Pros & Cons
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- Depth and flexibility in every module
- Comprehensive, customizable records and forms
- Tremendous reporting options
- Excellent mobile apps
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- Too complex for many small businesses
- Locks time tracking to projects
- Some features require add-ons
Zoho Books Specs
| All Major A/R, A/P Forms | |
| CRM Integration | |
| Customer/Vendor Portals | |
| Document Management | |
| Double Entry | |
| Live Support | |
| Mobile Access | |
| Multi-Currency | |
| Payroll | |
| Time Tracking | |
| Tracks Inventory | |
| Training Available |
Zoho Books offers more automation, features, and flexibility than many of its competitors, all for a modest subscription fee. In particular, we appreciate its in-depth options around records and forms, along with its capable mobile apps. Enhancements in various areas, including AI-driven support, invoicing, and reporting, have been introduced since our last review. Zoho Books is a worthwhile option for businesses that can fully leverage its feature set, and some of its high-end tiers are even suitable for midsize businesses. However, our Editors' Choice winners for accounting software are better suited for smaller companies: FreshBooks for service-based groups that prioritize usability, Intuit QuickBooks Online for those that sell both products and services, and Wave for one-person operations that don’t require payroll or inventory tracking.
Pricing and Plans: Competitive and Scalable
Zoho Books, like Wave, offers a free, limited version of its software. Five paid versions of Zoho Books are available, ranging from $20 per month for the Standard plan (supporting three users) to $275 per month for the Ultimate plan (supporting 15 users). The more you pay, the more features you get, including multicurrency transactions for customers, sales orders and approvals, various tax tools, and vendor portals. A free trial is available for all plans, and Zoho offers a discount for those who pay annually.
I reviewed Zoho Books Premium, which costs $70 per month for 10 users. It's less expensive than both FreshBooks Premium ($65 per month, or $11 per user per month) and QuickBooks Online Plus ($115 per month, which includes five users). The most affordable, full-featured accounting solution I tested is Wave Pro, priced at $19 per month. Patriot Software Accounting's Premium tier costs a bit more at $30 per month.
It’s difficult to calculate Zoho's true cost because some of its features, such as inventory assemblies and receipt scanning, require add-ons. Zoho Inventory offers three pricing tiers, including $29 per month (supporting assemblies), $79 per month, and $129 per month (all billed annually).
Interface and Ease of Use: Packed With Options and Personalization
Zoho Books offers more customization options than any other site I reviewed. Although its voluminous features and settings can be overwhelming, you can toggle some tools to simplify the interface. The site allows you to set your preferences at every step, including the base currency, fiscal year, and report basis (cash or accrual). You can also specify how the site should handle forms. For example, you can modify fields when giving discounts, recording adjustments, or tracking billable expenses.
(Credit: Zoho/PCMag)Other setup steps are more unusual. For example, Zoho Books offers unique automation tools that can be quite powerful once you get past their challenging setup processes. You might create a Workflow Rule that automatically generates invoices for unbilled time sheets at regular intervals. Additionally, the company offers migration assistance for those switching from QuickBooks (Desktop and Online) or Xero.
During setup (or any other time), you can reach support by chat, email, or phone. Zoho Books also now has an AI-driven chat help tool called Ask Zia (still in beta). It's proactive, taking actions such as preparing a draft document for my approval.
The software's flexibility is further evident in its data import options. You can add contacts, item records, and sales/purchase transactions in CSV, TSV, and XLS formats. Other setup tasks help you personalize the application by, for instance, choosing a payment gateway for receiving and sending payments (it supports several, including Stripe and Square), configuring user roles and permissions, and setting up automated payment reminders (both email and text). The site outperforms its competitors in supporting custom fields.
Zoho Books’ dashboard tells you what you need to know when you first log in. It shows totals for your current and overdue receivables and payables, followed by several charts, including cash flow, income and expenses, projects, and top expenses. Account balances are here, too, as is an account watch list. This is the default dashboard, but you can create additional ones with more content options by subscribing to higher tiers. I prefer this dashboard to Xero’s, although it, too, serves as a good starting point for your accounting work.
The site's navigation tools make things manageable once you learn what’s there, and the pages make good use of the entire screen. But there are so many options that this can take some time. The site lacks FreshBooks’ state-of-the-art design, but it still looks pleasing and professional, considering all its content. You just have to read every page carefully while you’re getting started. Competing sites have a much less onerous learning curve.
Sales Tools: Industry-Leading Customization
Zoho Books excels at handling receivables. It supports all the sales forms you might need, including multicurrency/multilingual invoices, quotes, retainers, and sales receipts. Beyond standard content (such as contact information) and financial details (including payment terms and related transactions), customer records often contain additional tools and data, including emails exchanged with customers. Customer portals enable shared activities, including communications, quote approvals, and transaction history. Most competitors don’t offer these, though they can save time and improve customer relations.
