Zoho Books Review: A Look at This Accounting Tool

Finding an accounting solution that meets the needs of a growing business can be an overwhelming task.

In this comprehensive review, we cut through the complexity to provide a detailed look at Zoho Books' features, capabilities, and ease of use to manage key accounting workflows.

We'll examine everything from core accounting and invoicing to inventory and customer management, along with mobile access, integration, security, support, and pricing. By the end, you'll understand if Zoho Books is the right fit to streamline accounting for your business's growth.

Introduction to Zoho Books

Zoho Books is a cloud-based accounting software designed to help small and medium-sized businesses manage their finances and streamline operations. With features like invoicing, expense tracking, inventory management and more, it aims to make financial processes efficient for SMBs.

What is Zoho Books

Zoho Books is an online accounting software created specifically for small and growing businesses. Some key things to know about Zoho Books:

• Cloud-based solution accessible from any device
• Automates tasks like tracking income and expenses, invoicing clients, managing inventory, and generating financial reports
• Integrates with other business apps like POS systems, banks, payment gateways etc.
• Offers customizable invoices, estimates and other templates
• Available as a free plan for up to 2 users

Overall, Zoho Books reduces time spent on bookkeeping so SMBs can focus on business growth.

Key Features and Benefits

Some of the main features and benefits of using Zoho Books are:

• Invoicing: Create professional customizable invoices, automate recurring invoices, get paid online via integrations. Saves time over manual invoicing.

• Expenses & Billing: Track expenditures over time. Easily bill clients for reimbursable expenses. Simple reporting for tax season.

• Inventory management: Manage stock levels and transfers between locations. Track inventory value over time. Automate purchase orders and transfers.

• Multi-currency support: Send invoices and receive payments in foreign currencies. Zoho Books handles exchange rates and conversions automatically.

• Mobile app: Manage invoices, expenses, contacts etc on the go from your phone. Useful for businesses on the move.

• 200+ app integrations: Connects with payment gateways, banks, POS systems, shipping carriers and more. Works seamlessly with other business tools.

With tools to manage accounting, contacts, projects and more - Zoho Books aims to be an all-in-one financial management platform tailored for SMBs. The software helps small businesses save time, organize finances better and focus on what matters most - growing their company.

Core Accounting Capabilities

Zoho Books offers a robust set of core accounting features to manage essential financial processes.

General Ledger

The general ledger in Zoho Books provides the ability to:

• Record all financial transactions from sales, expenses, inventory, and banking
• Categorize transactions with custom accounts
• Track account balances over time
• Generate balance sheets and profit/loss reports

Key capabilities include:

• Chart of accounts with income, expense, asset, liability and equity accounts
• Customizable account groups and hierarchies
• Journal entries for adjustments and accruals
• Audit trail of all accounting entries

Accounts Payable and Receivable

Zoho Books enables businesses to efficiently manage accounts payable and accounts receivable workflows.

For accounts payable, Zoho Books supports:

• Recording vendor bills and expenses
• Setting payment terms and due dates
• Tracking outstanding bills owed
• Processing electronic or check payments
• Managing 1099 tax forms

On the accounts receivable side, key features include:

• Generating professional invoices
• Customizing billing terms
• Tracking receivables and collections
• Getting paid online via credit card or ACH
• Monitoring customer statements and aging reports
• Automating payment reminders and late notices

By centralizing AP and AR on one integrated platform, Zoho Books simplifies accounting workflows for optimal efficiency.

Invoicing

Invoicing is a critical part of managing cash flow for any business. Zoho Books aims to make the invoicing process fast, professional, and integrated.

Invoice Creation and Customization

Creating a new invoice in Zoho Books is straightforward, with plenty of customization options. Users can:

• Choose from a variety of clean, professional templates
• Add their logo and brand colors
• Customize fields like item descriptions, quantities, rates, taxes, discounts, etc.
• Save customized templates for reuse

This flexibility allows businesses to craft polished, branded invoices that reflect their products and services.

Payment Processing Integration

A key advantage of Zoho Books is its deep integration with payment gateways like Stripe, PayPal, and Authorize.Net.

Businesses can:

• Connect Zoho Books directly to their payment processor
• Accept credit card and online payments from sent invoices
• View transaction histories and payment statuses
• Streamline payment reconciliation

Automated payment reminders and simplified reconciliation makes it easier to get paid faster.

Expense and Payment Management

Expense Tracking Workflow

Vintti's expense tracking workflow provides an automated process for employees to capture expenses from corporate cards, categorize spending to the correct GL codes, attach receipts, route for approvals, and get reimbursed.

