Are you looking for a simple & efficient way to manage your books of accounts? If so, then Zoho Books may be the solution you need.

Zoho Books is a cloud-based accounting software that helps businesses manage their financials, including invoicing, expenses, & bank transactions. It offers a wide range of features for accounting, stock taking, reconciliations, managing workflows, projects that help you keep track of everything. Zoho Books is a user-friendly interface, making it easy for business owners with little to no accounting experience to get started. In addition, its analytical interface helps you make informed decisions about your business.

Unique Features:

1. Banking
   • Automatic Bank feeds

With Zoho automatic bank feed feature, you are just one click away from getting your books updated with your real-time bank account. Zoho Books allows users to add bank accounts & get feeds automatically without having to download bank statement, convert it into formats & import them into books.

Zoho provides a wide range of banks with which one can get automatic bank feeds, such as PayPal, ICICI Bank, HDFC bank, SBI bank, Kotak, Axis, Citi Bank, & many more.

• Setting of rules

Zoho Books provides a feature that will reduce your efforts of making repetitive transactions by setting transaction rules. While creating the rule user can specify criteria based on fields such as payee, description, Reference number, or amount with matching criteria.

For Example, ABC Ltd. has a daily recurring transaction of conveyance. To reflect this, a transaction rule called "Conveyance" is to be created in Zoho Books with the criteria that any ‘description contains conveyance’ be recorded as "expense" & under the account "Conveyance." The account name & criteria are auto-populated as & when the transaction description meets

the criteria.

2. Sales
   • Automatic Follow-ups

Users can create automatic follow-up reminders based on the payment due date or expected payment date. By default, there are 3 default reminders in the Zoho Invoice account for which you can select the mail id & CC mail Id & number of days before or after the due date or Expected date of payment by which the reminders are to be sent.

3. Dashboard

The most unique feature of Zoho books is the dashboard which gives an analytical picture of the overall business through charts & graphs. This shows the analysis of the receivables, payables, status of cash flow, total income & expense, a summary of top expenses, an overview of the project, status of bank & credit cards. This illustration helps the business to make effective decisions based on the overall performance of the business. Zoho Books also provides users with customisable dashboards, which can be tailored to their specific business needs. Users can choose which widgets to display on their dashboard, such as recent transactions, outstanding invoices, & financial reports.

4. Inventory
   • Inventory adjustments

Adjusting the value or quantity of the inventory for reconciliation purposes is a challenging task in other accounting software; Zoho provides a great tool to resolve the same. In Zoho, the ‘Items tab’ enables the users to make adjustments in value or quantity & edit the same whenever required.

• Re-order level & purchase order

A re-order level is a point at which inventory needs to be purchased in order to reduce the risk of over or understocking & cost of carrying the goods. In Zoho, Users can set the re-order level & vendor from which the material is to be purchased. As soon as the inventory level reaches the re-order level, Zoho will notify the user of the same & user can send a purchase order directly through Zoho to the associated vendor.

5. Expense & Vendor Bills
   • Recurring Expense

Passing the same entry can be time-consuming when we incur the same expense over regular intervals. Users can set the option in Zoho to automate this step and thus pass entries for recurring expenses automatically after the set interval of time. For this user have to select the expense name, date interval, and repetition frequency.

• Attachments on bills

One unique feature differentiating Zoho from other accounting software is that the user can attach the softcopy of the original invoice and payment receipts in the books for reference. Users can have access to an actual copy of the invoice for scrutiny. You just have to click on the attachment icon & drag and drop the invoice. It will get uploaded to the cloud.

6. Projects
   • Timesheet & Managing finances

The timesheet feature in Zoho Books allows businesses to track the time their employees or contractors spend on a particular project. It will enable users to create timesheets for individual projects, set billable & non-billable hours, & view a detailed report of the total time spent. The timesheet information can then be used to generate invoices & bill clients for hours worked.

The users can create projects, set project budgets, assign tasks to team members, track expenses & billable hours, & generate detailed project reports. The feature also includes a Gantt chart view to help you visualise the progress of your project.

7. Payments Gateway Integration

Zoho Books can be integrated with various payment gateways to allow businesses to accept online customer receipts. This feature helps the user by reducing efforts to track the customer receipts as Zoho books automatically mark invoices paid as soon as the receipt is tracked. This integration makes it easier for businesses to manage their financial transactions, reconcile their accounts, & keep track of their cash flow. Zoho books provide multiple platforms such as PayPal, 2Checkout, eazypay, Razorpay, and Paytm.

Not only customer receipts but also allows the user to make payments directly to the vendors for expenses incurred. Zoho has integrated with ICICI Bank, Yes Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Standard Chartered Bank, etc.

8. Design & interface
   • The interface of the books

The design of Zoho Books is modern & intuitive, allowing users to access all the features & tools they need to manage their accounting effectively. The software has a simple, straightforward navigation structure, which makes it easy for users to find what they're looking for. In addition, the interface is designed to be easy to use, even for those new to accounting software.

• Templates

Zoho Books provides businesses with various templates to help them create sales orders, purchase orders, vendor bills, & invoices quickly & easily. These templates are designed to be both professional & customisable, allowing businesses to create documents that reflect their unique brand & style. By using these templates, companies can save time & effort when creating & sending essential documents, such as sales orders, purchase orders, vendor bills, & invoices.

Conclusion

Zoho Books is an excellent solution for MSMEs & startups looking for comprehensive & user-friendly accounting software. Zoho Books has something to offer whether you are a business owner, an accountant, or a freelancer.

Authors:

Varsha Dhake

Manager | Email: varsha.dhake@masd.co.in | LinkedIn Profile

Simran Pathan

Associate Consultant |Email: simran.pathan@masd.co.in | LinkedIn Profile