SparkReceipt Help

FreshBooks integration (beta)

How to connect SparkReceipt to FreshBooks, what is imported from FreshBooks, how expenses and income are published to it, and how to get the integration enabled on your account

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Written by SparkReceipt TeamUpdated Sep 17, 2026

The FreshBooks integration is currently in beta and rolling out in stages. It is not enabled by default for every account – to try it out, please contact SparkReceipt support through the in-app chat widget and ask for the FreshBooks integration to be turned on for your account.

What the FreshBooks integration does

The FreshBooks integration links a SparkReceipt account to a single FreshBooks business so that your accounting reference data stays in sync and the documents you capture in SparkReceipt can be posted straight into FreshBooks.

Once connected, SparkReceipt pulls reference data from FreshBooks and pushes processed documents to FreshBooks:

  • From FreshBooks → SparkReceipt (read-only sync):
    • Expense categories – your FreshBooks expense categories become expense categories in SparkReceipt. FreshBooks does not let connected apps create categories, so the list is exactly what is set up in FreshBooks.
    • Clients and vendors – FreshBooks clients are imported as customers (for income documents) and bill vendors as merchants (for expenses).
    • Cash and bank accounts from your chart of accounts – listed under Purchase Accounts on the settings page.
    • Income accounts – your FreshBooks income (revenue) accounts are imported for reference.
    • Taxes – your FreshBooks taxes, so each line's tax can be matched to a FreshBooks tax rate.
    • Business preferences – currency, country and company name are read from FreshBooks to keep SparkReceipt aligned with your FreshBooks settings.
  • From SparkReceipt → FreshBooks (publishing documents):
    • Paid receipts and paid expense invoices are published as FreshBooks Expenses.
    • Unpaid expense invoices are published as FreshBooks Bills, so they land in accounts payable.
    • Income documents are published as FreshBooks Invoices. If the document is marked as paid in SparkReceipt, a matching payment is recorded in FreshBooks.
    • The original attachment (PDF or image) is uploaded alongside the transaction. Image formats FreshBooks does not accept are converted to JPG before upload.

FreshBooks has no income categories – invoice lines in FreshBooks carry a description but no category. SparkReceipt therefore does not show an Income Categories tab for FreshBooks, and a category is not required to publish an income document.

Prerequisites

  • An active FreshBooks business that you are authorized to connect to third-party apps.
  • The FreshBooks integration unlocked for your account by SparkReceipt support – see the next section.
  • Only one accounting integration can be active on a SparkReceipt account at a time. If you already have QuickBooks Online, Xero, FreeAgent or Zoho Books connected, remove that connection before connecting FreshBooks.
  • The person doing the connecting must be a SparkReceipt administrator or accountant on the account – those are the roles that can see the Integrations settings.

How to get the integration enabled

Because the integration is still in beta, the Connect to FreshBooks action is only available to accounts that have been allow-listed by our team.

  1. Open SparkReceipt and click the in-app chat widget (the speech-bubble icon in the bottom-right corner).
  2. Let us know the name of the account you would like to connect to FreshBooks and that you'd like to join the FreshBooks beta.
  3. Once we enable the beta on your account, the Connect to FreshBooks action becomes available on your Integrations settings.

If you haven't heard back, feel free to nudge us in the same chat thread.

Seeing a "Get FreshBooks" button instead of "Connect to FreshBooks"?

If the FreshBooks card on your Integrations page shows Get FreshBooks instead of Connect to FreshBooks, the integration has not been enabled on your account yet. The Get FreshBooks button only opens the FreshBooks page on the SparkReceipt website – clicking it will not connect anything. Already a FreshBooks user? Skip that button and ask support to enable the beta as described above; once enabled, the same spot shows Connect to FreshBooks.

Connecting and initial setup

After the beta has been enabled on your account, the high-level setup flow is:

  1. Log in to SparkReceipt as an administrator or accountant and open the Integrations entry in the left-hand sidebar.
  2. Under the Accounting section, click Connect to FreshBooks. You'll be redirected to FreshBooks to sign in and authorize SparkReceipt.
  3. If your FreshBooks login has access to more than one business, SparkReceipt asks you to select the FreshBooks business you'd like to connect – the integration links a SparkReceipt account to a single FreshBooks business at a time.
  4. SparkReceipt then runs the initial sync, pulling in expense categories, clients, vendors, accounts and taxes from FreshBooks, as well as your business preferences. When the sync completes, you land on the FreshBooks Connection Settings page in SparkReceipt, where the Imported from FreshBooks section lets you review the imported data.
  5. Right after connecting, SparkReceipt asks whether it should auto-publish new expenses to FreshBooks. If you turn it on, every new expense is published as soon as it is scanned. You can change this later under Preferences on the same settings page (Auto-publish new expenses).