(Credit: Zoho/PCMag)Suffice it to say, you can customize every element of invoices and other sales forms. No other app allows as much control. You can modify the colors, fonts, and layout, as well as branding elements such as logos and headers/footers. It's also possible to add custom fields and modify templates as needed. Zoho Books makes customer financial details (such as outstanding receivables) available when you create an invoice. Completed forms appear on dedicated landing pages, which link to the form’s journal entries, related tools, and a timeline. The site even now supports progress invoices and sales tax automation.
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Bills and Expenses: Streamlined With Built-In Bill Pay
Vendor records and purchase forms (such as bills, expenses, and purchase orders) offer more customization and detail than those of our competitors. You can view an overview of your bill status and enable email and in-app notifications to stay on top of due dates. The software supports approvals, mileage tracking, multiple currencies (automatic exchange rates), and vendor portals. And now, it has a bill-pay add-on, which costs $59 per month for 100 ACH transfers.
Transaction management is good, but not exceptional. You can, however, create rules to automate categorization and itemize expenses.
(Credit: Zoho/PCMag)You can auto-forward receipts in email (more on that later) and snap pictures with your phone to attach expense documentation to forms. Recurring expenses and bills can save you a lot of time. As with QuickBooks Online, you can track 1099 payments to vendors, e-file the forms (extra fees), and create 1099 reports.
Project Management: Robust Control Over Costs and Time
Zoho Books’ project tracking is similar to what you get with FreshBooks and QuickBooks Online, although it supports more detailed information. For example, you can choose from four billing methods (based on project hours, staff hours, task hours, or a fixed cost) instead of the two you get in some other apps. By linking billable hours (time sheets or individual entries), as well as purchase and sales transactions, you can monitor each project’s profitability. Zoho Books allows you to create an actual budget rather than just specify a budget total.
(Credit: Zoho/PCMag)Document Management: Smart Scanning for a Fee
Zoho Books offers expansive document management features, but you have to pay extra for some of them. If you just want to attach a scanned receipt or other document to a transaction, for example, the site doesn't charge you. But you might want it to automatically extract and capture that information for Zoho Books transactions. The Autoscan tool, which supports 15 languages, automatically reads as many fields from the original document as possible and then enters that information into the correct fields on the transactions. The site can work with scanned documents that you upload or email to your unique inbox. The cost is $8 per 50 scans per month.
Inventory Tracking: Advanced and Highly Configurable
Zoho Books outperforms FreshBooks and competes with QuickBooks Online in terms of inventory tracking. You must pay an extra fee for product assemblies unless you subscribe to the Elite or Ultimate level. However, product records offer more options and fields, including Dimensions and Weight, Returnable Item, and Universal Product Code (UPC). Its item and service record templates allow you to enter sales and purchase information and use a category-leading 13 units of measurement. If you choose to have the application track inventory, you can enter your opening stock number and rate, as well as set your reorder point.
(Credit: Zoho/PCMag)Zoho Books tracks your inventory stock level (taking into account items you need to bill or invoice, for example), displays a list of related transactions, and provides the item’s history in its product records.
Reports: Deep, Customizable Insights
I can’t think of a question you might have about your finances that Zoho Books can't answer in a report. It includes dozens of templates—more than competitors—that you can customize, schedule (up to 200 per month), email, and export in CSV, XLS, XLSX, and Zoho Sheet formats. New since my last review is a custom report builder.
Privacy: Is Zoho Books Safe to Use?
Zoho Corporation employs various security measures to protect your data. For example, employees undergo background checks and sign a confidentiality agreement. The company has dedicated security and privacy teams in place, as well as a compliance staff. Physical security is a priority in the workplace and at data centers, as well as the monitoring of all entry and exit movements. Network security and monitoring techniques help provide multiple layers of protection and defense. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is an option.
Mobile Experience: Capable and Complete on the Go
The Zoho Books mobile apps (available for Android and iOS) replicate the browser-based version of the site for the most part. Though, as with numerous competitors’ apps, many of the data pages are abbreviated. Open a customer record, for example, and you instantly see contact information and the receivables balance. You can contact the representative from this page by phone, email, or message, as well as accept payments, create new transactions, and more. Related transactions and history also appear in contact records.
(Credit: Zoho/PCMag)Other tools, including bill status, invoices, projects, reports, and time tracking, provide good subsets of the website’s capabilities. In fact, you could probably run your business for a while from your phone if necessary—the mobile versions are that comprehensive. They aren't flashy, but they get the job done.