Why Zoho Books Is The Best Accounting Software For Small Businesses

maxine420
Oct 25, 2022
3 min read

If you are looking for the best accounting software for your business, you have come to the right place.

Zoho Books is an excellent online accounting software designed to help businesses manage their finances, automate business workflows, and work seamlessly between departments.

It is designed for any business size, from small businesses to large enterprises.

What are the features of Zoho Books?

Zoho Books offers a range of features including cash flow management, invoicing, including recurring invoice generation, purchase order management, collaboration, balance sheet management, inventory management, expense tracking, automated workflow creation, and so much more.

Click on the features below to see what's included:

Invoicing

Customise invoice templates to reflect your business brand with your company logo and font.
Get paid faster with the option for your client to pay by cash, card, cheque and direct debit. Integrates with Stripe, World Pay & GoCardless.
Set up automated reminders so you don't need to remember to chase clients for payments.
Multi-currency - charge customers in their currency and Zoho Books records it in your currency.
Set up recurring invoices for regular clients.
Secure invoices with your digital signature.
Manage returns and refunds with credit notes

Estimates

Create estimates and add contact information, item details, and prices that you've saved in Zoho Books. Send quotes in seconds as soon as a deal is won.
Customisable templates that you can create to reflect your brand.
Zoho Sign integration - digitally sign estimates before sending them to clients for approval that adds an extra level of security to your documents.
Use the Client Portal to send estimates, get them approved, and collaborate with your clients in real time.
Keep track of discounts, negotiations, and status for any estimate with the estimate history section. Zoho Books also notifies you when your client accepts an estimate or makes a comment.
Turn an estimate into an invoice as soon as your client accepts it. The estimate & invoice software lets you convert estimates to invoices in a click - saving you time!

Client Portal

Share quotes with clients and collaborate to speed up approvals. Keeps client conversation in one place, rather than a lengthy email thread.
Use the Zoho Sign integration to get estimates digitally signed by your clients - gives your client a more secure approval process.
The portal lets your clients make bulk payments with a single click as well as partial and full payment options.
No need to send copy invoice requests from clients. Your clients will have full access to all invoices in the client portal.
Notifications - get notified when a client views, accepts, declines, comments, or makes payments.

Expenses

Track expenses, categorise them, and bill them to your customers when necessary.
Recurring expenses - create recurring expenses that take place on a regular basis and Zoho Books will automatically record them for you.
Attach your bills, receipts and credit notes to associated transactions. Eliminate data entry with the Auto Scan feature.

Bills

Create recurring bills for purchases that happen at regularly.
Zoho Books lets you add landed costs to your bills so you can calculate the full cost of your items and decide on the right selling price.
Enable transaction approval and verify bills before they reflect in your accounts. Eliminates the risk of processing incorrect transactions.
Associate line items from your bills with the customers for whom they were purchased for.
Create bills from Purchase Orders.

Banking

Banking Dashboard - get precise cash flow predictions—plus balance mismatches, expected recurring payments, and past reconciliations.
Use banks rules to filter and categorise transactions automatically. Zoho Books identifies the best matches and other possible matches for your transactions, making the matching super quick.
Reconcile all your accounts in just a few clicks with Reconcilation. Process faster in bulk - bulk actions make it easier to select, categorise, delete, and restore multiple items.

Projects

With Zoho Books you never have to lose a minute of your billable hours. Either log the amount of time you spent for a project daily or weekly, or use the timer widget to clock the time you spend.
Control and manage multiple projects by letting you create new projects, add tasks for each project and assign specific tasks to your employees.
Collaboration - role based access in Zoho Books lets you give restricted access to those who you are working with. You can customise your users' access by restricting their views, granting them access only to the timesheet module to use the timer or log time.
Expenses - with Zoho Books, you can associate all expenses relating to a project at the time of billing, easily.
Advance payments - retainer invoice in Zoho Books lets you collect payments for projects.
Log time on the go - the mobile apps from Zoho Books lets you track your project hours, anytime, anywhere.

Inventory

Organise your inventory with vital information like SKU, product image, vendor details, cost, and stock on hand.
Create a customised price list with markups or markdowns and offer it to your preferred vendors (suppliers) and customers. Inventory tracking - enabling inventory tracking helps you keep tabs on your stock levels at all times.

