Dundas BI vs. Zoho Books

For all the scenarios I have so far worked on or I am currently working on, Dundas BI has proved to be more than adequate and apt to handle all of those. It is a very easy-to-use tool with quick shortcuts enabling you to prepare ad-hoc reports or dashboards in a matter of minutes.

Incentivized

If using other cloud applications and you wish to create Zoho Books transactions via APIs, Zoho Books is great. The overall UI and flow of the application are great. If you need a detailed job cost accounting solution and robust reporting there is some room for improvement here.

Incentivized

• Project organization from Development to Production, you get a production and development license but I think the best way to do it is with DEV and Prod project in the Production box. Use the development box for testing updates and really crazy things. With the Dev and Prod projects on the same box, you just publish from Dev to Prod and you are done. Users only have access to the Prod projects so no one can mess up what you are working on.
• Security - If you have a hierarchy (subsidiaries, divisions, department, teams) and you want each group to see only their data, then Security hierarchies are for you!
• Dependent filters! What's this you ask? Here is an example of how it can be used, in your company you have departments and who works for what department is in your database. You make a dashboard that has a department filter (only show these departments), a managers filter, and employee filter. Not every manager or employee is in multiple departments usually only one. With dependent filters you can say that the manager and employee filter are dependent on what is selected in the departments filter so when you go to filter them they only show the managers or employees that are part of that department, and you can even it do so employees are not only dependent on department but on manager as well. Then it gets even better as it can be done in reverse as well so when you select a manager then go to the department it only shows the departments he works for (there are better situations where this is more useful).
• It is scriptable! From calculate columns, null replacements, button actions, load actions, hover over events there a way to do what you want.
• They are constantly improving and listens to your suggestions.

Incentivized

• Zoho Books invoicing and receipting features are second to none. We find it easy to quickly invoice clients and add items to their bills and also for our own receipting internally.
• The accounting features are great for our accounting team to be able to see where we are financially and how the business is doing.
• The ability to add contacts and run a mini CRM channel with clients within Zoho is invaluable. Since we use this in conjunction with our other CRM channels, it helps to have a centralized place to follow up and see through a sales funnel.
• Zoho Books allows us to take payments from clients around the globe a feature we didn't have when we used another accounting system.
• The pricing for Zoho Books is fairly reasonable for an SME organization which is a great for us as it pays itself back many times over every month.

Incentivized

• Not too many cons for how we use the application. It really is easy and powerful. Very powerful.
• Licensing is one thing that could be looked into. It is simple, but a little confusing. For example, if I get a license today, but a new release comes out tomorrow, it seems that the license doesn't work with the new release. Maybe that is by design, but it would be nice to clearly understand.

• Zoho Books is only available in Texas and California. There is no integration allowed for paying employee expenses. The absolute worst aspect is the fact that if you make even the slightest error in data input there is no backing up. You cannot undo an error.
• The system does not allow change once implemented, so you must get every one of your beginning balances perfect. The practice of Journal Entries is cumbersome. When reconciling, Zoho Books has adopted a number of required steps that significantly overcomplicate reconciliation using practices that are not consistent with general accounting principles in the US.
• On the customer side, you must look in two places to see the beginning balance and the current receivables that might exist for current invoicing.
• The way the system works, you must avoid having much trust with the balances depicted. So far, it appears that Zoho Books uses what we called in school "that new math."
• It would be terrifying to rely on this bookkeeping system to support an IRS Audit. The system violates too many fundamental accounting principles.
• The software is used by so few people that there is concern that we might never find a skilled bookkeeper.

We are still in the implementation phase, but so far we are finding it to be easy to use and learn. The eLearning courses that they have made available for free, as well as User Forums and other training videos have made even difficult concepts easier to understand.

Customization is the biggest struggle for us and most of the time we need to involve a tech person. The chat support is a great feature and very helpful. It would be great to be able to customize and create invoices and correspondence (templates) such are reminders in multiple languages within one organization. The currency (USD) would be the same. We have clients in different countries that don't speak English but pay in USD.

Incentivized

We have bi-weekly calls with our Success Manager, as well as access to support as needed. Any question that I have had, multiple people have been willing and able to jump on a call to talk me through it, or send an email with the solution

The support team feels very disjointed. We have filtered through a number of "lead" contacts and are frequently spammed by other Zoho members. Once getting an appropriate support contact on the phone - the team is very helpful, it just takes a lot of hoop jumping to get there. We actually unsubscribed from their support package as we were not getting the value we were looking for.

Incentivized

Providing that you have the client's needs well known, creating BI content using Dundas BI is a walk in the park!

Per dollar spent, it offers the widest range of features of the tools that we evaluated. It offers lots of options for how to configure your environment, though they are not always intuitive to figure out. Having an ETL layer was a must have for us, as well as the ability to host to secure HIPAA compliance. It is not a replacement for ad hoc reporting, but does a great job of creating parameterized reports and dashboards that look great.

Incentivized

We had a lot of problems with Exact Online, support-wise and price-wise. So Zoho Books wins on every point there. While Exact offers way more options, it tends to be really slow... and complex. Again Zoho Books wins. If you want an easy-to-use tool and not pay a lot of money, or if you are a small administration office with a few clients, this tool will be perfect for you.

Incentivized

• Coming from an SQL based standard delivery model, Dundas BI has provided a fantastic rate of ROI.
• The preparation and delivery time has reduced from weeks to just a few hours.

Incentivized

• Integration: Zoho Books offers out of the box integrations to extend the functionality and connect with the applications you love like MailChimp, Microsoft Outlook, PandaDoc, and Quickbooks, etc.
• Flexibility makes Zoho Books great!
• Since I can use forecast reports, I can create customizable sales forecast data from the dashboard to accurately measure revenue forecasts and establish sales quotas.

Incentivized