Zoho Invoice

Avantages

Practically everything is so well-thought out. Zoho Invoice is everything a self-employed person or entrepreneur needs to manage contacts, quotes, invoices, receivables and expenses. It even has robust support for time billing (projects, tasks, etc.), sales tax, recurring invoices, and even multiple currencies (I just need USD, but the capability is there). Zoho Invoice is the almost perfect accounting tool I need to track income and expenses. When my data is entered and up to date, getting my data to my accountant for income tax prep is as simple as exporting two spreadsheets.

Inconvénients

The expense feature set includes the ability to track mileage. This feature is represented well on the iOS app, but in order to enter a mileage record with an odometer reading, the system requires both a beginning value and an ending value at the same time. This really doesn't work. I would have to note my beginning mileage then enter it along with the ending mileage at the end of the business trip. As such, I use a standalone mileage app called MileBug.

Avantages

My small consulting firm has used Freshbooks for a couple of years. Recently they "upgraded" their product and I lost very basic functionality that I relied on day-to-day. While not perfect, Zoho Invoice provides most of that functionality and at an over 50% drop in price. I really like the previous FreshBooks solution, and would have eagerly embraced the new, but you cannot release a new version that supports so much less functionality that the last.

OK, off that soap box. Zoho Invoice so far seems easy to use, with a few caveats I will spell out in the next section. The customization is great (almost, but not quite, to a fault). Some of what I consider basic functions for a consulting environment are available. Including the expense receipt images on the PDF invoice (HELLO FRESHBOOKS!!!) are very simple.

Inconvénients

Three things. But keep in mind that even with these three things I find Zoho Invoice better suited to my needs over my current solution;

Provide the option to include the expense date on the invoice!!!!! This is very basic and very needed. I see from reviews that people have been asking for this for several years.

Provide a field for expense vendor. Sure I can setup a custom field, but when you get to the invoice you cannot access custom fields at the detail level.

Provider the option to include the expense author on the invoice. I usually have two to three of us on an engagement all entering expenses for travel, lodging, meals, etc. By including the author, the client can easily see from whom the expense is coming from.

To get around these shortcomings, I have my group enter expenses in a very specific way that includes these information in the notes field. Not optimal, but still works.

Avantages

It is a very useful and easy software, specially for small start-ups. It allows you to easily make invoices, recurrent invoices, manage them as you wish, etc. Also, you can personalize them, since you can do your own templates, although they provide you with some. But the most important thing is that you can integrate Zoho Invoice with all other Zoho applications, such as Zoho CRM, Zoho Expense, Zoho Mail, etc. and, by this, have several different departments of your enterprise in the same page. That's what I find most useful.

Inconvénients

Honestly, I haven't found any problem with this program, but if I had to say something, I would say that the only negative things are small details that some times may be bothering but, at the end, are not relevant. An example of these little things could be when you make a mistake in an invoice and then you cannot modify it. It is true that you should not modify an invoice once it has been sent, but in some occasions I know I could do it without any problem.

Avantages

Zoho Invoice is a great invoicing tool that allows you to track invoices and payments for services and products.
1) The ability to design your own invoice template to use. Customization is easy but also designer friendly.
2) Tracking payments and expenses from one place. The name may fool you but Zoho Invoice also lets you track time and other expenses related to your business or invoice. This is great for basic bookkeeping.
3) Invoice management is second to none. You can create draft invoices, recurring invoices and others all with a few clicks, the email template is also great as you do not have to write emails.
4) Customer Statements are invaluable. Being able to send a customer a statement of all invoices plus payments they have made is a Godsend for business.
Zoho Invoice may not have all the bells and whistles of Zoho Books but it is an affordable alternative to someone who does not want the accounting side of things but want to still have a basic overview of their financial standing as a business.

Inconvénients

1) Zoho Invoice does not have a feature that allows you to know when a client has seen an email about a payment. This means you may not know if a client has seen your email unless they acknowledge it.
2) My continued gripe with Zoho mobile apps for Android still rings true. While the mobile app has the basic functions of the web interface, compared to iOS, the Android app just does not function as well.
3) The Client Portal does not offer much functionality to a client other than to check their statements, the process of communication has to be started by you to give an estimate and so on. If there was a way to allow a client to also initiate communication from the portal, it would be better.

Avantages

For young employees it is easy enough to add the products and their costs, and i can keep track of the schedules that have been created and included from the office or the cellular device, in addition to that I can send my clients the invoices by email in PDF formats

Inconvénients

I am somewhat general about the billing information, and it may only be a whim of mine, but I would like to have more control of the information in my invoices. For example, my start time, end time, assignment name and some notes I want to write for each assignment billed to my clients