their own; multi-tax lines computed on the net and printed separately with the registration numbers; QST refused without a QST registration; province-aware warnings; invoices in one currency with books in another and both values on every ledger line; XRechnung and ZUGFeRD issued and validated before numbering; incoming e-invoices read into bills with the file attached; frozen issued documents, credit notes and gap-free numbering; attachments everywhere; bank connections; CSV and XLSX migration with an approval step and a reversal rule; accountant access; an AI assistant over MCP with three levels and a per-act limit on the Enterprise plan. Not done: payroll, time tracking, DATEV and SKR03/SKR04, ELSTER filing, GST/HST and QST filing, rate determination, tax advice. Four plans from 29 € a month on the pricing page; no free plan and no trial.