Zoho Books detailed Analyst Evaluation prepared by Eval-Source for GetApp.com

1.
Features: Accounting, Invoicing, Quoting, Banking and Credit Card
Management
Industry: Non Specific
Customers: Small and Medium Business
Geography: All markets
Languages: English
Cost: Starts from $24/Month
Review methodology
This review constitutes an analysis based on a product demonstration and software review by qualified system software
experts at Eval‐Source The demonstration Eval‐Source received from the vendor was based on their own custom vendor
script, designed to validate and/or disprove vendors’ claims. The script was specifically prepared to identify
functionalities and form an impartial analysis and software review for an Accounting and book keeping system.
Business Problems Addressed
The nature of doing business means managing finances, which can be a time and resource consuming task. Whatever
type of business you’re in, managing your company’s cash flow is one of the most important aspects of your operation.
In small businesses, people are pulled in every direction and accounting may not have dedicated resources. Being able to
effectively manage your finances can help your company in forecasting and making better decisions.
When examining the financial management of your business, there are many elements that must be taken into
consideration. The basics of business accounting can be broken down into two components: money in (accounts
receivable) and money out (accounts payable). Businesses often have a difficult time keeping records of the quotes,
invoices, bills and expenses that constitute the company’s cash flow. Another major element of business accounting is
managing bank accounts and credit cards, and understanding how products and services impact the company’s profit or
loss. With so many accounting tasks, it is easy for companies to fall behind, make mistakes and mismanage their
finances. Streamlining the accounting process with good visibility can be very beneficial for any business.
Zoho Books is a specialized software application that addresses the accounting needs of small businesses. In this profile,
we will examine Zoho Books in the areas of target markets, pricing model, solution analysis and technical analysis. We
will look at the range of functions that Zoho Books offers to companies that need to manage their finances, make better
decisions and stay on top of their business.
Target Market
Many businesses manage their bookkeeping with Excel spreadsheets, basic accounting tools or specific accounting
software like QuickBooks. Using separate tools for bookkeeping can be confusing, time consuming, incur a high margin
for error and offers limited scalability. Zoho Books offers this functionality as a service. Because Zoho Books is an on‐line
tool, it caters to companies that wish to manage their finances using one complete accounting software tool with an
easy point of entry. The transition from spreadsheets or basic accounting tools to an on‐premise accounting software
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can be costly and Zoho Books provides the flexibility of having your accounting resources available at any location.
Given the number of growing businesses with remote offices or remote workers, this tool is an ideal solution for
bookkeeping. It allows collaboration and visibility of the company’s finances to any employee in any location, an ideal
function for owners and small accounting departments.
Most companies place a finance tool at the top of the purchase list for business applications. Zoho Books caters to
companies that want an on‐line bookkeeping tool but may need additional applications for other parts of their business.
Zoho Books is standalone application, but is part of the Zoho Platform, which has over twenty other business
applications. This means that companies using Zoho Books for accounting have the option to buy CRM, project
management, recruiting, ticket management and support applications to fulfil their needs. This is ideal for any company
that needs to manage its growth.
Pricing model
The pricing model for Zoho Books is very simple. A yearly subscription includes two months free, giving your
organization a net cost of ten months for the year. Zoho Books’ flexibility gives smaller companies the option of adding
another organization under one accounting entity. Additional organizations may be added to the monthly subscription if
multiple accounting entities are required. This option is available with a monthly or yearly subscription, both of which
offer a, net saving of two months with the purchase of a yearly package. The benefit of a monthly subscription is that
small businesses with very long sales cycles are not obliged to pay for months when there is little or no accounting
activity. Additional users can be added for five dollars a month.
Additional User
Additional Organization
$
5
per month
$
18
per month
$180 yearly subscription
Upon contract termination, the data export is free.
SaaS Checklist
In order to fully understand SaaS and cloud‐based solutions, Eval‐Source has created a checklist that businesses should employ when
engaging a SaaS or cloud vendor. The components of this checklist cover the cloud delivery model and provide details that may
require further investigation. This checklist serves as a starting point for SaaS/cloud basics that the organization should bear in mind
before choosing a SaaS/cloud solution.
