Zoho Books Reviews

Pros

Love the customer portal! Our clients can use self service to manage their account with us and get all their invoice and payment records as well as access to documents like our T&Cs. The invoice generating is very quick and easy with lots of customisation and extra data collecting boxes. The app is reliable and easy to use with lots of functionality too. Retainer invoice function is great for us as we offer clients a promotion to top up their account in advance to receive discounts on future invoices so this works perfectly!

Cons

There is no auto connection to my particular bank yet so can't connect it all automatically as I did with my previous software however it allows for bulk uploads so you can still reconcile everything.

Alternatives Considered

Xero

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

Lack of additional functions and reports weren't as relevant to our needs. Zoho Books came free with Zoho One plan and we were paying for Quickbooks so made sense to cut this cost.

Switched From

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

It was included in Zoho One plan

Pros

Zoho was very easy software to setup for someone who does not have a lot of experience. We used this software to mostly to track estimates. When estimates were approved and accepted by the customer it was simple to turn them into invoices.

Cons

Once you add certain items into the system they cannot be deleted. For example, if you accidently add a wrong item you will have to cancel it out on the books with another entry.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

Price and availability. It was simple enough that we could use what we needed in the program.

Switched From

Sage 50cloud Accounting and QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

The price and overall feel of the product.

Pros

Easy to use platform with all the basic features for accounting.

Cons

User interface can feel a bit dated at times which makes it a bit difficult to do frequent tasks.

Alternatives Considered

Odoo

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

My QB account was cancelled for undisclosed (by them) issues after asking for sensitive data using a Google Form! I couldn’t even recover my data, but at least they refunded a couple months “service”

Switched From

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

At the time I only needed accounting and the pricing was more appealing.

Pros

It looks modern and intuitive.
It has a sales portal that customers can access online and view their invoices and payments. That is the feature that sold the program to us.

Cons

The debit and credit side is the wrong way round as it follows the Indian system. For example, in the UK a sales balance of -£100 means that the customer owes £100 pounds and has to pay. In Zoho however, it means that the customer is in credit by £100 and would potentially need a refund.

Blocks you if you type and click your mouse fast. There are problems with batch invoicing, and it takes a lot of time to review invoices one by one. The system does not extract more than 100 statements at a time. You really should find another system if your sales ledger is large.

Pros

Marking the cost against my product items.

Cons

Uncleared notifications on the app that I just can’t seem to clear

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

To better understand my finances, for the reporting and to manage my expenses better.

Switched From

Zoho Invoice

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

I chose Zoho because of the simplicity of the Zoho suite of products.

Pros

I liked the following features of Zoho BooksUser-friendly interface with quick access to important featuresIntegrations with Zoho apps and third-party toolsAutomated invoicing and payment trackingMulti-currency supportBudgeting and financial reportingMobile app availableAffordable pricing, including a free planStrong customer support.

Cons

Along with Pros, these are the limitations I faced:Limited inventory management featuresLack of advanced project management featuresBasic time tracking functionalitySome features can be confusing for new usersLimited integrations compared to other accounting softwareLimited customization options for invoices and other forms.

Alternatives Considered

FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

Its worth considering that we chose Zoho Books over alternative products due to its user-friendly interface, integrations with other Zoho apps, affordable pricing, and strong customer support. Additionally, the software's focus on automating invoicing and payment tracking is a major selling point for businesses looking to streamline these processes.

Pros

The tool send us financial reports and profit as well as loss forms on time.
It has the best interface to use for our accounting processes.
The most amazing customer service is served to us.
Very fast and quick in invoice processing.

Cons

It has delivered to our expectations and it has never disappointed.

Pros

It has got lots of good features and seems very robust. Overall I liked it pretty much. It has got a vast range of invoice templates and is customization seems pretty easy. Also they got their own software for most of the business use cases which could be easily integrated with this one.

Cons

I had a look at their community page and many of the answers are not quite understandable, which makes me little bit suspicious about their customer support.

Alternatives Considered

Kanak Books

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

I didn't coose zoho books over kanakbooks. I just want to give a try of zoho books to see how good is zoho books. Both have very similar interface, but kanakbooks seems more better for smaller businesses with some impressive features and lower cost.

Pros

It has a very easy user interface and I really like the accessibility of using it on phone.

Cons

There is nothing that I don't like but yes the feature of budget and forecasting can be improved as it requires some advanced feature.

Pros

invoice and track payments from different clients

Cons

ease of use and multiple options available to keep my business. My favorite is the invoicing feature that's free

Pros

Zoho Books does everything that QuickBooks does in a much more intuitive interface. It provides a ton of flexibility in looking at things from both accrual and cash methods, offers a free seat for my accountant, and allows me to track my time and bring it directly into my invoices. The ability to take pics of receipts and enter expenses directly from my phone app is great, too.

Cons

I wish that other software providers would wake up and realize that QB isn't the only game in town. Make it easier to integrate with Zoho, please! I've had some trouble syncing with my bank in the past and it took a while for customer service to understand what was really going on - there are some language barriers. But their CS agents do seem to try to help.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online, Wave and Fiverr

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

Wave only allows for accrual-based accounting, which is severely limiting. Wave also makes some odd duplicate transactions when you're entering transfers and line items for invoices.