Sales Orders

Sales Orders can be customised with a brand logo, font type, and colour to match your company's style.
Convert an approved estimate into a sales order, and then into an invoice - super smooth and quick!
Orders with available stock - instantly create a partial invoice for the available products and ship them out directly.
Instantly convert a sales order into a purchase order to send to your vendor (supplier).
Insights - identify your top customers and your bestselling products with real-time reports on your transaction history.
Collaborate - create clones, print out a copy, or simply share sales orders over email with your team.

Purchase Orders

Purchase orders track any items ordered, as well as the agreed-upon price with the vendor.
Instantly convert the purchase orders into Bills.
Attach receipts, bills, or other files associated with purchase orders to your invoice.
Insights - identify your top vendors (suppliers) and most frequently purchased products with real-time reports on your transactional history.
Create customised purchase orders with your company logo. Change the background color, add a background image, select the font, and more.
Collaborate - print, clone or share purchase orders over email to collaborate and get things done faster.

VAT

Define multiple taxes, set a default tax rate, and enter the exemptions that apply to your business.
If your business falls under the VAT Flat Rate Scheme, enable the Flat Rate option under your VAT settings and let Zoho Books take it from there.
Zoho Books simplifies the process of filing and recording your VAT returns with powerful reporting tools. They calculate the VAT you owe and the amount you can reclaim in a consolidated report that's ready to file at tax time.
VAT MOSS Report - Zoho Books records it all in the MOSS Report, including details of the countries you sold to and the tax that you need to pay.
Zoho Books generates your VAT returns based on your purchases and sales, allowing you to review, finalise and directly submit them to HMRC.

Online Payments

Zoho Books provides multiple payment gateway integrations. Choose one and start collecting payments instantly. Current integrations include Stripe, Square, Paypal, WorldPay, WePay, GoCardless and more.
Zoho Books allows you to auto-charge for recurring transactions. Collect payments automatically on a weekly, monthly, or yearly basis.
Zoho Books lets you send automated reminders to customers and eliminate the worry of chasing payments manually.
Simplify payment procedures for your customers by giving them access to the client portal and enabling direct portal-based payments.
No need to record payments manually. Zoho Books automatically marks invoices as Paid as soon as customers pay you.
Create customised receipts and send personalised thank-you notes to customers once payment is received.
Insights - run detailed reports on payments received, and use the information to understand your customers' payment trends and preferred payment methods.

Reporting

Dashboard - see the details of your income and expenditure. The dashboard shows you your total receivables, sales, top expenses and more at a glance.
Generate reports like Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statements.
Share progress with your team - Zoho Books makes it easy for you to run business reports and share them securely with your team.
Zoho Books lets you schedule business reports weekly, monthly or quarterly depending on your preference. Choose the email address you wish to use and Zoho.
Reporting tags - selling products in different cost centres? You can generate specific reports for each of these regions by associating a reporting tag with all the relevant transactions.
Customise reports - from setting date ranges to choosing what columns to display, Zoho Books lets you customise your business reports to suit your needs.
View business reports on the go - the Zoho Books mobile app let you view your business metrics no matter where you are.
Tax reports - calculate your tax liability with Zoho Books, and see the amount you owe in taxes.
Audit trails - with the activity log report, be constantly aware of your business activities. Prevent fraudulent practices and track down errors to stay audit-ready at all times.
In addition to the 50+ built-in reports, get even more advanced analytics with Zoho Analytics integration.

Automation

Eliminate repetitive tasks - no more doing tasks one at a time. From chasing payments to sending recurring invoices, create a recurring profile and let Zoho Books automatically send out transactions for you.
Get paid on time - send out automated payment reminders and get paid on time, every time.
Reconcile with ease. Use bank rules to filter and categorise transactions automatically.
Save your clients' payment details for future billing. Card details associated with a contact can be billed automatically for recurring invoices.

Documents

The Auto-scan option in Zoho Books captures your document details automatically, so you can convert them into an invoice, expense, bill, sales order, or purchase order.
You and your contacts can email files to the inbox, and you can create transactions straight from there.
As you're gathering documents, it's simple to match them to transactions in your bank feed, or attach them to previously-created transactions.
Upload your documents to the cloud in a few clicks. Simply drag and drop the files, sort them into different folders, set folder-level access for other users, and see how easy it is to organize things!

Vendor (Supplier) Portal

The biggest advantage of the vendor (supplier) portal is that it allows your suppliers to self-manage everything about your transactions without having to resort to long email threads and calls.
Notifications - get notified when your suppliers view your transactions, and make comments on your documents.
Your supplier can upload their invoices to you directly through the portal, which you can add as bills to Zoho Books. Record and track them until they are paid off.
Through the portal, your suppliers can check the status of payments that you make and stay updated without having to contact you.