1. Tenancy ‐ Multi or Single: Multi ‐ tenant
2. Cloud Structure Public or Private: Public cloud
3. Subscription Terms: Monthly, Yearly
4. Data Center: Online
5. Data Security Standards by Vertical: N
6. Business Continuity/Data Recovery: Y
7. Encryption Type: 128/256 SSL bit encryption
8. Version release schedule: Depending on customer feedback for feature incorporation
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9. Current Version Released: 1.0
10. Session Management: Y
11. Application Level Security: Y
12. User Limits: N
13. Data Migration Services offered: N
14. Free trials/sandbox testing offered: Yes, there is a thirty day trial
15. Application Customizable by User: Y
16. Application Customizable by Vendor: Customer Driven Development
17. Set Up Fee (admin fee): N
18. Charge for Additional Space: N
Solution Analysis
All features such as customer invoice management, expense tracking, recording and monitoring ongoing expenses, bank
statement reconciliation, transaction monitoring and real‐time collaboration is included in this double entry accounting
solution.
Functional Areas
Zoho Books consolidates the functions for tracking money‐in, money‐out, managing operational accounting transactions
and all vendor related accounting. The four main functional areas of Zoho Books are Money‐In, Money‐Out,
Transactional Operations, and Banking and Credit Card Management. All accounting functions occur in these four
categories. They cover the entire accounting cycle, making it easier to track incoming/outgoing expenses, manage the
day‐to‐day transactional processes and include banking and credit card management.
The main functions of Zoho Books are Money‐In, Money‐Out Transactional Operations, and Banking and Credit Card
Management will be examined and consequent functions within each module will be explained.
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Money‐In ‐ The Zoho Books Money‐In functions manages all incoming cashflow from all sources. The Money‐In
functionality allows for monitoring of cash flow and invoice management. This features a wide array of functionality,
which is discussed below.
 Quotes, Invoices, Credit Notes etc. – The ability to generate a quote for products and services and to issue an
invoice when the sales cycle is complete is rare for accounting software. Zoho Books offers a quote to invoice
feature. All invoices can be tracked and managed through this portion of the application including credit
notes, recurring invoices and deposits.
 The invoices portion of the application is quite flexible and can customize your invoices, using either pre‐
generated templates or ones that you create yourself, which will enhance your business image. Contacts can
be imported from other programs such as Zoho Sheet or CRM through a use of a CSV or TSV file. Once the
invoice items and contacts are in place, businesses can create recurring invoices with an automatic date for
the invoice to be issued and utilize a feature that automates follow ups within the software, reducing
administration. Zoho Books is multi‐currency and multi‐lingual, and can automate snail‐mail invoices using
USPS. They can also be sent using email. As part of the procure‐to‐cash cycle, businesses can track payments,
accept payments online and automate thank you emails for extended customer service. The thank you
emails generated from invoicing can be used to promote special offers and act as an additional marketing
tool.
 A further helpful feature of Zoho Books is a help menu that prompts the actions to take when creating new
invoices. These include whether to import, export, add new items, add new customers, new contacts, new
tax groups and other common invoicing questions. These questions stem from a knowledge base of FAQ that
Zoho has created for this application, and which proves valuable for customers new to accounting software.
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 Within the Money‐In portion of this application, you can create credit notes for customers to facilitate
returns, for coupon submission, gift card purchases, overpayments etc.
Money Out– This category of Zoho Books allows you to manage the cash flow within the company. It helps manage and
track expenses and monitor outgoing funds.
 Zoho Books provides a convenient one‐source application where businesses can record all expenses and track
all payments, automatically creating the necessary records for SMB taxation, accounting and banking.
 As with the Money – In section of the application, there is a convenient help menu of possible actions.
Actions include the creation of a new account or contact, bill tracking, and import/export of expenses, and all
are viewable in Zoho Sheets.
 Zoho Books can help manage your supplier relationships by prioritizing payments and can manage the
accounting schedule for each payment. Suppliers can be paid within their own payment schedule which also
helps cash flow management and may contribute to discount pricing.
 Keeping invoice and expense records in one location ensures there is no duplicate payment or overpayments.
