Best Accounting Software For Really Small Businesses
Content
It’s great with most accounting tasks required for a 100+ size business. They’ve been good with upgraded in features & we’ve got all required reports.
But for anyone who is new to any system, there’s always questions and help needed. And unfortunately Zoho have completely missed the mark and don’t appear to care about improving on that at all. The overall experience with Zoho Books has been disappointing.
You can connect all of your bank accounts and credit cards directly to Zoho Books if you choose. In turn, all transactions will be automatically imported to the application, allowing easy categorization of both income and expense transactions. Divvy provides free expense management software that allows you to set budgets, pay bills, and automatically track expenses in one seamless app. General consensus is that it takes work to get Zoho Books up and running, from migrating your information from QuickBooks or another accounting platform to learning how to use each of the features.
Zoho Books can even bring clarity to your unbilled hours and expenses of your project so you can bill them together when sending a final invoice to a customer. In addition, Zoho Books provides a vast number of important financial reports such as profits and losses, cash flow statements, tax statements, and more. No worries, you can set up automatic payment reminders that will send messages to overdue clients reminding them that a payment is late or overdue. Zoho Books will even automatically update received online payments and notify you of the dollar amount received so you can better manage your cashflow. Once a payment is made you can even have the system send ‘Thank You’ messages or ‘Payment Received’ messages to the customer. You’ll notice in many Zoho Books reviews that one of its benefits is that the system is backed by the name of a powerful corporate suite that serves the activities of almost 13 million users around the world.
If you use other third-party products, such as payroll services, you won’t be able to integrate them with Zoho, leaving you with a lot of manual data entry. Compared to FreshBooks, Zoho also stands out for the number of users it allows in each plan, as well as its client allowances and cost. The most expensive Zoho Books plan is $29 and allows for over 500 clients, while you’ll need to work with FreshBooks to receive custom pricing for the same client volume. Considering the FreshBooks plan for 500 or fewer clients is $50 per month, it seems a safe assumption that it will cost more than $50 .
You and your team will be able to log the amount of time spent on a project daily, or weekly, or use the timer widget to clock the exact time spent on particular projects. I think the software fits nicely between invoicing software like Freshbooks, the micro business competitors like Wave and Kashoo, and it’s small business competitors like QuickBooks and Xero. If you haven’t checked out Zoho Books yet, I’d give it a try.
Zoho Books
Each plan also includes a private client portal for accepting payments, unlimited phone and email customer support, free SSL encryption, and open rest APIs to connect with third-party applications. Zoho Books also offers an intuitive mobile app for managing your accounts on the go. With the app, you can track your mileage, reach out to customers, track your time, create invoices, and more. If you manage many clients and vendors, Zoho Books is one of the most affordable accounting software to consider. Their cheapest plan includes up to 50 billable clients, and they also have packages for up to 500 billable clients as well. And you can easily upgrade to an advanced plan if you outgrow the basic plan or need more advanced features.
• Managing multiple projects can be overwhelming at times for business owners, but with Zoho Books controlling and managing projects has never been easier. Books lets you create new projects, add tasks for each project, and assign specific tasks to your employees. You can even give restricted access to those who are working with you. Customize your users’ access by restricting what they can view dependent on their position or role. Zoho Books is an intuitive software for growing businesses that manages finances, tracks expenses, and helps manage cash flow. Streamline all of your back office duties with Zoho Books and organize all of your transactions in one place.
Other Software By Zoho Corporation
Open one, and you instantly see contact information and the receivables/payables balance. Icons on this screen let you call, email, or message the contact, while another icon takes you to links for creating new transactions, accepting payments, and more. I found it to be effortless to use as it has one of the best interfaces around.
- Zoho Books is a smart accounting system designed for growing businesses.
- This plan includes everything in the Lite plan plus some additional features.
- If you’re business bills more than 500 clients, none of the previous three plans will work for you.
- The site now integrates with the Uber for Business app and supports report comparisons.
- You leave a message for the agent to call you back and no one does.
No credit card or banking information is required, and you can cancel at any time. Subscription payments are made monthly; however, if you commit to a year-long plan, you can receive a discount.
Alternatives For Zoho Books
That’s a simple example—you can create formulas with even more conditions and results. No other small business accounting tool I’ve looked at lets you create up to 46 custom fields for records and not one of them supports such thorough profiles for contacts. There’s still more to do in the site’s Preferences section, however. No other small business accounting website breaks down its functions for setup in this detail because no other site I reviewed is as flexible or feature rich. Take the time to check out the settings for every module you plan to use, and you can take full advantage of Zoho Books’ exceptional functionality.
You can also find help online in Zoho Books’ searchable knowledgebase and customer forums. Additionally, while the software can support multiple businesses under a single account, you need to pay a separate subscription for each organization. The reports in the “purchases” and “sales” section mostly sorts your sales or purchases based on certain categories, such as by item, project or customer. These reports will be important for some decision-making, but it seems unnecessary to separate these reports into different templates. You can also create bills if you have any future expenses that you need to keep track of.
Access key financial reports like P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement. The payment history tab is also useful to see how much you paid and when the payment was made for future reference when tax filing does occur.
Benefits Of Using Zoho Books
You can require approvals by the project manager or client and set a maximum number of loggable hours per day. No other small business accounting website offers this kind of project depth and customizability. In minutes you can also categorize all transactions imported from your bank and credit card accounts. Zoho Books is a piece of online accounting software that makes it simple to keep track of your company’s finances. It is one of the programs that make up the Zoho suite of services that can benefit small businesses. If you’re thinking about getting Zoho Books for your small business, here are a few things for you to consider.
Advantages Of Zoho Books
Larger small businesses should be aware that there’s a cap of 5,000 transactions per month on the highest plan. Even though this is ample for most small businesses, it’s a limit to keep in mind if your business is growing quickly. The system supports barcode scanning, and you can create price lists, which is a useful feature if you offer special pricing to certain customers. If you connect your account to a payment processor, you can accept invoice payments online. Compatible payment gateways include PayPal, Braintree, Stripe and Square.
Zoho Books’ mobile app is available for iOS and Android devices. With the app, you can create invoices, run reports, capture receipts, record expenses and track billable time no matter where you are. The Premium plan costs $60 per month and supports 10 users.
Generally, it can be described as an intuitive accounting solution designed for small businesses to handle their finances and to remain on top of their cash flow. It is very simple, easy-to-use, and able to help you make intelligent, data-based decisions. It is also the pioneer accounting product of a reputed software provider, which eliminates all worries related to uptime, support, or security.
The client approvals feature lets your clients approve timesheets before you bill them. The software also allows you to track and invoice billable expenses. As an online application, Zoho Books is accessible from any browser. It has automated features that can save you time, such as recurring invoices and automatic payment reminders, and client portals, which make it easy to follow up with your customers on quotes and payments. It’s also scalable, so you can continue using it as your business grows or even if you start a second business.
View All Accounts With Zoho Books
At $29 it’s still more affordable than the comparable QuickBooks Plus ($70/month) and QuickBooks Advanced ($150/month) and offers most of the same features. Although Zoho does offer 1099 tracking and filing, they do not dive deeper into the larger area of payroll and taxes, both of which can be crucial parts of business accounting. Therefore, if you’d like to be able to directly integrate your payroll or pay taxes within your accounting software, you may consider another platform that will allow you to do so. You can schedule reports to be automatically generated weekly, monthly, quarterly, or annually and then emailed to you in the format of your choice . More than 40 standard reports are built into the software, including a general ledger, profit and loss, sales by item, timesheet details, and aged receivables and payables. Zoho Books has several capabilities that help you complete your accounting tasks quickly.