Key features include:

• Direct integration with major corporate card providers to pull in transaction data
• Smart categorization to assign expenses to general ledger (GL) codes
• Receipt management with reminders for missing receipts
• Customizable approval flows and auto-approval rules under spending thresholds
• Reimbursement processing integrated with payroll

The automated workflow eliminates manual data entry and ensures expenses are properly captured, categorized, documented, approved, and reimbursed per company policy. This saves employees time while providing finance teams visibility and control.

Bill Payment Features

Vintti enables centralized payment of vendor bills on a one-time or recurring schedule. Users can set payment reminders, confirm when payments are made, and get notified of any issues.

Key features include:

• Support for one-time and recurring payments to vendors
• Reminders for upcoming due dates
• Confirmations when payments are processed
• Notifications if a payment fails or requires attention

Centralized bill payment ensures invoices are paid accurately and on time. The confirmation and notifications provide assurance payments were made successfully or alert users if any action is needed. This prevents late fees and maintains positive vendor relationships.

Reporting and Analytics

Zoho Books offers robust reporting and analytics capabilities to help businesses gain insights into their finances.

Standard Reports

Zoho Books has a library of pre-configured reports covering all critical financial statements and documents like profit and loss statements, balance sheets, accounts receivable and payable aging reports, sales reports, expense reports, and more.

These reports allow you to:

• View current financial status and performance
• Analyze past trends to predict future growth
• Identify areas for cost savings or revenue improvement
• Maintain compliance with tax and accounting regulations

The reports can be generated with a single click and provide an overview of financial health across different periods based on user-defined parameters.

Customization and Export Options

In addition to standard reports, Zoho Books enables customization to allow for more tailored analysis:

• Add or remove fields from reports
• Filter report data by date range, location, customer, status or other attributes
• Schedule automated report generation and email delivery
• Export reports as PDFs, Excel spreadsheets, or CSV files

These flexible options make it easy to manipulate the data to focus on specific business needs. Reports can also be securely shared with stakeholders like accountants, investors, and partners with customized access permissions.

With its wide range of pre-configured and customizable reporting, Zoho Books serves as a central hub to gain actionable financial insights for smarter decision making. The ability to export data also aids in further analysis and integration with other systems.

Ease of Use

Interface and Navigation

Zoho Books' interface is clean, intuitive, and easy to navigate. The main dashboards provide an at-a-glance view of key financial metrics, with easy access to detailed reports and transaction records. Common tasks like invoicing, expenses, and billing are accessible from dedicated menus, minimizing clicks to complete routine bookkeeping.

The navigation menu remains consistent across Zoho Books' modules like contacts, projects, banking, and reporting, reducing the learning curve. Dashboard customization allows hiding unused modules to focus only on relevant financials. Overall, Zoho Books makes bookkeeping simple through thoughtful interface design and straightforward navigation.

Onboarding Resources

Zoho Books offers extensive onboarding resources including:

• Step-by-step implementation guides for getting started with setup, importing data, and configuring workflows
• Webinars oriented towards beginners and advanced Zoho Books users
• 100+ tutorial videos explaining features for managing invoices, expenses, contacts, projects, and reporting
• Searchable help documentation covering everything from core concepts to advanced configuration
• Active community forums to ask questions and find solutions from Zoho Books customers

Between the structured learning resources and community support, most users can get up and running with Zoho Books independently. For those needing additional assistance, Zoho provides 24/7 email and chat support as well as expert implementation services for more complex needs.

Budgeting and Forecasting

Budgeting and forecasting are critical financial processes for any business. Zoho Books offers robust tools to help companies plan budgets, model scenarios, and project future revenues and expenses.

Flexible Budgeting

Zoho Books enables businesses to build flexible budgets tailored to their specific accounting needs. Key budgeting capabilities include:

• Custom budget categories by accounts, departments, people, projects, locations, etc.
• Budget tracking by custom tags and categories
• Flexible budget timeline with monthly, quarterly, or annual options
• Automated budget alerts when exceeding targets

With customizable budgeting, companies can gain visibility into spending and performance across business units. This helps identify problem areas and opportunities to optimize costs.

Forecasting Scenarios

In addition to budgeting, Zoho Books incorporates forecasting features to estimate potential financial outcomes. Businesses can:

• Compare budget vs. actual spending and revenue
• Project best and worst case scenarios based on past trends
• Adjust key assumptions and variables to model different futures
• Provide insight into growth, cash flow, and profitability

By forecasting different scenarios, management can stress test plans and mitigate risks. This leads to data-driven decisions aligned with financial goals across the organization.