Accurately tracking and recording cash flow allows the company to have visibility of all statuses. They may
then be categorized as billable, unbillable and track funds reimbursement.
Transactional Operations – As the complexities of running an SMB grow, it is important to understand that the Zoho
Books transactional approach facilitates the tracking of operational tasks. Zoho Books is a double entry accounting
system. Essentially, a journal entry is created to offset accounts for credits and debits, and also for expense and billing
transactions. For day‐to‐day transactions, Zoho Books automatically creates journal entries. For special considerations
such as fixed asset depreciation, the Account module allows for the creation of manual entries. The manual journal
entry capabilities facilitate moving money from one account to another, ensuring your books balance and allowing for
easy transaction correction.
 A popular Zoho Books feature is the multiple base currency manager. Open bills and invoices can be easily
adjusted using real‐time currency exchange rates. When converting currency the “loss” or “gain” resulting from
the transaction is posted to an exchange account and the differences are recorded.
 Zoho Books comes with extensive pre‐built reports to chronicle all common transactions such as trial balances
and journal reports. This provides broad corporate visibility to all balances and capital management throughout
the firm. Zoho Books’ canned reports are categorized, and can offer precise solutions to any problem. The
reports also have user based built‐in security so that private information can only be accessed by the correct
people.
 Within the invoicing module, detailed reports of all invoice criteria may be created. Items such as invoice details,
summary and aging reports are all part of the shelf packaged reports. Additional operational accounting tasks
such as profit ‐ loss reports and balance sheets that provide a financial snapshot are quickly and easily created.
To simplify tax collection, setup taxes are visible at any time for any defined entity to which you may owe taxes
such as Federal, Provincial or Local departments.
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 A convenient Zoho Books feature facilitates the addition of online payments. These payment options are easy to
use and simplify administrative and accounting procedures. Zoho Books has three online payments options:
PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net.

These online payment options enable the company to pay online, send money and receive payments. Customers
can pay with a credit card or PayPal account. In order to use the Google Checkout options for online payments,
a Google merchant account is required. Once setup, customers can use Google Checkout to accept credit card
payments or use the Google Checkout feature for online payments. The Authorize.net integration works the
same way, allowing for credit card payment or collection using the Authorize.net network, and requires a
merchant account for use. The integration of these three common payment gateways provides additional
security for transactions as they all are subject to the strict security policies of each gateway. This adds another
layer of security to validate internal accounting processes.
 Financial visibility is of key importance for any small business. The Dashboard feature in Zoho Books provides the
required visibility in all aspects of the business. Zoho Books offers over 25 off the shelf reports to gauge the state
of your business. Common indicators that are required such as aging reports, accounts watch list, profit/loss
reports, bank and credit cards accounts summary and income and expense charts are available. Complete
visibility by the Dashboard provides the organization with a clear financial picture of the state of the company.
Banking and Credit Cards
Recording of transactions has always been difficult for small businesses, especially when tracking expenses. Zoho Books
provides a feature to track and monitor expenses and bank account information, and then record that information in
one place. The Banking and Credit Card module of Zoho Books easily reconciles many different procurement and
payment streams.
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 This module records banking and credit card transactions (for both payments and invoice collections), deposits,
fund transfers and expense tracking. When it is reconciliation time, bank statements can be checked against the
transactions in Zoho Books to validate that correct accounting procedures have been adhered to. Items such as
interest on what the bank account earns, uncleared checks and institutional transaction fees are all validated
using this portion of the application. In accordance to reconciliation procedures, the user can drill down into
any account to view the details of a specific transaction for further clarification.
Zoho Books is different from SMB accounting software in its ability to handle multi‐decimal precisions for multi‐currency
transactions. This feature is difficult to find in SMB accounting packages.
Technical Specifications
Zoho Book comes standard with pre‐built integrations to three popular payment gateways: Google Checkout, PayPal and
Authorize.net. (See functional analysis for how these features work).
Zoho Books is part of the larger Zoho family of business applications platform; however each of the applications in the
platform is a standalone application that is sold separately. Zoho Books integrates to Zoho CRM, Zoho Projects, Zoho
Sheets and to Google Apps. The functional API’s for Zoho Books should be available around April, which will allow for a
wider range of import information from existing systems.
