Zoho Books Review

Matt By: Matt | Last updated September 27, 2017

zoho books logo accounting software white background

8.1 / 10

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PROS:

  • Lots of customizable invoices/estimates templates
  • Great customer support
  • Useful Client Portal
  • Good mobile app
  • Lots of automated features

CONS:

  • Dull bank reconciliation function
  • Below average free trial period (only 14 days, instead of 30)
  • There is no integrated payroll
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SUMMARY:

Zoho Books is a valuable choice especially for small organizations. It is user-friendly, highly customizable and has good invoicing, inventory and bookkeeping tools. It comes with a lot of automated features and an impressive customer support.  

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COMPLETE REVIEW

Zoho Books is cloud-based and it was developed by Zoho Corporation, a company that was founded in 1996. The company is based in California, but also has offices in China and India.

Zoho Books was created in 2011 and comes with a free 14-days trial, which is below the average, considering that most major competitors offer a 30-days one.

The program is very mobile friendly and has an app that is compatible with iOS, Android and Windows devices.

Zoho Books is suited for small businesses, but mid-sized and larger organizations can also benefit from the application.

The Basic plan, which is the cheapest, allows up to 50 contacts, 1 user and 1 accountant, bank reconciliation, expense tracking, custom invoices, recurring transactions and projects & timesheets.

The Standard plan allows up to 500 contacts and up to 3 users and adds reporting tags, vendor credits and bills to the list of features.

Professional allows unlimited contacts, up to 10 users and includes purchase order, sales order, inventory and custom domain.

The Zoho Books interface is user-friendly and the setup process is simple and quick. Once you fill in the necessary info about your company, set some preferences, connect your bank account and you are ready.

The tabs will appear at the left: Dashboard, Contacts, Items, Banking, Sales, Purchases, Accountant, Timesheet, Reports.

In case you are having problems to get started, there are instructional videos and demos you can watch. Also, for each tab, there is a Page Tips button.

Zoho Books has all the basic features you could need for your accounting purposes: invoices, expenses, contact management, purchase orders, sales, reports.

A cool fact is the fact that the program has a lot of automated features: automatic bank feeds, automated payment reminders that can be sent via e-mail to your customers, automated billing and more.

Zoho Books comes with 10 invoicing templates, which is the highest number we’ve seen so far and the program also explains what every template is best suited for. Zoho Books is quite customizable, too. You can choose between 10 fonts, several languages, add a logo and more. Each invoice lets you attach up to 5 files and you can convert the invoices to pdf, if you don’t want for them to be edited.

Estimates also come in 10 templates.

Payments can be recorded through bank transfer, cash or checks.

There is also a Client Portal which is very useful for your clients, because from it, they can pay their invoices online or view all their transactions, estimates, invoices, etc. But this feature is not only useful for your customers, but for you as well, because you can receive notifications about their activity (when they viewed or paid certain invoices, etc).

Another complex feature is Projects, which allows you to create all sorts of projects, budgets and tasks. You can also check the progress in real-time, using charts and graphs.

When it comes to reporting options, Zoho Books can generate 48 reports: general ledger, customer reviews and balances and many more). If you want, you can set up a weekly summary report and you will receive it by mail.

Bank reconciliation is another tool present in Zoho Books, but this one is pretty basic and doesn’t really rise to the level of its competitors. Transactions can only be matched manually, which is not really effective and there are other aspects that could really use some improvement.

In terms of integrations, Zoho Books integrates with 12 payment gateways: PayPal, Stripe, Square and others. There are also around 20 third-party integrations available: Zapier, Slack, Temponia and more.

Zoho Books also takes security very seriously. It uses 256-bit encryption and takes additional security measures such as two-factor authentication, scanning and others.

Pricing

There are 3 available plans: Basic, Standard, Professional.

Basic: $10.57/per organization/per month

Standard: $22.31/month

Professional: $34/month

If you choose to sign up for a yearly plan, you get 2 months off.

There are also add-ons available: you can buy 50 scans/month at $5/month or $50/year.

Help/Support

Phone: 8443165544 (US)

E-mail: [email protected]

Social media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/zoho

Customer support is also a thumbs up for Zoho Books. You can contact their reps on a 24 hour basis, 5 days/week. You can also e-mail them or use the live chat option, which proved to be very effective in our case.

Zoho Books also has a very extensive Support section on their website, where you can find a plethora of documentation, FAQ, blogs, forums, a welcome guide, videos and webinars. Zoho Books even has a ‘Find an Accountant’ option. Overall, we were really impressed with them, as far as customer support goes.

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Our editorial staff evaluates products and services independently, but ReviewFyer may earn money when you click on links. Read our advertising disclosure.

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