Moneybird vs Productive

Pick Moneybird if you are a freelancer or a small company in the Netherlands or Belgium and you handle most of your admin yourself. You send invoices and quotes, process purchase receipts, match bank lines and file VAT, with your accountant able to look in when needed.

Time tracking feeds invoices, which suits a freelancer or a small agency that bills hours. You can also take online payments with iDEAL, QR code, direct debit and card. It is the right fit when the pain is late invoices and a VAT weekend every quarter.

There is no free plan, but there is a trial. Check how the plan limits processed bank transactions, because that number grows with the business. Skip it if you need multi-entity or international accounting.

Pick Productive if you sell time. That means an agency, a consultancy or an IT services firm with several projects running, people booked across them and budgets that can burn without anyone noticing.

It covers resource planning, project management with Gantt charts, time tracking, budgeting, invoicing, expenses and revenue forecasting. The payoff is a profit report per project and per client that you can open in a minute, instead of a spreadsheet you rebuild.

It is priced per user, and the price depends on team size and plan, so test it on one real project during the trial. It is too much for a team that only needs a task tracker, or for a solo freelancer whose spreadsheet still works. Keep an accounting tool alongside it for the ledger and VAT.