Is Refrens real accounting software or just invoicing?
Real accounting. Refrens' own help documentation shows a journal voucher book with explicit debit and credit entries, a chart of accounts with opening balances and account groups, and downloadable ledger statements — alongside balance sheet, P&L and accounts payable and receivable. It started as a freelancer invoicing tool and moved upmarket, but the double-entry engine is genuine and any comparison that calls it "just invoicing" is wrong.
What does Refrens cost in 2026?
From refrens.com/refrens-premium on 28 July 2026: Free at ₹0 capped at 15 documents with 2 users; Accounts Lite ₹5,900/year with 2 users; Accounts Pro ₹15,000/year with 3 users, which is where GST tools, e-invoicing and e-way bills begin; Workflows ₹22,000/year with 5 users; Operations ₹39,000/year for full inventory; and Services on a custom quote. Third-party listings such as Techjockey show a different quarterly plan structure, so Refrens appears to have repackaged recently — use the vendor page.
What does HelloBooks cost in India?
Free forever, uncapped by turnover, with 2,500 AI credits per month and up to two users. Pro is ₹499/month or ₹4,999/year against a list price of ₹999 — that includes GST filing, e-invoicing, Tally sync, unlimited users, multi-entity, API access, inventory, three-way matching and multi-currency. Business is ₹1,999/month or ₹19,999/year. Launch pricing is rate-locked for twelve months after subscribing.
Does Refrens file my GST returns?
It prepares them. Refrens generates filing-ready GSTR-1, GSTR-3B and annual GSTR-9 from your data and exports them as JSON, CSV or PDF, plus GSTR-2B reports — but it names no GSP relationship and does not offer direct GSTN submission. You or your CA upload to the portal. HelloBooks files GSTR-1, 3B and 9 through Fynamics, a GSTN-authorized GSP, with GSTR-2B and IMS reconciliation and ITC matching. If "filed" versus "prepared" matters to your workflow, that is the single most important line in this comparison.
Do both do e-invoicing and e-way bills?
Yes, and credit where due — Refrens genuinely ships both. E-invoice with IRN and QR from the GSTN portal, and one-click e-way bills from any invoice without switching portals. The catch is the tier: both start at Accounts Pro, ₹15,000/year. In HelloBooks they are included from Pro at ₹499/month, which works out at ₹5,988 a year including the whole ledger.
Can Refrens work with Tally?
No integration or export compatibility is documented. Refrens runs a dedicated "Refrens vs Tally" page positioning itself as a Tally alternative — "Why Businesses Are Switching From Tally To Refrens" — and that page makes no mention of Tally integration. If your chartered accountant works in Tally, that is worth probing directly before you commit. HelloBooks takes the opposite approach: a Tally 6.2 connector that imports keeping every voucher number and keeps pushing to Tally afterwards.
What AI does Refrens have?
AI OCR document scanning is generally available and is a priced, metered line item — 15 documents a month on Free, 50 on Accounts Lite, 100 on Accounts Pro and unlimited on Workflows. FREYA, an AI accounting agent for natural-language querying of business finances, launched in June 2025; the homepage describes it as available but users request access via a form, and Refrens' own FREYA page states no availability designation or plan. We have not claimed a status Refrens has not stated.
What AI does HelloBooks ship?
AI auto-categorization at 95%+ accuracy, OCR bill and receipt capture with smart line-item extraction, Munimji — a conversational accounting assistant with 60+ tools — bookkeeping over the official WhatsApp Business API in Hindi, English and Hinglish with voice notes and India data residency, AI payables, AI calling for overdue receivables, a CFO agent, and an AI Analysis tab on every standard report. It draws on one credit wallet rather than a per-document count.
Which is better for inventory?
HelloBooks, on both depth and price point. Item master, bill of materials, FIFO, LIFO and weighted-average valuation, goods-receipt notes, low-stock alerts and forecasting come with Pro at ₹499/month, plus a full warehouse module, POS, restaurant and manufacturing with MRP and job costing. Refrens has real inventory — batch tracking, multi-location stock, barcode scanning, five warehouses — but only on the Operations plan at ₹39,000/year.
What are the common complaints about Refrens?
The G2 dislike tags are unusually well quantified as of July 2026: missing features (27 reviews), limited advanced accounting features (14), high pricing (5), difficult customization (4), inadequate reporting (4), lack of mobile integration (4) and limited integrations (3). Capterra India reviews from April and May 2026 add that mobile navigation is less intuitive than desktop, support response times are inconsistent at peak, and you cannot edit existing SKU descriptions. The consistent themes are mobile weaker than web, accounting depth thin at scale, and capability locked behind higher tiers.
How many users do I get?
Refrens caps seats by tier — 2 on Free and Accounts Lite, 3 on Accounts Pro, 5 on Workflows. HelloBooks Free supports 2 users, and Pro and Business have unlimited users with roles and permissions. If your team is growing, that difference compounds: on HelloBooks adding people does not change the price or force a tier upgrade.
Can I migrate from Refrens to HelloBooks?
Yes. Export your chart of accounts, customers, vendors, items, invoices and bills to CSV from Refrens, and import them into HelloBooks — the chart-of-accounts import uses AI to read your existing structure, retain account numbers and map intelligently, so there is no re-learning for your team. The migration flow at /migrate includes a dry-run preview and one-click rollback so you can test before committing.
Is Refrens a stable company?
Refrens Internet Private Limited is Bengaluru-based, founded 2018, and raised one seed round in 2020 from a notable angel list including Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Anupam Mittal, with no Series A publicly reported. Inc42 reports revenue of ₹5.5 Cr in FY25, up 143% year on year, and around 103 employees. Its own traction claims are inconsistent — the homepage says 100,000+ businesses while a June 2025 press item said 150,000+ — so treat either figure with the date attached.
Which has more integrations?
Neither is deep here, and Refrens reviewers say so directly. Refrens documents Cashfree Payments, IndiaMART, Meta and a public API; Zapier, Shopify, Stripe, PayPal and bank feeds are not documented on Refrens-owned pages. HelloBooks ships Plaid, Stripe, Razorpay, PayPal, PineLabs, a Tally 6.2 connector and guided QuickBooks USA migration as live, with Amazon Seller Central in beta and Xero, Zoho Books, NetSuite and Odoo on the roadmap, plus API access from Pro and a public MCP server.
Is HelloBooks secure and DPDP-aware?
HelloBooks is SOC 2 Type II certified with the report available under NDA through the Trust Center; ISO 27001 is on the compliance roadmap and we do not claim it as certified. Data is AES-256 encrypted at rest and TLS 1.2+ in transit, MFA is available, hosting is AWS with 99.9% uptime and daily encrypted backups. India DPDP is covered and the WhatsApp agent runs with India data residency. Sub-processors and residency detail are at /trust-center.
What is Refrens genuinely better at?
The front end and the track record. Invoicing, quotations, proformas, credit notes and delivery challans are polished and freelancer-friendly, and having a sales pipeline, lead capture forms and vendor management inside the same product is a real convenience if you do not want a separate CRM. It also has roughly 500 independent reviews averaging 4.6 to 4.9, which is a deeper public track record than ours. Those are fair reasons to choose it.