Zoho Books

Zoho Books is a cloud-based accounting platform that simplifies financial operations and automates workflows. It is a widely popular end-to-end online accounting software solution that integrates with other apps in the Zoho product suite.
Overall Rating

Powerful, but may lack a couple nice features. Great value for money.

Pros
Cons

Zoho Books Competitors

Quickbooks

Xero

Included in the Following Zoho Bundles:

Need help with Zoho Books? Here are some services we provide specifically for Zoho Books users!

Zoho Expert Bootcamp

Zoho Admin Crash Course

Hire a Zoho Books Expert

Zoho Books Certifications

Zoho Books Pricing

Zoho Books is a Zoho corporation app that offers terrific value. The starting price is $0 for businesses earning less than $50k annual revenue, and Standard and Professional plans are affordably priced as well.

The free plan comes with the following benefits: managing invoices and payment (1000 per year), client portal, online/offline payments, payment reminders, recurring payments, manual journals, taxes, custom templates, and more.

Zoho offers a pricing plan for businesses of all sizes.

Free Plan

$0

  • 1 user + 1 accountant
  • Manage clients
  • Manage invoices (up to 1,000 per annum)
  • Client portal
  • Online payment
  • Offline payment
  • Automate payment reminders
  • Multi-lingual invoicing
  • Credit notes
  • Recurring invoices
  • Expenses & mileage tracking
  • Add multiple online banks and credit card accounts
  • Import bank and credit card statements
  • Bank rules & reconciliation
  • Chart of accounts & sub-accounts
  • Manual journals
  • Reports
  • Invoice customization
  • Manage 1099 contractors
  • Payment gateways
  • Integration with Zoho apps and other apps
  • Email support

 Standard Plan

$15/ per organization/ per month (billed annually)

All Free features +

  • Manage invoices (up to 5,000)
  • Recurring expenses
  • Connect and fetch bank & credit card feeds via bank feeds provider
  • Predefined user roles
  • Track project expenses and invoice
  • Project tasks
  • Bulk updates
  • Transaction locking
  • Custom views
  • Custom fields
  • Reporting tags
  • Time sheet and billing
  • Track sales tax
  • Payment gateways
  • Email, voice, and live chat support

Professional Plan

$40/ per organization/ per month (billed annually)

All Standard features +

  • Sales approval
  • Invoice templates
  • Bills
  • Payments made
  • Vendor credits
  • Recurring bills
  • Sales orders
  • Purchase orders
  • Purchase approval
  • Multi-currency handling
  • Automatic exchange rates
  • Currency adjustments
  • Stock tracking
  • Price lists
  • Landed costs
  • Custom roles
  • Timesheet approval
  • Timesheet – client approval
  • Contextual chat
  • Retainer invoices for projects
  • Project profitability
  • Journal templates
  • Tasks
  • Recurring journals
  • Workflow rules (Up to 10)

 Premium Plan

$60/ per organization/ per month (billed annually)

All Professional features +

  • Custom domain
  • Vendor portal
  • Multi-transaction number series
  • Budgeting
  • Custom buttons
  • Validation rules
  • Related lists
  • WebTabs
  • Workflow rules (up to 200)
  • Custom reports
  • 10 custom modules
  • Zoho Sign and Twilio integrations

 Elite Plan

$120/ per organization/ per month (billed annually)

All Premium features +

  • Cashflow forecasting report
  • Advanced inventory control
  • Integration with the Shopify web host (up to 2 stores)
  • Warehouse management (up to 5 warehouses)
  • Serial number tracking
  • Batch tracking
  • Print shipping label
  • Shipment tracking

Ultimate Plan

$240/ per organization/ per month (billed annually)

All Elite features +

  • Advanced analytics
  • View real-time reports and dashboards
  • Analyze and track key financial metrics
  • Customize reports and dashboards
  • Analyze Books data along with other data sources
  • Collaboratively create reports with colleagues
  • Export and print reports as excel or PDF
  • Embed reports in web sites/applications
  • Records/Rows (5 Million)

Zoho Learning Paths

Zoho Finance Suite Admin

What Is Zoho Books?

Zoho Books accounting software enables the following:

  • Create financial budgets and an effective accounting program
  • Integrate other Zoho applications
  • Automate sending invoices
  • Track employees’ time
  • Track expenses

Compared to other popular accounting and management software platforms on offer, it is highly affordable while offering a wide range of features.

Which Features Does Zoho Books Offer?