In summary, Zoho Books simplifies the entire budgeting and forecasting process for SMBs. The flexible tools accommodate businesses of all sizes and industries to plan intelligently. With real-time visibility into the numbers, companies can pursue growth opportunities while maintaining financial control.

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Inventory Management

Inventory management is a critical component of any business. Properly tracking inventory allows companies to avoid costly out-of-stocks while minimizing excess inventory carrying costs.

Zoho Books provides several helpful inventory management features to streamline this important process.

Product Catalog

The product catalog allows users to easily add inventory items, assign product IDs and categorize items to organize the catalog. Key details like unit costs, sales prices, and reorder points can also be tracked for each catalog item.

As inventory is received, quantities on hand are automatically updated within the product catalog to provide real-time visibility into current stock levels.

Inventory Reorder Notifications

One of the most useful inventory management features in Zoho Books is the ability to set reorder notifications based on stock levels.

Users can specify a minimum quantity threshold for each item. When the on-hand balance drops below that level, Zoho Books will automatically email the designated contact to prompt replenishing inventory.

This prevents unexpected out-of-stocks that lead to missed sales and disappointed customers. It allows businesses to keep just the right amount of extra inventory on hand to meet demand without tying up excess working capital.

The inventory tools in Zoho Books provide an integrated, automated approach to cataloging products and managing optimal stock levels. Businesses can streamline inventory tracking without the need for separate software or complex spreadsheets.

Sales and Customer Management

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Mobile Accounting on the Go

Key Mobile Features

Zoho Books offers robust mobile apps for both iOS and Android that provide access to key accounting features on the go. Some of the notable mobile capabilities include:

• Real-time reporting and analytics: View critical financial reports, profit and loss statements, account balances, and other summaries directly from your phone or tablet. This enables making data-driven decisions anytime, anywhere.

• Expense tracking: Snap photos of receipts and log expenses on-the-fly. Expenses are automatically synced to the web app for reconciliation and reporting.

• Bill and invoice management: Create, view, and send invoices, record payments, track account receivables, and manage bills payable from mobile. This simplifies collecting from clients and paying vendors no matter where you are.

• Dashboard summaries: Check top-level snapshots of account balances, income and expenses, account payables/receivables, and other metrics in a simple consolidated view.

Ease of Use

The Zoho Books mobile app provides an intuitive, user-friendly interface optimized for accounting workflows on the go:

• Clean and organized layout makes it easy to navigate between key modules like contacts, invoices, expenses, and reporting.

• Data entry forms are optimized for mobile, with large tap targets, minimal required fields, and automatic saving to streamline capturing information on a smaller screen.

• Mobile reports display critical numbers prominently while condensing less important details, providing clarity on small displays.

• Workflows for key tasks like snapping and submitting expense receipts or creating/sending client invoices are simplified into just a few taps.

With Zoho Books' well-designed mobile apps that mirror web functionality, managing your business finances on the go is efficient and painless. The apps lower the barrier for staying on top of accounting no matter where you are.

Zoho Integration and Apps

Integration with Other Zoho Products

Zoho Books integrates seamlessly with other products in the Zoho suite to streamline business processes. Key integrations include:

• Zoho CRM: Sync contacts, accounts, deals, invoices, payments and more between Zoho Books and Zoho CRM. This eliminates duplicate data entry and provides a unified view of customers.
• Zoho Inventory: Connect inventory transactions from Zoho Inventory into Zoho Books for automated accounting. Manage orders, fulfillment, and inventory costs from one unified system.
• Zoho Subscriptions: Automate recurring billing and invoicing for subscription businesses with integration between Zoho Subscriptions and Zoho Books.

These deep integrations reduce manual work and errors by sharing data between Zoho products. Businesses can build an automated workflow covering marketing, sales, inventory, billing and accounting.

Third-Party App Integration

Zoho Books offers integrations with over 1,000 third-party business applications using Zapier and custom APIs. Key integrations include:

• Payment Processors: Connect PayPal, Stripe, Authorize.Net and others to accept online payments from invoices.
• Banks & Accounting: Automatically import bank transactions from Wells Fargo, Citi, Chase and others. Integrate with QuickBooks Online.
• Ecommerce: Sync orders data between Zoho Books and platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify and BigCommerce.
• Productivity: Connect Zoho Books into business apps like Slack, Trello, Basecamp and more for notifications and workflow automation.

These third-party integrations help businesses connect Zoho Books into their existing software stack for greater data sharing and visibility across systems. The wide range of integrations makes Zoho Books flexible for diverse business needs.