Switched From

Wave

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

Zoho books has everything QuickBooks has at a much lower price. And Wave and And.co had too many limitations.

Pros

I liked best the many features that Zoho Books provides. In terms of accounting software, this product does just about everything. I also liked being part of the Zoho suite of products, all of which are quite good. The product is stable, and the company offers solid tech support.

Cons

I purchased Zoho Books to use in my small business after using Zoho Invoice. I wanted a product that would do more than just invoice clients, such as track projects and accounting. However, I am not an accountant. The thing I liked least about Zoho Books is that, if you are not familiar with accounting, the product may seem unnecessarily complicated. There is definitely a learning curve with this product that I have not experienced with other Zoho products.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Enterprise

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

Zoho Invoice was excellent at invoicing and tracking client expenses. However, I wanted a product that did more than those two things.

Switched From

Zoho Invoice

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

I was already familiar with Zoho through the use of Zoho Writer and Zoho Invoice. It was easier to simply switch to Zoho Books, which had a familiar and pleasing user interface. Also, Zoho Books was a better buy for the money.

Pros

I am a big fan of Zoho Books. For the same price of a QuickBooks subscription, I was able to purchase a license to Zoho One, which comes with dozens of other valuable apps (Zoho Forms, Zoho CRM, Zoho Survey, Zoho Social, Zoho Marketing Automation, Zoho Analytics, Zoho Sign, Zoho Meeting, Zoho Desk, Zoho Projects, Zoho Expenses, Zoho Recruit, Zoho Flow).

I did the math recently, and figured out that if I were to buy each of the Zoho applications I use from an equivalent competitor, I would be spending $600 more than the cost of a Zoho One subscription each month.

For Zoho Books in particular, it has all of the features I used in QuickBooks, plus easy-to-use workflow automations and integrations with the rest of the Zoho One suite. It's very helpful to be able to cross-reference Zoho Books data within their CRM for example.

Overall, I highly recommend Zoho Books, but encourage you to purchase the full Zoho One suite rather than Books as a standalone application.

Cons

I wish they had a few more payment processors available.

Alternatives Considered

FreshBooks, Wave and Xero

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

For the same price as QuickBooks, I was able to get the full Zoho One Suite.

Switched From

QuickBooks Online

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

Integration with Zoho One.

Pros

This software it's very easy to setup and start using it. Even the free version is very rich in functionality. Once you have set it up you can also install the mobile app to keep up with the business. You can even create customer on the mobile app, invoice them, recon payment and send statements. The recurring schedule invoice are such a great feature. You can even setup reminders for unpaid invoices. Month end you can pull reports and understand your business

Cons

The bank connection doesn't always work nicely, sometimes it delay to update and end up sending incorrect statements to customers.I wish the clone customer was also available on the mobile app.

Pros

The setup is fairly straightforward, and the learning curve is very manageable. It's really nice to have a good (and reasonable) set of defaults for categories and account structure. That made initial use and customization pretty easy to do. The documentation is generally good, and tip links are numerous.

Cons

The only thing I find even slightly annoying is that the feed connection to the bank account is often "broken", but on the positive side the status is clear and whatever issues exist seem to fix themselves automatically within a day or two. It's not really a show-stopper; it's just annoying when I want to "clean up" things and the bank feed isn't fully current.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Online and Wave

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

The previous product had been discontinued.

Reasons for Switching to Zoho Books

Zoho was less expensive than QuickBooks, and seemed to be more approachable. Wave didn't handle retainers as well (at least at that time).

Pros

The live dashboard and analytics has provided great insight into our business profitability. The ability to have our project management and accounting systems tied into one saves on time and human error. The automation, workflows and custom fields are a game changer and allow any kind of person to be able to tailor the system to your needs. Whenever I am not able to code something myself, I send a request to the customer service team, and they are usually able to write the scripts for me. The ability to tie into Avalara and not have to worry about taxation is also a huge bonus.

Cons

I wish the Purchase Orders for drop ship customers were more obviously tied to the Sales Orders. There are ways to identify which POs belong to which SOs, but seems to be a little more complicated than it could be. I also wish there was a way to see how much we have invoiced against Customer POs. I also wish we could integrate our payroll with ZOHO, as ZOHO payroll isn't currently offered in Michigan. As a result we are having to do more manual entry for employee hours and journal entries for the payroll.

Pros

Zoho Book is a good software if you are starting out in a small business. What impresses me most about Zoho Book is the BRS statement. It's an excellent feature that prints all the required details very clearly, just as we intended. The automated bank flow is another feature that saves you a lot of time. The advantage of Zoho Books is that it can be linked to your online sales sites easily. 
 
Another positive aspect of Zoho Books is that its delivery always comes with many integrated functionalities such as stock management, sales and purchase booking, payroll processing, etc.

To conclude, Zoho Books is easy to understand and its configuration is quick and easy. The automation of the system is great and you save a lot of time. The customer support is also very responsive and usually fixes your worries.