From that point on, documents you process in SparkReceipt can be published to FreshBooks from the document view.

Publishing documents to FreshBooks

Unless you turned on auto-publish, publishing to FreshBooks is a manual step in SparkReceipt. Documents only move to FreshBooks when you publish them.

Publish a single document

Open the document in SparkReceipt and click Publish to FreshBooks in the document view. The publish dialog shows what will be sent and lets you match each line to a FreshBooks tax code. After publishing, you'll see a link back to the record in FreshBooks.

Publish several documents at once

In the documents list, select the documents you want to publish and click the Publish action in the bulk-action bar at the top of the list. The dialog also offers an option to re-publish any documents that were already published, in case you've made edits in SparkReceipt that you want reflected in FreshBooks.

Documents added before connecting FreshBooks

Any documents that were processed in SparkReceipt before you connected FreshBooks were categorized using SparkReceipt's generic categories. Those generic categories aren't mapped to a FreshBooks category, so publishing them shows the error Category is not available in FreshBooks until they're moved to a FreshBooks-synced category. Two ways to fix this:

  • Pick a FreshBooks-synced category manually. Open the document, change the category to one of the FreshBooks expense categories, and publish.
  • Rescan the document. Use the Rescan document action on the document. The AI re-categorizes the document against the categories that are now available, which includes your FreshBooks categories.

If the category you need doesn't exist in FreshBooks at all, create it in FreshBooks first and then click Sync now on the FreshBooks Connection Settings page so it shows up in SparkReceipt.

Common publishing questions

Can a receipt be published to FreshBooks with several lines?

No. A FreshBooks Expense has a single amount and a single category, so a paid receipt with several line items is published as one Expense for the document's total, using the category set on the document. Tax is still tracked – it's sent as the tax fields on the Expense.

Unpaid expense invoices are different: they're published as FreshBooks Bills, which do carry one line per SparkReceipt line item.

What does the Account selector in the publish dialog do for FreshBooks?

When you publish an expense to FreshBooks, the Account selector in the publish dialog lists the cash and bank accounts synced from your FreshBooks chart of accounts. Choosing one records that account on the expense in SparkReceipt, so your own reports and filters stay accurate – but it is not sent to FreshBooks. FreshBooks expenses, bills and payments do not carry a paid-from account, so the record created in FreshBooks looks the same whichever account you pick. To attribute the payment to a specific bank account in FreshBooks, do that inside FreshBooks after publishing.

Can I publish a refund to FreshBooks?

No. FreshBooks has no vendor-credit or credit-note record, and its Expense and Bill endpoints reject negative amounts, so SparkReceipt refuses to publish refunds to FreshBooks and shows an error instead. Record refunds directly in FreshBooks.

Why does an income invoice look empty when I open it in FreshBooks?

Income is published as a FreshBooks Invoice with tax sent as line tax rates. FreshBooks stores and reports these correctly, but its read-only invoice preview page can show such invoices as empty. Open the invoice in the FreshBooks editor or download the PDF to see the lines and tax. SparkReceipt explains this under Publish as in the publish dialog.

Can an expense be published with an empty merchant, or a default vendor?

Publishing an expense requires a Merchant on the document – it becomes the vendor on the FreshBooks Expense or Bill. There is no setting for a default or fallback vendor. If you don't have the real supplier, enter a generic catch-all name (for example Miscellaneous) and reuse it – on Expenses it is sent as the vendor name, and for Bills SparkReceipt creates and reuses a matching FreshBooks bill vendor.

How are foreign-currency documents handled?

Documents are published in their original currency. FreshBooks clients and vendors accept any currency, so no per-currency contact is needed. FreshBooks does not store a home-currency equivalent on the record, so conversion to your base currency happens on the FreshBooks side, if at all.

What does "Tax handling when publishing" change?

The Tax handling when publishing preference on the FreshBooks Connection Settings page works the same as for the other accounting integrations. With Track tax (recommended), each line is matched to a FreshBooks tax and the tax amount is tracked separately. With the no-tax option, expenses are published as tax-inclusive totals with no tax fields.

Which attachment types are uploaded?

FreshBooks accepts PDF, JPEG, PNG, GIF, TIFF and BMP files. Other image formats (for example WebP or HEIC photos from a phone) are converted to JPG before upload. Other file types, such as Word or Excel documents, are not attached – the transaction is still published without the file.

Troubleshooting and feedback

Because FreshBooks is still in beta, you may occasionally see gaps or edge cases we haven't polished yet. If something doesn't look right – a missing category, a document that failed to publish, an unexpected error – please reply in the same in-app chat thread you used to enable the beta. That's the fastest way to get help and also the best way to help us make the integration solid enough to leave beta.

FreshBooks is a trademark of 2NDSITE Inc. SparkReceipt is an independent, third-party integration and is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by FreshBooks.