Every business should invest in accounting software to manage its finances. It can help them in business performance analysis by facilitating invoicing, expense tracking, payroll, and financial management.

But finding the right online accounting solution can be daunting and tedious at the same time. Zoho Books and QuickBooks are the market’s two most popular cloud-based accounting tools. To help you decide which one is more suitable for your business, we have created a comparison guide below.

Before jumping to the differences between the two, let’s first understand what Zoho Books and QuickBooks Online(QBO) are ???

Zoho Books is an online accounting software offered by Zoho Corporation. It helps you automate accounts payable, accounts receivable, inventory tracking, payroll management, and many more. QuickBooks Online is also one popular accounting and Finance software offered by Intuit. It automates the segregation and organization processes for businesses and helps them save much of their productive time. Other than accounting, it provides other multiple functionalities too.

Although Zoho books and QuickBooks have quite similar functionalities, here are some essential differences that you should keep in mind before choosing the right one for your organization:

1. Pricing

Zoho Books offers three subscriptions, namely Standard, Professional, and Premium. Features like a client portal, automated payment reminders, and recurring invoices have been made available under the standard plan. Their pricing starts from $0 to $60 per month. It also offers a four-day trial and free plan to help the users get acquainted with the application.

On the other hand, QBO offers three monthly subscription plans: Easy Start, Essential, and Plus and Advanced. Pricing starts from $10 to $60 per month. Features like Zoho Books can be easily found in this too. They also offer a 30-day trial period to the users.

Unlike QuickBooks, Zoho Books offers monthly and annual plans, and businesses can save a lot by taking up a yearly subscription.

2. Invoicing

Both Zoho Books and QuickBooks Online have advanced invoicing features. QuickBooks has six fully customizable inbuilt templates for its customers, allowing companies to place bank transfer and payment gateway links directly in the invoice. You can also track and auto-schedule the invoices to know when your customers have seen them. Features like recurring invoices, reminders, and batch invoicing are offered in some of the subscription models. It also supports six different languages for sending invoices.

Zoho Books has a slight edge over QBO in terms of invoicing. It provides 16 pre-built templates which are fully customizable and can be provided for your business. Recurring invoices, reminders, batch invoicing, and auto-scheduling are included in the subscription plan. It also supports 30 languages and encrypts the PDF invoices for extra security.

3. Payroll

Payroll management features can help you effectively manage your employees by ensuring seamless business operations. QuickBooks offers three different payroll plans to choose from, and it is essential to note that payroll doesn’t come with your subscription and will cost you an additional fee.

Zoho Books does not offer any payroll management solution. But it provides SurePayroll integration to cover your business’s payroll needs and comes with an additional fee.

4. Reporting

Both Zoho Books and QBO have a plethora of reports. Although both have more than other accounting software, QuickBooks has more than 80 reports compared to Zoho books 50 plus reports.

5. Client Portal

Both Zoho Books and QuickBooks have secured client portals for their users. In ZohoBooks, customers can view documents, including invoices, estimates, and project details. But with the QBO, it is limited. It only allows customers to view, print, pay, and send questions about their invoices.

6. Project Management

You can use either to manage your projects and keep them organized. Both include project creation, billable and nonbillable hours, and tracking expenses for your project.

Zoho Books also lets you add tasks that are not a feature in QBO.

7. Integrations

When talking about the integration of QBO leads. Users can integrate 650+ applications with QBO. In comparison, Zoho Books offers only 30 integrations. However, Zoho Books has multiple payment gateways and a Zapier integration that can connect it further to the 1000 plus applications.

8. Customer Support and Service

Customer service and support increase the reliability of the application. Zoho Books offers numerous ways to get in touch. Finding the answers is accessible through phone, mail, live support, and weekly webinars.

On the other hand, QBO has longer hold times when calling support. It also lacks email support and knowledgeable support agents.

9. Mobile applications

Both Zoho Books and QBO have many applications compared to other accounting software; however, Zoho Books has a slight edge over QBO as QBO is only available for  Apple and Android while Zoho books are available for Apple, Android, Windows Tablet, and devices.

10. Ease of use

No one wants to deal with complicated applications. And that is by Zoho Books, and QBO  comes with an easy-to-use and user-friendly interface. Some features are hidden within the other elements, which may seem difficult a few times at first, but one will get used to them eventually. Customer Support is always there to help the users if they are facing any difficulty and can help them come back on track.

Conclusion

By now, you must have understood the key differences between these two, but if you are still confused regarding this critical decision, feel free to contact our experts at CRM Masters.