Vena vs FreshBooks: Which is a better fit?

Soumya: Hi, my name is Soumya. I'm a financial analyst at Achievement Network, and I give Vena a score of three out of five. We were using a combination of Google Sheets and Excel to build our models and present our reports to our C-level executive. We chose Vena to have a single source of truth where we can bring in our actuals data, compare it against the budget that we would have set in one time in the year, and we would have a source or a tool where we can forecast throughout the year. And Vena is also a great tool to report on. So we would share the Vena license with our C-level executives, and they could open their financials any point in time, any day, and view their financials live. Vena is also a cloud-based platform, so all our data could be stored in a cloud platform and there was no need for a desktop version, and so the single source of truth could be maintained for everybody. The implementation process was pretty easy and very quick. The Vena company itself, they provide a learning platform and a consultant who can help you ramp up into learning the platform itself and how to model in it. So it's a pretty easy process and it took about two, three months of implementation. Vena is a tool that's better suited for a small-size company, small to mid-size company. It's also very suited to a nonprofit or academia-based company, and that is how the company markets the product itself. It has some issues with scalability, and hence the recommendation to stay within the mid-range size as a tool. Another thing to note would be that it's a great tool if you want to bring it in-house and model yourself, and if you want to have your analyst learn the platform and build and integrate and all of those things. If you bring in a third party consultant itself, it can get pricey, which is, in my opinion, not very worth spending your dollars on. You would rather have your full-time employee learn the platform and you can be up and running in no time, and that would have a much, much longer and larger ROI than getting an outside consultant to do your things. Another thing to note would be scalability, as I mentioned before, is on the low side. So try to maximize on that side of the platform, try to build it as minimal as possible so that you can scale on it without the model breaking all the time.

Andrew T.: Hi, my name is Andrew. I'm the Chief Executive Officer at ATS Group. I give FreshBooks a rating of four. All right, so we used quite a lot of different softwares, FreshBooks being one of those softwares. Before we moved to FreshBooks, we were using a software known as Ways. We moved to FreshBooks because FreshBooks was designed to be for clients who want to do their own bookkeeping with us. Just providing them with guidance on doing so. It was more ideal for those kind of clients. FreshBooks is a pretty easy software to use. That's one of the reasons why we decided to use it for our clients who wanted to do their own bookkeeping. It's a very simple, very user-friendly. It allows for our clients to be able to do their books with little or no assistance from us, and it's quite ideal for entrepreneurs or business owners that wish to do their own accounting. Plus, they get very great support from the FreshBooks team. The process to get started using with FreshBooks was pretty simple. First of all, we were contacted by one of the reps at FreshBooks. They gave us a tutorial on the product, how it's used, the benefits of the product, and things like that. And then they guided us in setting up the product and they offer a lot of training. Their portal provides you with ongoing training and ongoing support. So the setup and use of the FreshBooks was quite easy and simple. So my advice to anybody looking for any new software, FreshBooks, or any other software out there is first of all, do your research. Read reviews such as this one right now so you can compare. Not every software is ideal for everyone, so what's ideal for me may not necessarily ideal for you, but once you compare the software, see what they offer, know the advantages, disadvantages, the pros and the cons, and that's one of the most important things to do. Then of course, all of these companies, FreshBooks included, normally give you a trial period. So you can actually try the software out. So you can do a test run and you can do side-by-side trials. So you can be using FreshBooks on one side, another accounting software on the other side. Compare both of them to see which one works best for you. And then after that you can go ahead and make a decision as to which one you want to move forward with.