Is there a mobile app for Zoho Books?

Yes, you can manage your accounting from your mobile phone with the Zoho Books app, available for Android and iOS.

How much does it cost for Zoho Books?

Zoho has a pricing plan to suit every budget of a small business. As your business grows, you can upgrade to their Premium, Elite and Ultimate plans - Zoho will grow with you every step of the way.

	FREE*	STANDARD	PROFESSIONAL
Price/Org/Month	£0	£12 (or £10 if paid annually)	£24 (or £20 if paid annually)

Users	1 user + 1 accountant	3	5

You also get a 14 day FREE trial when you sign up - click here to get your free trial today.

*Is there a free version of Zoho Books?

Yes, there is a free version for businesses with a turnover of less than £35,000 per year. Perfect for small businesses who don't need a lot of online accounting features. When you are ready to upgrade, you will have no worry of having to transfer your data - just simply upgrade!

Is there a demo version of Zoho Books?

Yes, there is a demo version of Zoho Books - click here and select Explore Demo Account.

What is the customer support like for Zoho Books?

For support, you can call or email Zoho. They also have an online Help & Support section with documentation and help videos. You can also register for their weekly webinar sessions to learn more about Zoho Books.

What are the reviews for Zoho Books?

There are many reviews on Zoho Books online, here are a couple of the reviews below:

⭐Forbes rate Zoho Books 4.5/5 - "Zoho Books is an easy-to-use, cloud-based accounting software with an invoice, inventory and project management system. It offers a competitive free plan and a variety of features to make your processes easier and more efficient. Zoho is a particularly good option if you’re a smaller or medium-sized business (SMB) in search of an alternative to alternatives to larger, more expensive software."

⭐Business.com rate Zoho Books 9.1/10 "Zoho's built-in automation tools set this accounting software apart from its peers. The ability to eliminate tedious, error-prone tasks and streamline operations is why Zoho Books is our best pick for process automation."

What other apps integrate with Zoho Books?

Payment Gateway integrations:

Stripe
Paypal
2checkout
Square
Braintree
GoCardless

Documents integrations (for uploading expense receipts):

Zoho Docs
Dropbox
Drive
Box
Evernote
OneDrive

Google integrations:

G Suite - Import your Google contacts into your Zoho Books account and start invoicing clients.
Chrome Web Store Access Zoho Books from the Chrome Web Store and log your work time using a live timer with our Chrome extension.

Other integrations:

Entryless (get bills automatically scanned, processed and approved)
Temponia (tracks timesheets)
Slack (received notifications about your customer's Client Portal activities)
Office (import office 365 contacts)
Uber for Business (forward monthly ride statements to Books)
Twilio (send out instant SMS notifications for payments & reminders)
KeyPay (payroll)

What other Addons do Zoho offer?

Check out these other Addons from Zoho that integrate with Books:

Zoho CRM - Connect to Zoho CRM and sync your contacts, accounts, products, and transactions in Zoho Books.
Zoho Expenses - Automatically integrated with Zoho Expense, Zoho Expense makes your expense reporting effortless.
Zoho People - Integrate with Zoho People and push your employees' time logs to Zoho Books and invoice your customers accordingly.
Zoho Inventory - Sell and fulfil your orders across multiple channels and stay on top of your stock flow with Zoho Inventory.
Zoho Subscription - Manage customer subscriptions with Zoho Subscriptions and view transactions easily in Zoho Books.
Zoho Sign - Encrypt invoices and estimates with your electronic signature using ESIGN and eIDAS compliant software.
Zoho Projects - Create invoices using Zoho Books for hours logged in Zoho Projects.
Zoho Analytics - Slice and dice your financial data with our Zoho Analytics integration and make informed decisions.
Zoho Flow - Bridge the gap between your apps using Zoho Flow for an uninterrupted flow of information between them. Connect and coordinate departments across various apps by building efficient automated workflows.

How do I get started with Zoho Books?

To get started with Zoho Books - click here to sign up. Just provide your company name, email address, and contact number, choose a password of your liking, and you're good to go. On signing up, you get a fully-featured 14-day free trial of the product before you choose to subscribe to Zoho Books.

Can I transfer to Zoho Books from another accounting software?

Absolutely! Zoho provide a step-by-step process to switch over to Zoho Books easily.

If you have any questions about Zoho Books or any of their other apps - please get in touch, we would be happy to help.