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Zoho Books is a new service that offers an online library of books with their own subscription business model. This innovative startup has just announced the launch of Zoho Books, so let’s review what you need to know now before diving in on this platform.
Zoho Books is a company that offers online accounting software. Their pricing for the year 2022 can be found on their website. Read more in detail here: zoho books pricing.
Zoho Books is a cloud-based accounting software that includes an integrated CRM, inventory, and Management of a project system. Income and cost monitoring, invoicing, sales tax management, and time tracking are just a few of the tools available. For organizations with less than $50,000 in annual sales, Zoho Books provides a free plan, as well as three premium subscriptions that start at $20 per organization, per month.
What Zoho Books Are Good For
Small companies may utilize Zoho Books’ numerous valuable capabilities to automate various business activities, such as Reconciliation of bank accounts and recurring invoicing. Inventory management, accounts payable (A/P), accounts receivable (A/R), project accounting, and reporting are the system’s major strengths, according to our internal case study where we examined the entire working Zoho Books system.
In comparison to other comparable accounting tools, Zoho’s general features are much better developed. We suggest Zoho Books for companies seeking for a full accounting application at a fraction of the cost of more costly software like QuickBooks based on these findings.
Zoho Books is very useful for
- Businesses looking for a cheaper alternative to QuickBooks can consider Zoho Books. It has many of the same features as QuickBooks but at a lesser cost. For example, Zoho Books’ Professional plan, which costs $24 per month, includes project accounting and inventory management, while QuickBooks Plus costs $80. It entered our list of the top QuickBooks Alternatives because of its cost, especially for freelancers.
- Self-employed people and freelancers: Create and send Professional invoices, monitor time and project expenditures to include on invoices, and manage all of your clients in one location with Zoho Books. Our guide to the best accounting software for freelancers might assist you if you’re seeking for an effective accounting tool for your project-based or hourly freelancing company.
- Companies searching for integrated management software in the ecommerce space include: Zoho Books works with other Zoho products, such as Zoho Inventory and Zoho Commerce, to automate several elements of your ecommerce company, including sales and marketing, inventory, and accounting. Our list of the best ecommerce accounting software includes the supplier.
- Users on iOS: Zoho Books is one of our most popular accounting programs for Mac users. It lets you send bills, estimates, and account statements to customers over iMessage, and Siri can keep track of transactions for you. Furthermore, Zoho Books is compatible with Apple Watch, making it particularly useful for iOS users on the move.
- Businesses looking for accounting software with a mobile app should: We noted that Zoho Books’ A/P function is one of its strongest features, and it is even one of our top-recommended A/P software. Its mobile app is useful for keeping track of spending and invoices, as well as obtaining insight into how your firm is doing thanks to its KPI dashboard.
Zoho Books isn’t the best option for you.
- Users who manage the books for many businesses: One of the disadvantages of utilizing Zoho Books is that you can’t create and manage several businesses from a single account. Explore our selection of the finest multicompany accounting software if you need to combine financial accounts from various organizations.
- Companies that need fixed asset management: Xero differs from Zoho Books and other accounting software in that it includes a full-featured fixed asset manager that calculates depreciation expenditure and keeps track of accumulated depreciation.
- Businesses who wish to send an unlimited number of invoices for free: Zoho Books’ free plan limits you to 1,000 invoices per year, but Wave lets you to send as many invoices as you want for free.
Are you on the lookout for something unique? Check out our top selections in our guide to the best small company accounting software.
Zoho Books Accounting Pros & Cons
Visit Zoho Books for more information.
Case Study: Zoho Books
We extensively assessed Zoho Books in our case study to see how it performed across 11 predetermined areas and how it compared to QuickBooks Online and Xero within the same set of features. Our case study is summarized in the graph below.
Zoho Books vs. QuickBooks Online and Xero: A Case Study
According to the findings, Zoho Books wins in the project accounting, customer support, and mobile app categories. While it lags behind QuickBooks and Xero in terms of sales and taxes, it has a tiny advantage in terms of inventory and is a close competitor to QuickBooks in terms of general functionality. Fixed asset management is Zoho Books’ major flaw, exactly as QuickBooks Online’s. For a detailed review of how Zoho Books did in each area, see our features section.
Pricing for Zoho Books
Zoho Books provides a free plan as well as three premium subscriptions that range from $20 per organization per month to $70 per organization per month. The amount of users and invoices, as well as sophisticated features like recurring payments, inventory monitoring, Budgeting, and Reports made to order, are the key variations between the plans.
A brief review of each plan is provided below to give you a better understanding of what to anticipate from each membership level.