Breaking down the Zoho Books features:

  • Accounts payable: keep track of unpaid invoices and money owed to vendors. Set up automatic payments so you never have to worry about missing an invoice payment.
  • Accounts receivable: keep track of who owes what, and when payments are due. The application also provides powerful tools for pursuing late payments, such as automated reminders and collections management.
  • Accrual accounting: record revenue not yet collected from the customer. Useful in long-term contracts or projects.
  • ACH payment processing: ACH is short for Automated Clearing House, a financial network that allows you to transfer money to another account without a checking account, a balance transfer credit card, or wire transfers. Send and receive money through this network.
  • Approval process control: manage spending and keep track of bills.
  • Audit trail: track every action that’s been taken within your account, as well as who took it and when.
  • Payment gateways: integrate with PayPal, Stripe, and other payment processors.
  • Bank reconciliation: match up your records with what your bank says you have in your bank account. This helps catch discrepancies so you can fix them. That way, you’ll avoid getting a bad credit score, which makes it easier to open a savings account and get better business loans, refinance rates, and mortgage rates.
  • Easy collaboration: helps you keep your client and vendor relationships transparent.
  • End-to-end accounting: gives you a 360-degree view of your personal finance.
  • Categorized banking transactions: allows you to see all bank transactions and bank feeds, and categorize them.
  • Multi-project management: create multiple projects and track them all in one place.
  • Inventory management: combine inventory and accounting so you don’t need another app to manage your inventory.
  • Transaction approval: control who spends what.
  • Time tracking: see billable hours at a glance and budget time more effectively.
  • Contact management: easily add and track information about your contacts, including their name, contact info, and communication history. You can also categorize contacts into groups, making it easy to stay organized.

Zoho Books vs Quickbooks

Zoho Books is often compared to Quickbooks. Both are widely used accounting apps, and they share a lot of similarities.

As competing accounting solutions and payroll software solutions, the Books app by Zoho and Quickbooks go head to head in most respects:

Integrations

Your accounting software needs to integrate with other software and apps you are using in your company. Both solutions have solid integrations: QuickBooks has around 650 different integrations while Books has the advantage of integration with other Zoho applications. Both platforms integrate with Zapier, allowing them to connect with over 1000 apps and software platforms.

Pricing

Zoho Books is the clear winner. Its top plan is far cheaper than Quickbooks self-employed accounting software. This explains why Zoho is a favorite of startups and small businesses that are yet trying to establish sustainable business operations and workflow rules.

Customer Support and Satisfaction

Users of Zoho Books highly praise Zoho’s customer support and resources. Zoho excels at customer support, providing low wait times. Quickbooks Online missed the memo for this one.

Mobile Apps

Zoho Books and Zoho Books alternatives such as Intuit Quickbooks Online have mobile apps. Books wins in the mobile department with mobile apps available on Android on the Google Play store and Apple, as well on the Kindle Fire and Windows devices. Quickbooks Online is available only for Apple users, and drew the ire of customers with numerous bugs.

Getting Started with Zoho Books

Zoho Books accounting and invoicing software offers a wide range of features to help small businesses stay on top of their finances.

Whether you’re a business owner, a sole proprietor looking for an invoicing solution, or a project manager that needs help managing your inventory, Books can be part of your success story.

You may need some training to get up to speed with the software. Our certified coaches can help you discover all the capabilities, streamline your cash flow, and set the stage for further growth.

Take advantage of all the free Books training linked on this page, and contact us if you need help with Zoho implementation. We offer Zoho consulting and on-site services.

Zoho Books FAQ

Yes, Books is usually quite easy to deploy. The setup is straightforward and simple, and the interface is neat and intuitive. Some admins get caught up in all the features, which is why we provide training resources to help you make sense of it.

Yes, Books has apps for Apple, Android, and Windows products.

Yes, Books offers a free tier. See our pricing explanation above.

Our training videos offer numerous demonstrations of Books capabilities and features. If you need help with something not covered here, please contact us so we can help you.

While you can’t use Books for insurance on its own, you can do so by integrating it with Zoho insurance CRM, a Zoho alternative to Wave Accounting. Zoho insurance CRM is used by online brokers and insurance companies to organize leads and claims, estimate insurance quotes, automate assignments, and manage multiple policies in a single system.

An insurance company can use the Zoho CRM insurance integration for:

  • life insurance
  • homeowners insurance
  • car insurance (auto insurance)
  • pet insurance
  • …and so on

About The Workflow Academy

The Workflow Academy offers extensive Zoho education and also Zoho consultation and implementation services for enterprises of all types and sizes. We offer one of the leading Zoho training programs. We help you get up to speed as a Zoho user from Zoho Projects to Zoho CRM.

For additional assistance, ask about hands-on Zoho training and Zoho implementation from our certified consultants.