Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.
Zoho Books
Zoho Books
Zoho Books

Zoho beefs up cloud accounting program

by
22nd Mar 2017
Save content
Have you found this content useful? Use the button above to save it to your profile.

California-based cloud application developer Zoho has introduced a mini-ERP suite for small business users.

Zoho Finance Plus incorporates the Zoho Books online accounting system alongside an invoicing module, Zoho Expense for recording and tracking employee expenses, a multi-channel order management system and a recurring bills module for subscription-based businesses.

All of this comes as a bundle for 10 users costing £79 a month. Additional users cost £2 a month, with sundry charges for extra invoice scans and order/shipping labels. Anyone who previously used multiple Zoho Finance apps can switch to a single license for Zoho Finance Plus.

While hardly mainstream in the UK, Zoho has the advantage of integrating with other applications in the developer's portfolio including customer relationship management, HR and reporting. This integration means that quotes or orders generated in Zoho CRM can be automatically funnelled through to finance.

This time last year, AccountingWEB member carnmores asked whether Zoho can get UK VAT right - a common weakness in US products. The online help manual for Zoho Books covers this side of things adequately, including clear descriptions of how it copes with EU sales, the flat rate scheme and the dreaded multi one-stop shop (MOSS) report. 

Another area that is covered includes the need for “safe harbour” protection from international data protection liabilities, under which Zoho says it conforms with EU requirements on collecting and retaining user data.

Zoho lies somewhere between Google Apps for business and Salesforce or Oracle, but unlike Google, the smaller rival has offered an accounting product for many years. But Zoho Books has has yet to crack the ultra-competitive UK accounting market in a significant way.

When AccountingWEB surveyed software users in 2013, only four users registered a rating for Zoho Books, which achieved the lowest functionality and customer satisfaction scores of all the applications in our survey. Zoho has addressed that challenge with a range of functional upgrades over the past four years including an online document store introduced last year.

Another reason for Zoho’s elusiveness is that it rarely shows up in traditional accounting channels - unlike other rival developers such as Sage, Intuit and Xero. That may be changing, however, as Zoho has been spotted among the exhibitors’ lists for the Accountex event in London on 6-7 May.

Tags:

Replies (5)

Please login or register to join the discussion.

avatar
By Barkster
23rd Mar 2017 11:11

Is there not a forum where we can all discuss the pros and cons of all the accounting software ?
I've been looking at Zoho, Quickbooks, Kashflow, Xero, Clearbooks and FreeAgent - trying where possible to actually use them for some real -life accounts, but they all seem to have some horrible shortcomings, most commonly in that lack of flexibility in the nominal code structure. For example, I loved the simplicity of FreeAgent, and the neat postcode and company details lookups of ClearBooks (which saves no end of typing), but you can't amend any balance sheet codes in FreeAgent (so to cope with a temporary loan of monies to a client, we had to create a bank account) and the code structure in Clearbooks is somewhat amendable but so many are undeletable you couldn't possibly have your own code structure.
Quickbooks outputs a TB with the code number and the code name as one text item (why would you do such a thing ?), Xero is quite inflexible when it comes to posting cash received which doesn't pertain to a particular invoice, on Zoho, when I tried to put some real accounts on it where the first deposit into the bank account was £101 being £1 share capital and £100 directors loan account - I gave up at that point - it was just too hard !

So it would be useful if everyone's findings (good or bad) can be posted on here to save everyone else from reinventing the (square) wheel !

Thanks (0)
Replying to Barkster:
avatar
By jasongibson
23rd Mar 2017 11:45

I had the same problem with Quickbooks i.e. code number and code name being one text item. The solution i use is something like :-

=NUMBERVALUE(MID('IncomeStatementNominal'!G35,4,4))

The =MID selects the numbers, and the =NUMBERVALUE turns the numbers which are being recognised as text, into numbers - which means the VLOOKUP can find the number to link into.

Thanks (0)
Replying to jasongibson:
John Stokdyk, AccountingWEB head of insight
By John Stokdyk
27th Mar 2017 17:21

We sincerely want to make AccountingWEB the kind of place where you can do exactly that, Barkster.

We are working on creating a backroom forum area where people like you can discuss things like cloud accounting software, but until that work is complete the best place to start is https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/any-answers.

Rather than adding to the mountain of general "Small business accounting software" threads, maybe start off with one on "Thoughts on Xero..." Followed by one on QBO, Free Agent, Clear Books etc etc....

You could leave a bit of space between them (a couple of days or as much as a week) so as not to crowd out other conversations, but also to focus attention on one at a time.

In the meantime, I'd like to refer to you our Cloud Practice Management series. This is a project we have been working on since Feb to shine the spotlight on a few of the new market entrants:
https://www.accountingweb.co.uk/content/cloud-practice-management

We're considering the next candidates for our software snapshot series - would a similar survey of the main accounting engines fulfil your requirements? Or would you want something deeper and more detailed (follow some of the links to see the extent to which we've described the products)?

It would obviously be a bigger job for us - but the insights from AccountingWEB members like you would help map out the differing functionality and characteristics of each application.

Thanks (0)
avatar
By Barkster
23rd Mar 2017 19:21

But you shouldn't have to do that ! Grrrrr !

I have just spent about 30 minutes painstakingly ticking off 256 invoices on Kashflow for a single cheque batch payment (this is one months invoices for my supplier). You have to load 10 transactions, scroll down, load another 10 (and that's just to get back to April-16), I then had to tick them all off, pressing "load more" or whatever to get the next screen up, it took ages and my hand aches but I finally got the 256 invoices to agree to the amount of the cheque, pressed "Save" and was told the maximum amount of invoices I can include on a batch payment was 100 !!! So for every one of my suppliers cheques, I have to post three different payments to the bank to match off a month's invoices ? Let alone the hours and hours it would take of scrolling down, ticking boxes. This has just rendered Kashflow completely useless for this client. What a waste of my time and their money. These are the sorts of things we need to know before we waste days trying to implement a package which is not for the client. I have spent days just importing a whole years invoices for this client and getting the TB to balance and now it's all just wasted. I am gutted frankly.

Thanks (0)
avatar
By varunsingh123
24th Mar 2017 05:22

Hi Everyone,
I'm Varun, the product marketer for Zoho Books. We've beefed up our offerings for the U.K. market and are on a roll to give a complete back-office solution to businesses. In the next few days, you can expect more from Zoho Books with us participating at Accountex and then through other marketing efforts.

Thanks (0)