Free
This is appropriate for firms with yearly revenues of less than $50,000. It has several restrictions, such as being restricted to a single user and only allowing you to submit 1,000 invoices each year. It contains the following items:
- Reconciliation of bank accounts
- Keeping track of your expenses
- Tracking your mileage
- Accounts ledger
- Payments may be made both online and offline.
- Entries in the journal
- Management of contacts
- Management of 1099 contractors
- Reports
- Email assistance is available.
- Client-facing portal
- Tracking of sales taxes
- Reports
Standard
The Standard package allows you to send up to 5,000 invoices each year and includes three users. It contains everything in the Free plan, as well as the following:
- Costs that repeat themselves
- Bank feeds in real time
- User roles are pre-defined.
- Management of a project
- Locking transactions
- Views and fields that you create yourself
- Tags for reporting
- Updates in bulk
- Payment gateways that are integrated
- Support is available through email, phone, and chat.
Professional
This plan includes everything in the Standard plan and is designed for organizations with up to five people. It also includes:
- Purchase orders and sales orders are two different things (POs)
- Approvals for sales and purchases
- Credits to vendors
- Invoices for retainer services
- Bills that repeat themselves
- Support for several currencies
- Inventory management
- Templates for journals
- Billing and timekeeping
- Estimating the cost of a job
- Up to ten processes are possible.
- Profitability of the project
- Permissions for certain users
- Email notifications, in-app notifications, and field updates are all available.
Premium
Upgrade to Zoho’s top level, Premium, if you have up to ten users. Everything from the Professional package is included, plus the following additional features:
- Personalized domain
- Branches
- Portal for vendors
- Buttons made to order
- Budgeting
- Web Tabs and Related Lists
- Schedulers and custom functions
- Up to 200 workflows are possible.
- Reports made to order
- Twilio and Zoho Sign integration
There are a variety of add-ons available, including:
- Additional users are $3 per month.
- Autoscans with advanced features are $10. (50 scans per month)
- $2 per credit for snail mail
Features of Zoho Books
While Zoho Books’ Free plan includes basic features, like invoicing and Keeping track of your expenses, the advanced capabilities you will receive depend on your subscription plan. Below, we briefly discuss the results of our case study of Zoho Books Professional within the 11 categories, plus a link to videos where you can watch our complete assessment of each feature.
Zoho Books offers almost all the general features and benefits you may desire from an accounting program, including the ability to set up your organization profiles, import and modify Accounts ledger, enter opening balances for bank, credit card, and other types of accounts, and lock your books when you’re ready to close out the year. For an additional fee, you can set up additional users and give them only the access needed for their role. The program is generally easy to set up, but since it’s a very complicated program, there are some features that are hidden within each other, which makes it a bit difficult to navigate especially for new users. However, when you get used to the nuances, you should be able to understand the software easily.
Video of Zoho Books’ General Features
With Zoho Books, you can enter, manage, and track purchase transactions, including bills, expenses, estimates, and even Credits to vendors for returns. The program enables you to manage your business expenses with purchase orders that you can convert to bills easily. If you have periodic payments to make, such as utility bills like telephone service, you can set up recurring payments and add payment reminders so you can track bills to be paid easily. The automated workflow for managing expenses allows you to categorize your financial transactions easily. Zoho Books offers an easy way to add product or service items using the Items menu located on the left sidebar on your dashboard:
In Zoho Books, create a new item.
The advantage of adding product and service items is that you can include a description and pricing that will immediately fill on all of your buying and sales forms. In addition, each inventory item you want to monitor must have a product item.
The A/P system also has the following significant features:
- Assign a payment to a customer or project as chargeable.
- From the mobile app, send a copy of an expenditure receipt to your Zoho Books account.
- An invoice that isn’t paid on time
Accounts Payable Video in Zoho Books
The invoicing component of Zoho Books is as good as the A/P system. It includes a variety of essential templates, such as spreadsheet forms. You may change the background color, upload your logo, and include a customized greeting for your clients when making an invoice. The option to send your invoice in many languages and choose the right currency depending on your company or customer’s location is a unique invoicing tool. You may send regular invoices or plan them in advance, as well as include attachments, discounts, and shipping costs, as well as a salesperson field. When you send an invoice, it informs clients of any outstanding amounts, making it easier for them to pay:
Zoho Books Customized Invoice Example
Accounts Receivable Video from Zoho Books
Cash Management and Banking
Zoho Books has an advanced banking module for reconciling bank transactions. There are two ways you can import bank account transactions into Zoho Books—by connecting your bank account (Bank feeds in real time) and importing bank statements manually. It doesn’t support QuickBooks Online files like QuickBooks Online and Wave, but you can upload files in other helpful formats like comma-separated values (CSV) files and Excel. You can enter a statement balance manually when reconciling your bank account, which is important since it enables you to perform a reconciliation even if you don’t import your bank activity. This is a surprising rarity among the software we’ve reviewed. After reconciling your bank transactions, you can see your detailed reconciliation status reports, including matched and unmatched transactions. You can save your reconciliation before completion and return to it later. The only issue we found is that there’s no option to enter monthly service fees as part of your reconciliation, so you’ll need to enter the fees in a separate transaction before reconciling.