Security

Vintti takes data security very seriously to protect client and employee information. They utilize 256-bit SSL encryption for all data in transit and at rest, with regular backups stored in secure facilities.

Encryption and Data Protection

Vintti leverages industry-standard 256-bit SSL encryption to secure all data transmission through their site and internal systems. Sensitive data like personal information and accounting records are encrypted both while being transmitted and when at rest in their databases. Regular automated backups provide an additional layer of protection against data loss.

While specific details of their security infrastructure are not publicly disclosed, Vintti states that they follow security best practices and have controls in place to prevent unauthorized access. As a staffing agency handling sensitive information, they aim to provide robust data security to maintain client trust.

User Access Controls

Vintti has granular user access controls to restrict employee access to only the accounting data they need for their role. Permissions can be configured to allow certain teams or employees to view or modify certain accounting records.

For example, an individual accountant may only have access to the books they are actively working on. Vintti's managers can restrict access to confidential data like salaries and performance reviews to HR staff only. Segregating access helps prevent accidental or intentional data modification across the organization.

Vintti states that all employee access is monitored and audited regularly to identify any suspicious activity. By limiting employees to least-privilege access, Vintti reduces the risk of data leaks or unauthorized transactions.

Customer Support

Zoho Books offers multiple support channels for customers to get assistance with any issues they encounter.

Support Channels

Zoho provides the following main support channels:

• Live Chat - Customers can access live chat support directly within their Zoho Books account. Live chat is available during business hours for an instant response to issues.
• Phone Support - Phone support is available for more complex issues that require troubleshooting over the phone. Customers can call a regional support number based on their location.
• Email Support - Customers can submit support tickets via email for issues that may not require an immediate response. Emails are typically answered within 24 hours.
• Documentation - Zoho Books has extensive documentation covering common issues, setup instructions, user guides, and more. The searchable documentation allows self-troubleshooting for many basic questions.

The availability of live chat, phone, email, and documentation provides customers multiple convenient channels to resolve any problems in using Zoho Books.

Self-Service Resources

In addition to direct support channels, Zoho Books offers the following self-service resources:

• Knowledge Base - The searchable knowledge base contains hundreds of help articles addressing frequently asked questions on setup, usage, billing, and troubleshooting.
• Webinars - Live and pre-recorded webinars cover Zoho Books features, integrations, and best practices in detail through visual walkthroughs.
• Community Forums - Customers can participate in community discussions with other users and Zoho staff to ask questions and share expertise.

These self-service options complement the direct support channels by empowering customers to self-troubleshoot issues independently without having to contact Zoho's support team directly. The breadth of self-service resources helps minimize customer effort in resolving common problems.

Pricing

Zoho Books offers several pricing tiers to meet the needs of different types of businesses.

Plan Options

Zoho Books has the following plan options:

• Free - Best for solopreneurs and very small businesses. Includes up to 5 users, 5 contacts, 5 invoices per month, and basic features.

• Standard - $9 per user/month billed annually. Best for growing small businesses. Includes unlimited invoices, contacts, 10 users, time tracking, double entry accounting, and more features.

• Professional - $19 per user/month billed annually. For mid-size businesses. Everything in Standard plus advanced reporting, multiple currencies, purchase orders, and other premium features.

The free plan allows you to try out basic Zoho Books features, while the paid plans provide additional capabilities as your business grows.

Value for Money

Zoho Books provides excellent value, especially for small businesses on a budget. The free version already includes core accounting features. Standard delivers robust capabilities for only $9 per month, much more affordable than many competitors. Professional packs advanced tools that can justify the higher price for medium complexity needs.

When you consider the depth of features even in the cheaper paid plans, Zoho Books offers outstanding overall value across all pricing tiers. Smaller businesses get exceptional functionalities for very little money, while growing companies can cost-effectively scale up to the more full-featured premium plans.

Conclusion and Recommendation

Pros of Zoho Books

• User-friendly interface optimized for small business accounting needs
• Robust feature set for tracking income, expenses, invoices, payments
• Seamless integration with other Zoho business apps
• Affordable pricing tiers for small business budgets

Cons to Consider

• Limited customization compared to higher-end solutions
• Mobile app lacks some advanced features
• Steeper learning curve for extensive accounting needs

Final Recommendation

Zoho Books is an excellent accounting software choice overall for solopreneurs, freelancers, and small business with basic accounting needs. Its affordable pricing, ease of use, and seamless integrations make financial management simple and efficient. For larger or more complex accounting needs, advanced customizations, or niche industry requirements, exploring higher-end solutions may be advisable. Evaluate all solution options to determine the best fit accounting platform for managing your small business finances.

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