A Moneybird alternative when you only want to invoice
Moneybird is a good bookkeeping suite. If you do your own books and want to file the VAT return from the same screen, there is little reason to look for anything else. This article is for the other group: business owners who use Moneybird mainly to send invoices, while an accountant does the rest.
What you pay for then
Moneybird’s plans are built around the bookkeeping: booking bank transactions, processing purchase invoices, preparing and filing the VAT return. Making invoices is in there, but the price follows the administration. Anyone who only invoices and has an accountant therefore pays for work that accountant already does in their own software, and often for a higher plan than needed to get the bank link.
What an invoicing tool does differently
An invoicing tool like factuurmaken does the invoice and what is attached to it, and nothing else:
- invoices and quotes that meet the Dutch tax office’s requirements, with the VAT per rate calculated automatically;
- reminders that go out by themselves, in your words;
- a ‘Pay with iDEAL’ button in every invoice e-mail;
- a bank link that ticks off paid invoices, in every plan;
- e-invoices over UBL and Peppol;
- an accountant who reads along for free from their own account.
What is deliberately left out: journal entries, a general ledger, the VAT return. That is where the price difference comes from: a plan starts at €2.50 per month.
What you lose
Be honest about the other side. With an invoicing tool you do not file the VAT return from the same screen; you do see per quarter what you invoiced and how much VAT goes with it, but filing is done by you or through your accountant. If you also want to keep your expenses, at factuurmaken that is an add-on in which AI reads your receipts, not full bookkeeping. And if your accountant works in Moneybird and wants you to stay in it, switching is more hassle than it is worth.
How to switch
- Numbering. Check your last invoice number in Moneybird and set factuurmaken to continue from there. That way your sequence runs on without a gap.
- Clients. Add them as you invoice; with a KVK number factuurmaken pulls the details from the register. No import is needed.
- Old invoices. Leave them in Moneybird as long as your account runs, or export them as PDFs for your retention duty. They do not need to come along.
- Accountant. Invite them to a free accountant account, so they read along from the first new invoice.
The facts of both tools sit side by side in the comparison with Moneybird, with the date we checked the pricing page.