Learn more about the FreshBooks economy—a thriving global network of freelancers, small business professionals, and service providers.
We spent a little time digging into the aggregate activity and usage across the FreshBooks economy to better understand the trends and needs of our users.
So far the data report proves what we’ve long suspected: There’s a thriving global network of freelancers, small business professionals ,and service providers—in short, you lovely people who are the underappreciated duct tape of the global economy.
So how big is this ball of duct tape? Well … as it turns out, $1 billion was invoiced worldwide using FreshBooks from January to early May of this year. In contrast, it took us until August to reach the same milestone last year.
FreshBooks Economy: Notable Points
Check out the infographic below and you’ll see we looked at activity based on country, and the findings are certainly thought-provoking. Here are some highlights—you can draw your own conclusions and interesting theories:
- The average invoice size on FreshBooks was $1,677
- Mexico and Sweden saw the largest invoice sizes with $4,669 and $4,423 respectively. India and Malaysia saw the smallest with $414 and $406
- Average invoice size for the U.S. was $919
- The average time to pay overall was 22.8 days
- China saw the shortest time to pay with 11.9 days, while India saw the longest at 31.7 days
- Average time to pay for the U.S. was 20 days
(All values are in US dollars.)
about the author
FreshBooks, the world’s #1 cloud accounting software for self-employed professionals. Built in 2003 after he accidentally saved over an invoice, Mike spent 3.5 years growing FreshBooks from his parent's basement. Since then, over 30 million people have used FreshBooks to save time billing, and invoice billions of dollars. A lover of the outdoors, Mike has been bitten so many times it’s rumored he’s the first human to have developed immunity to mosquitoes.
Mike is the co-founder of