Zoho Books Review
March 04, 2020

Zoho Books Review

Mike James | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 1 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Zoho Books

We use it to manage all financial transactions. It is used by people across the organization of a Professional Services company.
  • Invoice is very seamless if using Zoho CRM
  • 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.
  • It has caused significant harm to our business because you just cannot trust the numbers.
  • The adverse impact has been complicated enough that plans are underway to reverse the bad decision that led to the installation of this system in a 25-year-old business approximately 8 months ago.
Zoho Books is significantly inferior to the competition. The listings offered here would not allow me to choose QB or MYOB.
Zoho Books worked so hard to make the system all-inclusive and assumed that it must do everything automatically without thought on the part of the operator. Most recently the system credited this writer with being the author of some manual entries in a major account that caused a six-figure error that may take as much as half a day to correct if it can be corrected. Remember it is almost impossible to undo something that is not correct. If you need a true accounting system, this is not the system.

Zoho Books Feature Ratings

Accounts payable
1
Accounts receivable
1
Cash management
1
Bank reconciliation
1
Expense management
3
Inventory tracking
Not Rated
Automatic reordering
Not Rated
Pricing
3
Order entry
8
Credit card processing
9
Cost of goods sold
2
Dashboards
5
Standard reports
2
API for custom integration
5
Role-based user permissions
3

Evaluating Zoho Books and Competitors

Yes - Quickbooks Desk top. QB for the cost was prohibitive and did not all for a distributed work force. We really did and still do need a cloud based solution, it just has to follow more traditional accounting principles
  • Price
  • Product Usability
  • Third-party Reviews
The integration with Zoho One (CRM) which we think is the best ever CRM for us.
Our review of the product did not include adequate review by our CPA. Books does an excellent job of promoting the features that are strongest. I really thing that in our due diligence before making the change, we did not ask enough questions or did not ask those questions of the right people.

Zoho Books Support

The people are great. They follow the party line when working with us. There is clearly no intent to provide integration to the employee expense
There is no intent to make the bank reconciliations system work in a manner consistent with US Accounting principles. There is no intent make the payroll system one that can easily cut a paycheck. Which brings up the fact that adjusting the printing on a check is very laborious and you only get close. You cannot get perfect.
ProsCons
Knowledgeable team
Kept well informed
Poor followup
Problems left unsolved
Escalation required
Difficult to get immediate help
Need to explain problems multiple times
Yes - They will always try, but frequently the bugs we report remain as bugs. We just gave up.

Using Zoho Books

Processes are not intuitive
ProsCons
None
Do not like to use
Unnecessarily complex
Difficult to use
Requires technical support
Inconsistent
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
  • Invoicing
  • Entering Vendor Payables
  • Bank reconciliations