Cons

The major problem with Zoho Book is that it is only practical with a small business. It is better to choose another software like Wave if your business is large. Finally, the other blockage is that Zoho Books is based on the Cloud so without a connection you can go and have a nice cup of hot coffee (LOL).

Alternatives Considered

Xero

Reasons for Choosing Zoho Books

Zoho Books functionalities were limited

Switched From

Wave

Pros

I think Zoho Books is on par with all the other bookkeeping software, but what is even better is how it integrates with all of the other Zoho products. I have had to integrate SFDC with ZenDesk and other solutions and what a pain! The fact that books integrate with their CRM with their Desk app is wonderful. This does everything you need from creating invoices to managing expenses and accounts. Very easy to use and full-featured. It is a definite must for small businesses that are looking for a robust affordable solution that might also need a CRM (look at zoho one).

Cons

With any bookkeeping software, there is a learning curve. Not always the easiest, but certainly worth it. Once you get all of your accounts set up you'll need to make sure you get all of your payment processes in place. Which is nice once it's ready because people can simply pay from click on an invoice. My only complaint would be how certain things don't flow as easily as I would like to start off with. But once you get it figured out it's pretty easy and will save you tons of head aches when time goes on.

Pros

Zoho books is cloud based accounting software with many impressive features. Below are the pros of ZOHO Books

1. Zoho comes with many inbuilt accounting software features like inventory management, Payroll processing, Sales and Purchase booking etc.
2. Can be integrated with your online shoping websites like shopify, woocommerce and many more.
3. Automatc recurring expense booking like depreciation, monthly rent etc.
4. Zoho has rebust cloud technology and provides 99.99% downtime, also provides top security for your data protection.
5. In cloud based software there is negligible risk of data loss as service provider regularly takes backup of data.
6. Cloud based software are are far better than DOS based or windows based softwares.
7. Zoho books is available with reasonable price compared to other cloud based software.

Cons

1.As compared to Quickbooks online many features are missing.
2.Disadvantage of cloud based software is it becomes difficult to shift to windows based software as data can not be transferred easily.
3. Zoho attracts consumer by quoting very less fees for 1st year but from next years there is steep increase in charges.

Pros

Excellent/fast support. Interface can be fun to use and is quick to respond.
Development seems to be ongoing.

Cons

Lacks basic functions like deposit slip printing (and automatically transferring those funds to bank from Undeposited Funds), ability to pre-send recurring invoices, inability to set simple defaults such as default account to accept payment to (always need to manually select Undeposited Funds when accepting checks) and no running total in account ledgers such as Undeposited Funds (how are you supposed to find and fix errors, mistakes?)

Pros

This product Hooks up easily to Zoho CRM. The product works almost fluidly with the CRM. it makes it easy to see each client payment and how much we have received each month. The information the books hold really helps for some financial reports. The Reports do make my life easier kindof. Books make it easy to bill clients and it keeps all the information in one place.

Cons

The Reports as mention in my pros are missing some really good information that is already there in the system. They want me to pay for Zoho reports, but to my understanding Zoho reports, I would still need to go in and set it up. In our business every month we have to pay out our salespeople. fist I'm not able to split commissions easily or add multiple salespeople to an invoice. second, if I look up sales by salesperson by month it gives me all invoices created in the month, not all invoice paid. We sell expensive web projects and could take months to close. so it is unhelpful for me to see monthly sales report because it is not correct. they also have a "payments received" a report that comes in Zoho books. This report gives me monthly sales but does not add the sales person to the report. So I build a report that takes 30 min to an hour top. I have asked them to fix this and they told me to get Zoho reports

Pros

The ease of using the zoho books across all the device since the data is stored in server rather than tally in which the data is stored locally in the system.

Cons

Nothing to complain as such, but you can say demo or training is necessary extensively to use the application in more productive way.

Alternatives Considered

QuickBooks Enterprise

Pros

cost and the ability to build your own integration tools.

compared to other options (unnamed here, but you know who they are), it is VERY cost efficient and effective. depending on options chosen with alternatives it costs anywhere from 25% to 75% of what The Other Guys offer.

i've even been able to write some integrations with it (using some powerful and reasonably well documented REST APIs)

Cons

the interface is a bit clunky - things like matching take a bit of getting used to.

banking integration only allows one sync per 24 hour period.

Pros

I use Zoho Books as part of my Zoho One subscription. Zoho is integral in the operation of my business. I have found these tools to be comprehensive, powerful, and relatively easy to learn and use. Zoho Books is certainly no exception. I love the automation tools and customization options. Support is also prompt and efficient.

Cons

If I wasn't part of Zoho One, I'm not sure I ever would have discovered or used Books. Though it is a great option, I'm not sure how it compares with other modern bookkeeping software. I haven't examined the market recently.

Pros

Invoice and billing options are good and we can accept the credit card payment and online payment, and auto generation of monthly invoice and we can set due dates so the system will send auto reminder for aged receivables to the tenant

Cons

when its come to reports like Financial reports and budget forecasting and other its bit difficult to analyze the report and it is bit confusing in Aged receivable report