Zoho Books Cash Management and Banking Video
Zoho Books, like the majority of small company accounting software, lacks functionality for managing and monitoring fixed assets. You can make a journal entry and look at the fixed asset entry, but that’s about it. You can’t keep track of fixed assets or set up depreciation. Most small companies leave depreciation to their tax preparers, but if you want to calculate depreciation on your fixed assets, we suggest Xero, which is the only accounting software we’ve examined that has this capability.
Fixed Assets Video by Zoho Books
Zoho Books allows you to create an estimate and associate a project to it using the Project module found on the Time Tracking menu. When creating an estimate, you can add items, like inventory, labor, and sales taxes. Once approved, you can convert the estimate into an invoice easily. You can also assign actual labor to a project and record the actual inventory used in the project. The only issue we encountered is that you can’t find the actual inventory used in a project in the actual vs budget report, though you can view it in the profit and loss (P&L) statement. If you need dedicated software for Management of a project, explore our list of the best contractor accounting software programs.
Project Accounting using Zoho Books
When the sales tax module is activated, Zoho Books calculates sales taxes automatically based on where you collect your taxes. You can create and manage records for independent contractors, apply tax on inventory items, and view sales tax liability details. Zoho Books can’t be used to pay and file sales and income tax returns. Zoho Books’ sales tax features are included in the assessment of the accounts receivable, so there is no separate video available. Zoho Books has complete Inventory management features for tracking stock levels. It allows you to track the cost of goods available for sale and allocate that cost between ending inventory and the cost of goods sold (COGS). You can adjust the quantity and cost of inventory, and sort out items based on product details, vendor details, and stock keeping unit (SKU). If inventory accounting is important to you, then Zoho Books is a great choice. We have no separate video for Zoho Books’ inventory as it is discussed in the accounts payable and accounts receivable section. Zoho Books has an excellent selection of financial and accounting reports, including a general business overview, P&L statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets, general ledger, trial balance, A/P and A/R, sales and payment received, inventory, taxes, and project and timesheets. An important missing feature is that there’s no option to see the time and expenses you haven’t added to your invoice, which is something QuickBooks Online does. Nevertheless, Zoho Books still has powerful reporting capabilities. Zoho Books offers only Email assistance is available. for Free users, but when you upgrade to any of the paid plans, you’ll get access to all forms of customer support, including phone support and live chat. You can either call a rep or submit a ticket and wait for them to call you. The live chat feature is available on the Zoho Books website and within the software itself. If these options are not enough, Zoho Books also offers a comprehensive selection of self-help resources available, including webinars, tutorial videos, a frequently asked questions (FAQs) page, and a user community forum. Zoho Books boasts its unbeatable mobile application which contains all essential features that businesses need, at least when they are on the road. As reflected in the table below, Zoho Books has all the features we look for in good mobile accounting software.
Options for Assisted Bookkeeping
Through its Zoho Books Advisors program, Zoho Books provides supported bookkeeping services. Zoho Books consultants are Zoho Books-certified accountants, bookkeepers, and tax specialists who know all there is to know about the software. If you need the services of a Zoho Books Advisor, you may search through Zoho Books’ online database of independent accountants, bookkeepers, and financial consultants to select the ideal one for your requirements.
Integrations
Zoho Books is an accounting program with a lot of features. Zoho Books readily interacts with third-party software such as PayPal, Stripe, Gusto, Shopify, BigCommerce, and Mailchimp, in addition to its built-in interaction with other Zoho products like as Zoho Inventory, Zoho Checkout, and Zoho CRM.
Alternatives
Conclusion
Zoho Books is a feature-rich accounting program that costs a fraction of what QuickBooks does. It boasts a very affordable free plan, a user-friendly UI, and plenty of capabilities for automating company activities. It boasts unrivaled customer service and a mobile app that isn’t even close to QuickBooks. Despite its invoicing limitations, Zoho Books may be as good as, if not better than, QuickBooks under the Free and Standard versions.
Zoho Books is a cloud-based software that helps small businesses and people to manage their books. It offers features like bookkeeping, invoicing, payroll, inventory management, and accounting. The company offers two different pricing plans: Zoho Books Basic and Zoho Books Plus. Reference: zoho books features.
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