It doesn’t matter if you run a small single-member LLC or a major corporation: all business entities need to carefully track their income and expenses to ensure compliance with taxation guidelines and to separate personal and business assets.
Starts at $0 + state fees and only takes 5-10 minutes
These days, you don’t need to hire an accountant to handle this aspect of your business. Instead, you can enlist the assistance of a reputable accounting software service to take care of it, saving thousands of dollars over hiring a CPA. But how can you determine which software solution is the best fit for your needs?
Zoho Books is our favorite accounting software option for very small businesses that want an accounting tool that can grow and scale along with them. Let’s see if it’s the right choice for your business!
What can business accounting software do for your company? For starters, it helps you with expense tracking and tax season preparation. In addition, accounting software can assist you in setting reasonable expectations for the growth of your business. It can also provide custom reports that identify which parts of your business provide the best return on investment.
Last, but far from least, using accounting software can help you prepare reports for investors. When you have clear and concise financial data at your fingertips, it’s easy for potential investors to get a snapshot of your business activities and decide if they want to invest in your business or not.
Zoho Books can tackle all of these tasks and more, but is it the best accounting software service for you?
Zoho Books is an outstanding option for any small business owner or self-employed individual who wants accounting software that can grow and evolve along with their company. Let’s quickly run down some of its pros and cons before we take a deeper dive.
Zoho Books offers four different levels of accounting software service: free, $15/month, $40/month, and $60/month. Unlike most competitors’ free versions, the no-fee version of Zoho Books actually includes enough tools for a very small business to handle its accounting needs. In addition, its paid versions add valuable services to present well-rounded packages.
We’re highly impressed with Zoho Books’ free version, as it includes invoice management, expense and mileage trackers, the ability to import credit card and bank statements, and much more. Each of the paid plans adds a suite of features to the free version, suitable for a variety of business types and sizes.
All of Zoho Books’ plans are reasonably priced, and we love how this company can adapt to your evolving needs as a small business owner. Overall, pricing is a solid advantage for Zoho Books.
Zoho Books first hit the market in 2011. Beyond that, we weren’t able to uncover much info about the company. In fact, the “What Is Zoho Books” page on its website doesn’t include many details, and seems like a bit of a forgotten relic on the Zoho Books site, considering the page has an assortment of random typos you (thankfully) won’t see elsewhere on this site.
When it comes to customer feedback, it’s a much better story for Zoho Books. We found reviews of its services scattered across the web, with the biggest collection appearing on the Google Play Store, where Zoho Books maintains an outstanding 4.5/5 average score with nearly 8,000 reviews.
The big drawback of Zoho Books’ free version is that you’ll only have access to email support. That said, what are you complaining about? It’s free! All of Zoho Books’ paid plans include phone and chat support, in addition to the free version’s email option.
We’re impressed by Zoho Books’ incredible customer support availability. When some competitors offer less than 10 hours of support availability per day, we were delighted to discover that Zoho Books actually answers the phone 24 hours per day, Monday through Friday. In our experience, their support reps are courteous and informative, so Zoho Books earns a strong score in this area.
There wouldn’t be much point in using an accounting software service if it didn’t make the process of tracking your company’s finances significantly simpler. Thankfully, Zoho Books does just that, with an easy-to-use interface and plenty of intuitive features.
One of Zoho Books’ best attributes is how easy its platform is to use. Just take a look at its incredible rating in the Google Play store for evidence to back up that assertion! Zoho Books presents simple, straightforward tools that make it easy to keep close track of your business income and expenses.
While we found handfuls of customer feedback scattered on other sites as well, by far the largest collection of reviews we found for Zoho Books was on the Google Play store. With 7,903 reviews and a 4.5/5 average rating score, it’s clear that the vast majority of Zoho Books customers are satisfied with their purchases.
Overall, it seems that many customers are highly pleased with the affordability of Zoho Books accounting software, and also praise the company’s customer support team. That said, we did notice a small handful of reviews complaining about different user experiences on the app and desktop versions leading to a longer learning curve than expected.
Considering how few of those negative reviews we found, we’re not putting too much stock into them. We think Zoho Books rates very strongly on customer feedback.
Think Carefully When Picking Business Accounting Software. Zoho Books is an excellent option for any small business owner looking for a free accounting tool with several tiers of upgraded service for growing businesses. The fact that this company receives such good reviews is the icing on the cake.
We’re big fans of what Zoho Books has to offer for accounting software services, and we wouldn’t hesitate to recommend this company to our families and friends. That said, we understand that this might not be the right company for everyone.
If you’d like to take a look at your other options for accounting software services, take a look at our guide to the best companies in the industry.
Disclaimer: The content on this page is for information purposes only and does not constitute legal, tax, or accounting advice. If you have specific questions about any of these topics, seek the counsel of a licensed professional.
Written by Team ZenBusiness
ZenBusiness has helped people start, run, and grow over 700,000 dream companies. The editorial team at ZenBusiness has over 20 years of collective small business publishing experience and is composed of business formation experts who are dedicated to empowering and educating entrepreneurs about owning a company.
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