Zoho Books Review: Features & Pricing for 2024

The Fit Small Business editorial policy is rooted in the company’s mission, which is to deliver the best answers to people’s questions. This serves as the foundation for all content, demonstrating a clear dedication to providing valuable and reliable information. Our team leverages its expertise and extensive research capabilities to identify and address the specific questions our audience has—and this ensures that our content is rooted in knowledge and accuracy.

In addition, we employ a comprehensive editorial process that involves expert writers. This process ensures that articles are well-researched and organized, offering in-depth insights and recommendations. Fit Small Business maintains stringent parameters for determining the “best” answers, including accuracy, clarity, authority, objectivity, and accessibility, and these see to it that our content is trustworthy, easy to understand, and unbiased.

Touch the graph above to interact Click on the graphs above to interact

• Zoho Books From $0; $24 as tested

• QuickBooks Online From $30 per month; $90 as tested

• Wave Starter Free

Zoho Books aced this criterion in our evaluation because it offers all the essential features and benefits you may desire from an accounting program. These include the ability to set up your organization profiles, import and modify charts of accounts, enter opening balances for bank, credit card, and other types of accounts, and lock your books when you’re ready to close out the year. For an additional fee, you can set up additional users and give them only the access needed for their roles.

Zoho Books General Features Video

The only thing we dislike about Zoho Books’ A/P module is that it requires extra steps to apply a vendor credit to a new invoice. Other than that, there are many things to love about Zoho Books. You can enter, manage, and track purchase transactions, including bills, expenses, estimates, and even vendor credits for returns. The program enables you to match your business expenses with POs, which you can convert to bills easily.

If you have periodic payments to make, such as utility bills and monthly marketing expenses, you can set up recurring payments and add payment reminders so that you can track bills to be paid easily. Recurring expenses can be scheduled to be sent out every week, every two weeks, every month, or at any frequency you desire.

The automated workflow for managing expenses allows you to categorize your financial transactions easily. Zoho Books offers an easy way to add product or service items using the Items menu located on the left sidebar on your dashboard.

Zoho Books A/P Features Video

Zoho Books could have earned a perfect score in our evaluation if not for the minor issues we encountered, such as the inability to issue a refund check if a customer has a credit balance on their account. However, its invoicing feature is impressive. It offers different useful templates, including spreadsheet forms. When creating an invoice, you can customize the background color, upload your logo, and add a personalized message for your customers.

A unique invoicing feature is the ability to send your invoice in different languages and choose the appropriate currency based on the particular location of your business or customer. You can send recurring invoices or schedule them to be sent in advance and add attachments, discounts, shipping charges, and a salesperson field. When your invoice is sent, it reminds customers of unpaid balances, which allows for easy payment.

Zoho Books A/R Video

Zoho Books could have aced this area if there were an option to enter monthly service fees as part of your reconciliation, as that eliminates the need to enter the fees in a separate transaction before reconciling. Other than that, Zoho Books has an advanced banking module for reconciling bank transactions. There are two ways you can import bank account transactions into Zoho Books:

1. connect your bank account (live bank feeds); or
2. import bank statements manually

You can upload bank statements as comma-separated values (CSV) or Excel files. You can enter a statement balance manually when reconciling your bank account, which is important since it enables you to perform a reconciliation even if you don’t import your bank activity. This is a surprising rarity among the software we’ve reviewed.

After reconciling your bank transactions, you can see detailed reconciliation status reports, including matched and unmatched transactions. You can save your reconciliation before completion and return to it later.

Zoho Books Banking & Cash Management Features Video

Zoho Books did a great job in this criterion but could have done even better if there were an option to find the actual inventory used in a project in the actual vs budget report. In the current version, you can only view it in the profit and loss (P&L) statement.

Despite this weakness, Zoho Books has solid project management features. It allows you to create an estimate and associate a project to it using the Project module found on the Time Tracking menu. When creating an estimate, you can add items, like inventory, labor, and sales taxes. Once approved, you can convert the estimate into an invoice easily.

You can also assign actual labor to a project and record the actual inventory used in the project. If you need dedicated software for project management, explore our list of the best project accounting software.

Zoho Books Project Accounting Features Video

Zoho Books took a hit in our evaluation of sales tax management because it can’t be used to pay and file sales and income tax returns. However, there are still some features you’ll find helpful. For instance, when the sales tax module is activated, Zoho Books calculates sales taxes automatically based on where you collect your taxes. You can also create and manage records for independent contractors, apply tax on inventory items, and view sales tax liability details.

The platform’s sales tax features are included in our assessment of A/R, so there is no separate video.

Zoho Books has complete inventory tracking features for tracking stock levels. It allows you to track the cost of goods available for sale and divide that cost between the ending inventory and the cost of goods sold (COGS). You can even adjust the quantity and cost of inventory, and sort items based on product details, vendor details, and stock keeping units (SKUs).

Another useful inventory tool is the Price List feature, which provides a convenient way to customize item prices for specific customers (i.e., family and friends and high-volume customers). If inventory accounting is important to you, then Zoho Books is a great choice.

We have no separate video for Zoho Books’ inventory as it’s discussed in the A/P and A/R sections.

An important feature that’s missing is an option to see the time and expenses you haven’t added to your invoice, which is something QuickBooks Online does. Nevertheless, Zoho Books has an excellent selection of financial and accounting reports. These include a general business overview, P&L statements, cash flow statements, balance sheets, general ledger, trial balance, A/P and A/R, sales and payment received, inventory, taxes, and project and timesheets.

• Added flexibility in mileage tracking: You can add and update mileage preferences, such as customizing different vehicles and adding multiple custom fields.
• Discounts for individual items in Price Lists: You can enter and apply a discount rate individually for each item, regardless of your preference for discount.
• Purchase Review module: This new feature allows you to track items that are already delivered and yet to be delivered by your supplier or vendor.

• Breakdown
• Pricing
• General Features
• Banking
• A/P
• A/R
• Inventory
• Project Accounting
• Tax
• Reporting
• Ease of Use
• Mobile App
• User Reviews