- Invoicing: Create professional, customizable invoices quickly, with options to add tracked time, expenses, and taxes, and send them to clients for faster payments.
- Expense Tracking: Monitor and categorize business expenses in real-time, with receipt upload capabilities for accurate financial records.
- Time Tracking: Log billable hours for projects or tasks, easily integrating tracked time into invoices for precise client billing.
- Project Management: Manage projects with tools to assign tasks, track progress, and collaborate with team members efficiently.
- Client Management: Organize client information, track interactions, and streamline communication through a dedicated client portal.
- Online Payments: Accept payments via multiple gateways, with automated payment reminders to ensure timely collections.
- Reporting: Generate real-time reports on invoices, expenses, and overall business performance for informed decision-making.
- Multi-User Access: Allow team members or accountants to access financial data simultaneously, with customizable access levels for security.
- Cloud-Based Accessibility: Access financial data anytime, anywhere, from any internet-connected device, ensuring flexibility for remote work.
- Data Security: Utilize encryption and secure cloud storage to protect financial data, with automatic backups for disaster recovery.
- Automation: Automate repetitive tasks like invoice generation, payment reminders, and expense categorization to reduce errors and save time.
- Scalability: Scale features, users, or storage as your business grows, without requiring significant infrastructure upgrades.
- Integration: Connect with payment gateways like Stripe and PayPal for streamlined billing workflows.
Cloud Books
CloudBooks handles invoicing, estimates, expense and time tracking, project management, and online payments for small businesses and freelancers.
Updated July 30, 2026
Cloud Books Overview
CloudBooks is a cloud based invoicing and billing software designed for small businesses, freelancers, and agencies. It helps users create and send professional invoices and estimates, track expenses and billable time, manage projects, and accept online payments through integrated gateways like Stripe and PayPal.
With unlimited invoicing, multi currency billing, automated payment reminders, and real time reports on business performance, CloudBooks keeps client billing organized and easy to manage from any internet connected device.
Key Features
Pricing
| Plan Name | Price | Who It’s For | Key Features |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lifetime Plan | $999 (one-time payment) | Long-term users or agencies | Unlimited invoices, clients, users, estimates, expenses; unbranded; includes online payments, unlimited storage, email & chat support. |
| Team Plan | $9.99/month | Small teams (up to 5 users) | All Lifetime features, plus capped at 5 users; unlimited everything else. |
| Agency Plan | $19.99/month | Larger teams or agencies | Full features with unlimited users; similar to above but with more user flexibility. |
Pricing source: https://www.cloudbooksapp.com/pricing
Pros
| Competitor | Pros of CloudBooks |
|---|---|
| QuickBooks Enterprise | CloudBooks charges $9.99 a month for Team with five users, $19.99 for Agency with unlimited users, or $999 once for a lifetime license. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise starts at $2,210 a year for Gold. For a freelancer who needs invoices, estimates, expenses, time tracking and projects and nothing more, the difference is hard to argue with. |
| Zoho Invoice | Zoho Invoice costs nothing but stays with quotes, invoices and payments. CloudBooks adds time tracking, expense logging and project management inside the same Team plan, and every tier carries unlimited invoices, clients, expenses, estimates and storage. Invoices go out unbranded on all three plans. |
| Xero | The one time lifetime license removes the subscription entirely, where Xero bills $25 to $90 a month in the US, every month. CloudBooks keeps the feature list deliberately short: billing, estimates, expenses, time and projects, with chat and email support on every plan. Teams that never wanted a full ledger have very little to set up. |
| FreshBooks | FreshBooks Lite at $23 a month limits you to five billable clients and charges $11 a month for each extra team member. CloudBooks Team costs $9.99 for five users with unlimited clients, and Agency at $19.99 lifts the user cap altogether. Both cover invoicing, expenses and time, so the difference shows up mainly on the bill. |
| Paylocity | Paylocity quotes custom pricing based on company size, product mix and support needs, so no number appears until you speak to sales. CloudBooks posts all three of its prices publicly and starts a trial without a card. It is also built to bill clients rather than to run HR, payroll and benefits. |
Cons
| Competitor | Cons of CloudBooks |
|---|---|
| QuickBooks Enterprise | CloudBooks has no general ledger, no payroll and no enterprise reporting; it stops at invoicing, estimates, expenses, time and projects. QuickBooks Desktop Enterprise bundles payroll, with Enhanced Payroll adding up to $3 per employee a month, and supports 30 to 40 simultaneous users. Anything resembling formal accounting has to happen somewhere else. |
| Zoho Invoice | There is no free CloudBooks tier at all, only a trial you can start without a card. Zoho Invoice costs nothing indefinitely, which is hard to beat for a sole trader sending a handful of invoices. Even the entry Team plan carries a monthly fee, and the lifetime option is a $999 outlay up front. |
| Xero | The CloudBooks feature list includes no bank connection or reconciliation, so transactions get entered by hand. Xero reconciles bank feeds from its $25 Early plan and adds multi currency and project time costing at $90. CloudBooks also lists no mobile app, so working away from the desk means the browser. |
| FreshBooks | CloudBooks does no double entry accounting and no payroll. FreshBooks sells payroll for $40 a month plus $6 per user and gives your accountant direct access to the books, and its $70 Premium plan lifts client limits entirely. Service firms that grow tend to outgrow CloudBooks quickly. |
| Paylocity | Paylocity covers HR, payroll and workforce management, and CloudBooks has none of it, nor a payroll integration to fall back on. If you need to pay staff as well as bill clients, CloudBooks handles only half the job. |
Reviews
- G2 Review (Rating: 4.6/5 from 14 reviews): A small business user in accounting wrote “CloudBooks just made my company’s operations much easier. The guys did a great job on the website’s interface. Simple, neat, and clear,” while suggesting fuller accounting reports: “Comprehensive company accounts could be a good add-on such as Balance Sheet, Profit & Loss etc.”
- Software Advice Review (Rating: 3.4/5 from 23 reviews): Ratings here are more mixed. Longtime users praise the simplicity — one wrote it is “Easy to setup and to use” — but a 1 star reviewer from October 2024 warned “No client service at all” after getting no reply to support emails.
