Zoho Books Review 2021

For just $9 a month, Zoho's accounting solution, Zoho Books, helps you track business expenses, send invoices, and accept online payments. It also automates as many of those tasks as possible, which means less time entering data and more time steering your business towards success. Interested? Business.org's Zoho Books review can help you decide if that sweet, sweet automation and low price outweigh Zoho's main drawback: its lack of easy payroll syncing.

If you want to spend as little time as possible keeping your books, Zoho's accounting features make it a great fit—as long as you don't have many employees. Why? Because Zoho Books doesn't have an easy payroll solution. Other popular accounting software providers either offer their own payroll product or sync with payroll providers like Gusto . . . but Zoho doesn't.

Practically speaking, Zoho's lack of payroll syncing means you'll use separate payroll software to calculate employees' wages. Then you'll re-enter that same information in your Zoho Books chart of accounts to ensure your business finances are accurate.

If this sounds like a hassle, well, that's because it is. As a result, we can't really recommend Zoho Books to companies with more than a handful of employees. But if you work for yourself, employ two or three other people, or don't mind re-entering information (or paying an accountant to do it for you), Zoho's automation, price, and ease of use make it a great choice.

Like the super-popular QuickBooks, Zoho's cloud-based accounting software is hyper intuitive—ideal for business owners new to the wide world of accounting. And unlike QuickBooks, Zoho's accounting plans start at a deeply reasonable $9 a month. (In fact, Zoho's priciest plan is just $4 more than QuickBooks' least expensive plan for small businesses.)

Plus, extra users cost just $2 a month or $20 for a full year, which is an absolute steal. For instance, QuickBooks doesn't let you add extra users, while FreshBooks charges $10 a month for each one.

But Zoho's low price doesn't spell a trade-off in quality: every Zoho Books plan packs in the features. Even the cheapest plan includes all the accounting basics, like expense tracking and automatic bank reconciliation, plus Zoho-specific automations like automated workflows.

In addition to automated workflows, every Zoho plan has automated recurring invoicing, expenses, and payment reminders—features that cost extra with competitors like FreshBooks.

Zoho’s cloud-based accounting software has one major flaw that makes it hard to recommend to businesses with employees. Apart from Texas and California, Zoho doesn't offer payroll integration in the United States. With Zoho Books, you'll have to manually enter your payroll data into your accounting software every payday, which works against Zoho Books' time-saving automation in a big way. So if you manage employees, we recommend you look to a competitor like Xero or Wave instead.

The Professional plan, Zoho's priciest, costs $29 a month for 500+ billable customers. Most crucially, the plan adds inventory management, which is how businesses that sell products track those products, from salons selling hair dye kits to appliance repair shops selling parts. (If yours is a service-based business, like a law firm or massage studio, you likely don't have inventory to track and won't need this specific feature.)

But the increased customer list and inventory management are about the only difference you'll see between the Standard and Professional plans. And while Zoho Books' inventory management plan is fine, businesses that manage thousands of dollars worth of inventory each month will likely need a more robust inventory management system than Zoho can provide.

QuickBooks and Zoho Books share some strengths, especially their user-friendly software, highly rated mobile apps, and extensive reporting. But in general, if you need accounting software that syncs easily with quality payroll services like Gusto and ADP, we recommend QuickBooks’s software over Zoho’s accounting solution. If you care more about affordability, automation, and collaboration, go with Zoho Books.

Remember, though, that it's hard to declare one accounting software better than the other: what's right for your company might not be best for someone else's. Take your unique needs into consideration before choosing one over the other, and don't be afraid to test-drive software before committing. Zoho Books has a 14-day free trial, and QuickBooks' lasts 30 days (note that testing QuickBooks for a month waives its offer of 50% off for 3 months).

Zoho Books starts at $9 a month for two users. Additional users cost $2 per month (or $20 per year if you choose to pay annually instead).

Zoho Invoice is an invoice- and billing-specific Zoho product. With it, you can send customized and recurring invoices, accept online payments, and track the time you spend on each project for more accurate customer billing. If you have five customers per month, you can use Zoho Invoice for free. Otherwise, plans start at $9 a month.

Like Zoho Books, Zoho Invoice is a quality software—it's one of our top five picks for the year's best billing and invoicing software. But if you need more than billing and invoicing, go with Zoho Books, which includes Zoho Invoice's features plus accounting.

In other words, if you're running a small freelancing business from home with just a few sales a month, Zoho Invoice's free plan might be enough. Otherwise, Zoho Books's accounting features make it a better pick.

Zoho One is a business suite that packages multiple Zoho apps into one accessible CRM (customer relationship management) platform. Instead of subscribing to multiple businesses for different accounting products—say, Zoho Books for accounting, Hiveage for payments, and WordPress for site hosting—Zoho One gives you access to multiple Zoho apps that streamline business management from one accessible dashboard.

In the end, though, Zoho One still doesn't offer a simple payroll solution for businesses outside of India. So if you're running a US-based small business, our Zoho One review comes down to the same thing as our Zoho Books review: whether you're using just one app or the full spectrum of products, Zoho’s suite won't work for businesses with employees.