For organizations looking to leverage an existing system with previous accounting records, there is an import option
available through a data wizard for importing information into Zoho Books. These files may be imported in CSV and then
imported into Zoho Books. An additional advantage of using Zoho is that the Zoho CRM is free for up to three users.
The CRM contacts can be imported into Zoho Books, and companies have the functionality of Zoho Books and Zoho CRM
for the price of just Zoho Books. This provides an extra incentive when organizations are evaluating enterprise software
applications, by combining two applications for one price. Further integrations with rest of the Zoho platform is planned
for later release.
Because of the SaaS based model that Zoho provides, there is no need for organizations to install a thin client that is
interfaced through the web. The application is accessed through any major web browser and can easily be accessed
from many sources. This is especially useful for organizations that have multi‐organizational entity accounting in one set
of books and many different physical locations.
An upcoming service of data migration that should be released shortly is expected to simplify migrations from other
systems and provide direction to SMB’s to make the transition from spreadsheets to a proper accounting system.
Quick Glance Specifications
Web browser optimization: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer
OS required: N/A due to SaaS model browser based delivery
DB required: N/A due to SaaS model browser based delivery
API’s provided: Coming in April
Security practices include: Physical, Business continuity, Redundancy and People Access
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Conclusion
Zoho Books is point‐to‐point accounting software for SMB’s that allows companies to manage their finances and make
better decisions. The collaboration and visibility within the tool allows owners, management and accounting resources
to understand the flow of money in and out of the company and help forecasting for the business. When examining
money coming into a business, Zoho Books facilitates the management of invoices, quotes, and credit notes. For money
going out of a business, Zoho Books manages the expenses and bills. A company’s credit cards and bank accounts can
also be managed with Zoho Books. For companies that operate internationally, Zoho Books provides a wide variety of
currency exchange within the tool.
Zoho Books also integrates with different applications like PayPal, Google Checkout and Authorize.net. The integration
with other financial applications extends the functionality of Zoho Books. As PayPal, Google Check out and
Authorize.net are so widely used, Zoho Books can be quite powerful as an accounting software tool without the need to
manage multiple systems, and provides one central interface for all financial transactions.
As Zoho Books is on‐line software, it makes it easier for a company to adopt the technology and not have to worry about
resources to provision and manage the tool. Once a company begins to use Zoho Books, the functionality of other Zoho
applications such CRM, project management, recruit and others can be easily added to cater for other business needs.
Since Zoho CRM is free for up to three users, both systems can be used for just the price of the Zoho Books monthly
subscription price. The combination of this functionality makes Zoho Books a full financial management software tool
for small businesses.
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About GetApp.com
http://www.getapp.com
GetApp.com is a business software app store for buyers of enterprise applications. It offers a simple way for buyers to compare and evaluate
applications and a low cost channel for providers to be found online. Software buyers come to GetApp.com for the convenience of researching
enterprise applications in one place. Application providers come to GetApp.com to reach out to a worldwide audience of active buyers, receive
qualified traffic to their website and sales leads relevant to their target markets. GetApp.com also operates AppDoubler, a software partner
network dedicated to Cloud applications, where vendors offer affiliate opportunities to re‐selling partners. Please visit www.getapp.com
and www.appdoubler.com for more information.
About Eval‐Source
http://www.eval‐source.com
Eval‐Source is consulting firm that provides enterprise software selection and strategic consulting services for organizations to achieve success in
their IT initiatives. Our Tru‐Eval selection system allows organizations to avoid IT failure, receive greater ROI and provide accurate decision support
for enterprise software. Our strategic consulting practice encompasses cloud computing services, cloud evaluation services, technology planning
and business process optimization. Eval‐Source is an industry leader in the analysis of software technology and our thought leadership has placed
us in the elite of consulting /analyst firms. As technology changes the need to understand your options and find the best fit for your organization is
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direction and success in selection, planning and optimization of their technology systems. Eval‐Source provides the professional services that put
your needs first and allow you to achieve success in your IT initiatives. We are the source for your solutions.
Zoho Books Product Review 13/04/2011